[Grief]

Well, I haven't bought many of his books, though not for any moral reason, just that i've got other things to read before I get around to them.

However, I do think writers have some duty to finish a series. If you call something a series, people go in expecting the author to conclude the story.

If I wrote 2 books, and called them book 1 and 2 of a trilogy, then didn't write a third, people would be rightfully pissed off at me, because they have bought the books with the expectation that the story is concluded, not that I just leave it unfinished as of book 2, because I would have misled people.

Saying you are going to finish a series, and not doing so, is misleading, because people buy the books expecting a finished series.

Would I have bought all the Mbotf if erikson had said "Btw, i'm not actually going to finish this series"?

Is it a scam, saying that you are going to write a series of books, and then not doing so? I would say yes, because people buy te first books expecting a finished series.

Now, Martin is still working on the books, so hasn't scammed anyone yet, really. But if people don't think that they're going to get the series concluded, which they expected when buying the first books, and were told they would get hen buying the first books, I can see why they might feel a bit scammed.

"One more thing. Burn all producer that stopped your favourite show in the middle. Its your right! You paid for whole story! Or not...? "

Is it a scam if I buy a DVD saying "Part one of a twelve part show", and then buy the next 7, and then it is stopped, before the story is concluded? I would say yes, because I bought the first 8 under the expectation of a complete story, and so it is a scam, because I have been misled. Had it said "Part one of a 8 part show which gets axed abruptly" I would not have been misled.

Likewise, had martin not led people to believe he would deliver a finished series, it would not be a scam if he did not do so.

[anothevilbadguy]

Grief, on 07 June 2010 - 01:00 AM, said:

Well, I haven't bought many of his books, though not for any moral reason, just that i've got other things to read before I get around to them.

However, I do think writers have some duty to finish a series. If you call something a series, people go in expecting the author to conclude the story.

If I wrote 2 books, and called them book 1 and 2 of a trilogy, then didn't write a third, people would be rightfully pissed off at me, because they have bought the books with the expectation that the story is concluded, not that I just leave it unfinished as of book 2, because I would have misled people.

Saying you are going to finish a series, and not doing so, is misleading, because people buy the books expecting a finished series.

Would I have bought all the Mbotf if erikson had said "Btw, i'm not actually going to finish this series"?

Is it a scam, saying that you are going to write a series of books, and then not doing so? I would say yes, because people buy te first books expecting a finished series.

Now, Martin is still working on the books, so hasn't scammed anyone yet, really. But if people don't think that they're going to get the series concluded, which they expected when buying the first books, and were told they would get hen buying the first books, I can see why they might feel a bit scammed.

"One more thing. Burn all producer that stopped your favourite show in the middle. Its your right! You paid for whole story! Or not...? "

Is it a scam if I buy a DVD saying "Part one of a twelve part show", and then buy the next 7, and then it is stopped, before the story is concluded? I would say yes, because I bought the first 8 under the expectation of a complete story, and so it is a scam, because I have been misled. Had it said "Part one of a 8 part show which gets axed abruptly" I would not have been misled.

Likewise, had martin not led people to believe he would deliver a finished series, it would not be a scam if he did not do so.

It is not a scam unless the intention was to deceive. Without the deception element there isn't a scam. I mean would you call it a scam if Erikson got hit by a car tomorrow and had left express wishes previously that no one else finish the series.

This whole GRRM thing is a bit annoying. He is my second favourite author but cannot get so worked up about the delay. Quite a few authors take a long time to write books, especially perfectionists. His blog only annoys me in that is mainly a bit shit. He should be allowed to watch sport and have hobbies, I doubt it is really slowing him down much. Obviously some of his work commitments like editing will draw some time away but not that much, and many authors switch between work to stop getting bogged down. And I cant see him advertising his merchandise is really going to hinder his progress much, and obviously some people want that stuff (not really sure what adults exactly but whatever), so if there is a demand. It seems from his comments he has written himself into a corner a bit and also due to his perfectionist nature he is taking a bit to get it done.

Saying that a number of broken promises about earlier release are annoying, and I do want him to finish it soon, partially to stop all the bitching back and forth constantly. But i thought I would take part so as to avoid doing actual work.

