A co-worker of mine started watching House of the Dragon and asked me to borrow the Song of Ice and Fire books. I gave her the usual disclaimer about the fact that the series may never be finished and let her borrow them.
I am curious as to why GRRM's publisher doesn't cut ties with him or how he can get away with not doing anything with his main series. Is it because he has enough money that it wouldn't matter or that he publishes side books like Fire and Blood to make the publisher happy? Had he released Winds of Winter before season 6 it would've been massive. Granted, I'll still buy it when it comes out ( I am thinking Winds of Winter will come out eventually but I don't think book 7 will).
I honestly think what will happen is that the publisher will wait until he dies and then gather all his writing and hire someone to complete the books with it. I find it highly interesting that now GRRM is claiming the books will be different and attacking GOT. Although HBO is a fool to keep working with him because had he finished the series, GOT would've been much better at the end.
I never read the books, but it was clear by the end of season 4 that the show was never going to get better. The story liked to keep building and adding instead of deepening character depth. The characters just kinda flopped into their new roles with the new characters. This of course is why we saw the rushed ending, because all the characters with any depth to them were killed off and the bandwagon of “heroes” to fight the night king was just brutally lame.
One, what do they care whether or not he actually finishes the series? The books he's written already make them lots of money, and they likely get a cut of the royalties from HBO. Two, A Song of Ice and Fire isn't the only thing George is involved. He also writes and edits a series called Wild Cards, for instance, which is still going strong today. Overall, there's no reason for the publishers to cut ties with George he's making them plenty of money even with an incomplete series.
That’s what I figured but was wondering if I could be wrong. I have a Wildcards comic book which isn’t bad but I tend to avoid buying his stuff unless it’s second hand since he doesn’t seem to care enough to finish the main series. But I’m just one person
It's just the reality of the publishing industry. GRRM has made many millions of dollars. His publishers have made many millions of dollars. I'm sure they've paid some very large sums of money for his unpublished books (advances).
So, what are they going to do? Lock him in a room until he finishes the book? No, you can't force an author to write. Besides, coerced in some way, it would probably be crap.
So what's left? Are they going to sue GRRM to get their advance money back? Then all of the sudden they become "that publisher who sued their most successful author." As prospective author would YOU want to publish with a publisher who might sue you if you missed deadlines?
They may or may not have the option to pick a replacement author if GRRM dies.
It's basically a lose-lose for the publisher. All they can do is encourage GRRM to get off his butt and and finish the book.
Man's a septuagenarian neckbeard blob of Trump derangement syndrome, COVID derangement syndrome, and metastasized old-school east coast liberalism.
It's going to be crap whether they try to force an ending out of him or not.
Maybe they're waiting for GRRM to pop his clogs so they can find a more malleable author to take the project on?
His heirs might be more amenable to the proposition that someone who gives a fuck writes the remainder of the story.
GRRM is a god in the writing community and can command huge bucks from streaming services. That's why he stopped writing GoT. He knew that nothing he could write would exceed expectations and he just gives 0 fucks since he can't keep topping himself.
His publisher has 0 leverage and he could fire his publisher and have the whole industry beg for him.
His HBO deals isn't like his books. HBO has a contract and they're going to squeeze him to get everything they paid for.
With the GoT series, nobody has any leverage to squeeze him with. The fans? He doesn't give a fuck about them.
GRRM will never finish asoiaf. He's done a few things that have screwed himself. Most notable is that the characters are too young for him to execute the ending he wanted. He plotted out that the series would take longer and let the characters age into adults, but then he wrote a book that covers like 3 months. He's also laid out too many series plotlines and made the promise that most of them will resolve together in an ending. We saw that ending in the show, it was underwhelming and awkward.
So GRRM is in an impossible situation. He can't stretch the series out more, it would just make more problems. And he can't end it like the show did, which included almost every core element he wanted in his ending. So he just wants to milk it until he dies.
I'm shocked he's not under a contract that the publisher can leverage.
I wouldn't think so, but I would imagine book sales were high at the peak of the GOT poplularity
Absolutely. They’re probably not waiting until grrm dies, they’re waiting until hbo has squeezed enough out of their investment so that they can stomach the risk of air being a flop. It’s essentially a HL3 situation