[Grief]

Authors dying is different-it's out of their control, rather than a choice about finishing a series.

It's a scam if an author says he'll finish a series, and chooses not to, because people will have bought the book expecting the author to finish the series, and might not have bought it otherwise.

It's not a scam if an author says he'll finish, and cannot because of circumstances outside of his control.

Do I think GRRM has chosen not to finish the books? No.

Do I think people are being unreasonable to worry that he cares less about finishing them? Not really. Personally, I don't care enough to worry, but it's hardly difficult to see why people might think he cares less about writing asoiaf, and so think they may not get a conclusion as they expected when buying the books, and so begin to feel scammed.

"It is not a scam unless the intention was to deceive. Without the deception element there isn't a scam."

I agree with this. It is the deception that makes the scam. Though, maybe not the intention. If an author chooses not to finish after saying they will, even if they intended to complete the series at the outset, they have still decieved the people buying the books in the first place, albeit not deliberately, because they have still bought the books expecting the series to be completed. Now some reasons justify this, health reasons etc. But in the absence of outside factors, I think that authors do have a duty to the readers to finish a series, because the readers have supported the authors with an expectation of a completed series that the authors have led them to hold.

My point is that it's not just as simple as you buy the book, and that is all, in my mind, if the books are part of a series that the author has said will be completed.

[Grief]

I don't have an issue with him taking his time, though think it was a mistake for him to estimate when he thought he'd finish.

I don't think anyones been scammed yet. People aren't scammed as long as he is trying the series, imo, because that's what he said he'd do, and what they bought the books expecting. But, it isn't that difficult to see why people think he isn't really trying to finish the series/doesn't really care or whatever, with him spending less time on it, and the delays/missed deadlines.

[Ulrik]

Grief, on 07 June 2010 - 01:48 AM, said:

It's not a scam if an author says he'll finish, and cannot because of circumstances outside of his control.

IMHO (really humble IMHO) it is out of his control...IMHO he doesnt know how end it. Storyline until Tyrion´s exile was solid, little cliffangerish, but almost felt completed (open ended, but many story arcs was fulfilled). But after that, I didnt see further developement. Going in circles, no reals letmotif... Im afraid (for all fans of his books) that GRRM simply doesnt know how finish ASoIaF and more pressure makes him more and more undecided. If he has block, he probably hates ASoIaF already.

[Werthead]

Quote

I can see his point actually. While he got what he paid for, he is paying for parts of a story, on the expectation that he will get the full story at some point. If he doesn't, it's a scam, because he's been sold an unfinished story, rather than the expected full story.

Fully agreed. But no timescale has been given for the completion of the series, and the only dates given for ADWD have been speculative. If GRRM had abandoned the entire series altogether and gone off to Rio with the earnings, that would be a different matter and the anger and sense of 'betrayal' that people are experiencing would be far more understandable.

Quote

I think this is what it comes down to. I don't think the backlash is due to peoples wish for instant gratification-he's hardly the only author that slow. It's the fact that he has projected finish-dates, which he hasn't met, that I think annoys people. Aswell as this, people dislike the time he spends on other projects, because it slows down a book that they expected to be finished some time ago.

Indeed, but then when he didn't give out any projected dates for an entire year to avoid this problem, the backlash was far, far worse (that's when various 'anti' websites like FTBG sprung up). So he either gives out dates and gets moaned at or doesn't and gets moaned at even more.

The other issue about the 'other projects' is interesting, as GRRM has worked on other projects throughout ASoIaF's gestation, right from the very start (GoT was delayed by a year due to a TV project). He was editing a WILD CARDS book, going to cons and watching football during the writing of ASoS as well, and those elements did not seem to impact on the publication time of ASoS to any significant degree.

The same is true of other authors. Erikson works like a maniac, but also has time to write the Bauchelain and Korbal Broach novellas, to pursue other interests, even move country, and work on the series has not slowed appreciably.

Quote

with him spending less time writing the books

Actually, this is incorrect and I think gets to the heart of the issue. Martin has not spent less time writing the books, but because his blog focuses on other issues - cons, football, the TV series, other discussions - he has created the impression of spending less time working on the books, which as far as people are concerned is the same thing. This also ties in with the fact that whenever the delays are discussed the real, substantive reasons - namely the massive structural shift and rewriting of ADWD, the timeline issues created by elements of ASoS and AFFC, the elimination of the five-year-gap, GRRM's questionably perfectionist writing style, the splitting off of elements of the last book, the new deadlines imposed by the HBO series production schedule and the need to keep the series to seven books - are ignored in favour of misleading secondary reasons instead, which for those of us interested in the actual writing process, is a shame.

[amphibian]

Werthead, on 07 June 2010 - 10:46 AM, said:

Actually, this is incorrect and I think gets to the heart of the issue. Martin has not spent less time writing the books, but because his blog focuses on other issues - cons, football, the TV series, other discussions - he has created the impression of spending less time working on the books, which as far as people are concerned is the same thing. This also ties in with the fact that whenever the delays are discussed the real, substantive reasons - namely the massive structural shift and rewriting of ADWD, the timeline issues created by elements of ASoS and AFFC, the elimination of the five-year-gap, GRRM's questionably perfectionist writing style, the splitting off of elements of the last book, the new deadlines imposed by the HBO series production schedule and the need to keep the series to seven books - are ignored in favour of misleading secondary reasons instead, which for those of us interested in the actual writing process, is a shame.

He has and has had control of what goes out about his writing process. At this point, he should just turn the blog over to an editor, keep the public perception pretty tightly controlled, pound out those words, get the book done, take control of the blog back and not repeat the mistakes he made with this book. To continue doing as he is doing is being a masochist about continuing to suffer the audience reaction.

[Werthead]

amphibian, on 07 June 2010 - 11:17 AM, said:

He has and has had control of what goes out about his writing process. At this point, he should just turn the blog over to an editor, keep the public perception pretty tightly controlled, pound out those words, get the book done, take control of the blog back and not repeat the mistakes he made with this book. To continue doing as he is doing is being a masochist about continuing to suffer the audience reaction.

Except, of course, that perceptions of the audience reaction are also skewed. On Martin's blog itself, the overwhelming responses he gets to his posts is supportive. Of the emails he receives, maybe 2 or 3 out of every 100 are criticisms. Even on message boards where the topic is debated, there are usually many other posts or threads talking about how great the published books are. Since Martin doesn't read forums or most blogs, the perception he receives is that there is a tiny, if very vocal, disaffected minority and the majority are reasonably supportive. He has little incentive 'to change his ways' as it were, save for the fact that we can be assured there won't be a promise in the back of ADWD that The Winds of Winter will be out next year

I also think that us at Westeros.org might be a bit to blame for this. By following his announcements and putting up the ADWD FAQ and update post, we may have inadvertantly encouraged George not to talk about the book as much on his blog.

[Abyss]

MODGOD NOTICE OF WARNING: this thread was verging on becoming an argument about what people are arguing about (ie: NO, what i said was X and what YOU said was Y....). Stay on topic and stop attacking each other or the thread will be purged.

[Abyss]

There's a level of irony in that so many people loved the first three books SO much that it's fueling the extent of the negative reaction to the delay. Really it's the delay people are reacting to - not the books. Likely that if DANCE is awesome (or even medicorely goodish) all/most will be forgiven. And who are we kidding, it's STILL going to hammer every bestseller list out there and the loudest venters will be the first in line (on line, whatever) to lay down dollars for it.

That said, as you put it Wert', I suspect we won't see a promise at the back end of DwD re the next book, but even so, that won't prevent a long run because we see book six. In theory he had 'half' (or something) of DANCE on hand following FEAST, and, well, here we are and that more than anything drew the wrath because how dare he spend time on anything else after teasing the ravening masses that way.

Aside from the cliffhanger ending, i didn't have a problem with FEAST and i'm still on board as long as he keeps writing them and they don't fall apart the way WoT did for a few years there where we got delays AND substandard novels.


- Abyss, does not object to sending GRRM diapers so he doesn't have to stop to go to the can...

[dktorode]

Werthead, on 06 June 2010 - 09:44 PM, said:

By this point this argument has become a meme, and is about as beholden to logic and fact as one. It surprises me that people want to keep going over it again like Groundhog Day, only with less Bill Murray and laughs. But so be it.

Quote

Im just pissed he got my money for the 1st 3 books.
Its like he got his money, now we can all go fuck ourselves... like an online scam.

An online scam where you pay for 3 books and you get 3 books? THE BASTARD! How dare you get what you paid for? Jesus wept! THE HORROR!

Yes... its a scam where i invested in the first 3 books of a SERIES only to never get the rest...wich in turn for me make the first 3 a pointless waste of time.

Like sex without an orgasm.

Yes...the actual sex is great and all....but without the orgasm at the end...without the money shot,without the HAPPY "ENDING", its a complete let down and waste of my time.
do you still have to pay the hooker?....yes i suppose you do, but did she deserve it? hell No.


and yes...i just compared Martin to a hooker who could not make me come in the hour i paid for....deal with it...
The question now becomes....do i buy another hour? can she do it this time or would i be wasting my money again

This post has been edited by dktorode: 07 June 2010 - 02:50 PM

[D'rek]

dktorode, on 07 June 2010 - 02:40 PM, said:

Werthead, on 06 June 2010 - 09:44 PM, said:

By this point this argument has become a meme, and is about as beholden to logic and fact as one. It surprises me that people want to keep going over it again like Groundhog Day, only with less Bill Murray and laughs. But so be it.

Quote

Im just pissed he got my money for the 1st 3 books.
Its like he got his money, now we can all go fuck ourselves... like an online scam.

An online scam where you pay for 3 books and you get 3 books? THE BASTARD! How dare you get what you paid for? Jesus wept! THE HORROR!

Yes... its a scam where i invested in the first 3 books of a SERIES only to never get the rest...wich in turn for me make the first 3 a pointless waste of time.

Like sex without an orgasm.

Yes...the actual sex is great and all....but without the orgasm at the end...without the money shot,without the HAPPY "ENDING", its a complete let down and waste of my time.
do you still have to pay the hooker?....yes i suppose you do, but did she deserve it? hell No.


and yes...i just compared Martin to a hooker who could not make me come in the hour i paid for....deal with it...
The question now becomes....do i buy another hour? can she do it this time or would i be wasting my money again

That's gross.

Anyways, there is something to be said in the fact that generally a publisher signs on with an author for an entire series, so there is the expectation of the completion of the series by more than just the readers. Just like Bantam signed on with SE for a 10-novel series before publishing GotM, I'm sure it's the same with GRRM. Of course the author probably gets paid for each one as they come out but the contract is implying continuation of the series up to at least the number of books that is written (6 in ASoIaF's case?)

[haroos]

D, on 07 June 2010 - 03:50 PM, said:

That's gross.

Anyways, there is something to be said in the fact that generally a publisher signs on with an author for an entire series, so there is the expectation of the completion of the series by more than just the readers. Just like Bantam signed on with SE for a 10-novel series before publishing GotM, I'm sure it's the same with GRRM. Of course the author probably gets paid for each one as they come out but the contract is implying continuation of the series up to at least the number of books that is written (6 in ASoIaF's case?)

well, a book that comes out as a series (comes out as vol 1) is implying an agreement between the author and the readers.
this isn't a legal thing, it's an ethics thing.
and imo, GrrM has proven to have low ethics.
btw, what realy bugs me, is not necessarily the delay, but the fact that he keeps so many other projects on the side that he
actualy makes good progress with, while all the time, making the soiaf his main atraction to readers who are later celicitated to his other projects.
which is the whole point of the begining post, showing how far down soiaf is in his priorities, when (imo) most of the people who go to his site
never read "tuff voyaging" (very nice book , btw).

This post has been edited by haroos: 07 June 2010 - 04:44 PM

[Werthead]

Bantam signed GRRM for three books, a contract completed by A STORM OF SWORDS. I have no idea about what contractual arrangements were made after that. I assume it was for another three books. If there was a delivery date clause (there often is for new authors and not for older ones) in the second contract we can assume GRRM has blown it quite spectacularly.

Erikson signed for 10 books for a huge, record-breaking advance, and IIRC there is a time-money relationship clause (i.e. Erikson has to deliver a book a year to get the next instalment of his advance, the same deal that Al Reynolds just signed with Gollancz).

Quote

Yes... its a scam where i invested in the first 3 books of a SERIES only to never get the rest...wich in turn for me make the first 3 a pointless waste of time.

You haven't gotten the rest 'SO FAR'. Like I said, if Martin had taken your money and blown off to Rio, that's one thing, but he ain't. He's continued to work on the next book in the series, just not as quickly as you or I might wish and not as quickly as he once indicated might have been possible. If you didn't want to start an unfinished series then, well, don't read a series until it is finished. I know several big fans of the genre who really enjoyed Martin's previous work who've refused to read ASoIaF until it is done and, even if it means they don't read the series for another ten years, they're cool with that.

Quote

well, a book that comes out as a series (comes out as vol 1) is implying an agreement between the author and the readers.
this isn't a legal thing, it's an ethics thing.
and imo, GrrM has proven to have low ethics.

I don't know about this either. It's now low ethics to take a book that wasn't working and restructure and rewrite it to make it better? Or would it have been more ethical to say, "Screw it!", publish it and take the money, which would have been far easier and not entailed a four-year delay to the book? I don't really buy that either. If Martin wanted to have taken the easy way out of this situation he could have done years ago, and no doubt we'd be now talking about how great the series used to be before it had two below-par books in a row.

[Slick Mongoose]

haroos, on 07 June 2010 - 04:43 PM, said:

and imo, GrrM has proven to have low ethics.

Haha, writing slowly is low ethics now.

[The Seguleh 46th]

I agree with the assessment that he has written himself into a corner.....to a certain extent. Doesn't the dude have an army of "factcheckers" though? C'mon, for someone of his talent, it really can't be this hard! I mean, he kinda spelled out alot of things in the "weirdass house that Daenrys toured" for instance. Oh well, at this point, i'm almost not even interested anymore. That being said, i probably would buy it the day it comes out, or rather try to read over my grandchild's shoulder since i will be a freaking ghost by that point! Just bitching to bitch really, i have no point at all here.........

[dktorode]

Werthead, on 07 June 2010 - 06:58 PM, said:

Quote

Yes... its a scam where i invested in the first 3 books of a SERIES only to never get the rest...wich in turn for me make the first 3 a pointless waste of time.

You haven't gotten the rest 'SO FAR'. Like I said, if Martin had taken your money and blown off to Rio, that's one thing, but he ain't. He's continued to work on the next book in the series, just not as quickly as you or I might wish and not as quickly as he once indicated might have been possible. If you didn't want to start an unfinished series then, well, don't read a series until it is finished. I know several big fans of the genre who really enjoyed Martin's previous work who've refused to read ASoIaF until it is done and, even if it means they don't read the series for another ten years, they're cool with that.

Like i originally said....i wish i had never been SUCKERED into thinking he would complete the books in the time he "indicated" he would. I would not have bought his books back then had i known. If i knew I would have had to dip into my arthritis medication money in order to buy the last book I would have rather waited untill the series was complete.
As far as i am concerned...as it stands... he has "scammed" me, with false promises. Hence my original statement about it being similar to an internet scam where you only get half of what you expected and cant return what you have bought.

He has our money and now he leaves us in the dark and goes off writing other books, what about finishing the rest of the fucking story i have invested time and money in??!!...i have paid for 3 chapters of a 6 chapter story and would like to buy the rest now pretty fucking please!! what am i going to do with half a story??!!!...thats fucked up right there!...wheres my orgasm dammit!!?

BAH!!

This post has been edited by dktorode: 08 June 2010 - 08:36 AM

[dktorode]

Slick Mongoose, on 07 June 2010 - 07:28 PM, said:

haroos, on 07 June 2010 - 04:43 PM, said:

and imo, GrrM has proven to have low ethics.

Haha, writing slowly is low ethics now.

No...its all the other shit he is doing instead of writing slowly that is low ethics!

[Werthead]

dktorode, on 08 June 2010 - 08:32 AM, said:

No...its all the other shit he is doing instead of writing slowly that is low ethics!

But 'all the other shit he is doing' is exactly what he has been doing all along. Even during the writing of the first three books he was working on Wild Cards, watching American football, working on screen projects (he helped Melinda Snodgrass on her Wild Cards movie script and was being consulted by Disney over a possible movie of Fevre Dream in the late 1990s), writing short stories (The Hedge Knight was written during the writing of A Clash of Kings) etc etc.

His 'low ethics' is what gave you the first three books, and has had no bearing on the writing time of the fourth and fifth books. People have just seized on this as an excuse because they are either not interested or not knowledgeable enough to discuss the real problem, the structural issues that arose from decisions taken during the writing of Books 3 and 4. The 'writing himself into a corner' comments above are closer to the mark.

Quote

Like i originally said....i wish i had never been SUCKERED into thinking he would complete the books in the time he "indicated" he would. I would not have bought his books back then had i known. If i knew I would have had to dip into my arthritis medication money in order to buy the last book I would have rather waited untill the series was complete.

The only book that had a timeframe indicated for its release was Book 5, and that was tentative (even if the fact it was written in black and white at the back of AFFC gave it some kind of official air, it was still indicated to be a hope, not a promise). Certainly no hard and fast timeframe has been given for completion of the entire series.

Quote

As far as i am concerned...as it stands... he has "scammed" me, with false promises. Hence my original statement about it being similar to an internet scam where you only get half of what you expected and cant return what you have bought.

So if GRRM had been run over by a combine harvester in 2000 after completing A Storm of Swords, would you feel the same way about the incomplete story being worthless? AGoT, ACoK and ASoS, which presumably you enjoyed and thought were good-to-excellent, suddenly become rubbish because they have no ending? I don't see how. A good book is a good book, and there being no ending might be better than getting an ending that sucks, or which you feel was underwhelming (just ask many BSG and Lost fans, or fans of Greg Keye's Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series that started brilliantly and then collapsed into crappiness at the end).

Quote

He has our money and now he leaves us in the dark and goes off writing other books, what about finishing the rest of the fucking story i have invested time and money in??!!...i have paid for 3 chapters of a 6 chapter story and would like to buy the rest now pretty fucking please!! what am i going to do with half a story??!!!...thats fucked up right there!

Except he hasn't gone off writing other books. In fact, since 1995 GRRM has written exactly two pieces of fiction unrelated to ASoIaF, a single Wild Cards story and a story for Songs of the Dying Earth, both short pieces of fiction which took a couple of weeks each to write. And that is absolutely it. Nothing else at all. Nada.

For those of us who know how hard GRRM has worked on ADWD, comments like yours are somewhat disheartening. When the 375,000-400,000 words of ADWD finally appear, I doubt there are many parts which will not have been written, edited or rewritten several times over. Something like a million words will have gone into this book (possibly much more, counting the ancient, long-replaced versions of chapters stretching back to 2000) by the time it is done. Having that belittled by people is something I know GRRM gets annoyed by, but given his own reluctance to offer a weekly update on how the book is going, perhaps it is somewhat his own fault for not getting across his work on the book more clearly.

This post has been edited by Werthead: 08 June 2010 - 11:38 AM

[dktorode]

Werthead, on 08 June 2010 - 11:37 AM, said:

So if GRRM had been run over by a combine harvester in 2000 after completing A Storm of Swords, would you feel the same way about the incomplete story being worthless? AGoT, ACoK and ASoS, which presumably you enjoyed and thought were good-to-excellent, suddenly become rubbish because they have no ending? I don't see how. A good book is a good book, and there being no ending might be better than getting an ending that sucks, or which you feel was underwhelming (just ask many BSG and Lost fans, or fans of Greg Keye's Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series that started brilliantly and then collapsed into crappiness at the end).

Well he might as well HAVE been run over by a combine harvester.
The only problem is HE HASNT!!!!!

Even if he was, then yes...the story would have not been complete, there there was no orgasm....yet i paid for the hooker and she could not deliver in the time i paid for.... so i would have kicked myself for buying the 1st three.
Imagine how pissed i was at Jordan!!!...fucking wasted over 1000 bucks on that fucker!!!

dont get me started.



btw....did i mention i was cheap?

This post has been edited by dktorode: 08 June 2010 - 12:03 PM