George R.R. Martin Owes You
I’ll step back from macroeconomics to talk about something a little more generally accessible: A Song of Ice and Fire. Specifically, why George R.R. Martin either owes readers a new book or should give all of their money back.
This is a classic installment delivery gone wrong.
George R.R. Martin has, to all appearances, basically stopped writing his landmark series. After publishing A Game of Thrones in 1996 Martin has finished each book more slowly than the last. A Dance With Dragons came out in 2011, and his sixth and seventh books are nowhere in sight.
This is indefensible. Martin made a deal with his readers: they bought his books and made him rich and in exchange he promised them a story told in pieces.
Some fans and critics have defended the author’s famously slow schedule. Writing about the long wait between books four and five, fantasy author Neil Gaiman once said that “George R.R. Martin is not your bitch.” He argued that readers don’t have “a contract” with Martin and every book is a standalone purchase.
Gaiman is wrong.
For many other authors, the writer of Neverwhere would have a point. Harper Lee famously wrote her one-and-done To Kill a Mockingbird and didn’t owe her readers anything more. Nor could readers demand another Lincoln Lawyer book from Michael Connelly. His Mickey Haller character has self-contained adventures that, although tied together with larger storylines and themes, each exist on their own.
But A Song of Ice and Fire is not self-contained. As is common in fantasy and science fiction epics this is not a series of independent-but-related stories. It’s one long narrative broken up into chunks where none of the interior books have structurally complete beginnings or ends.
As a result no single book in this series has much value outside of the whole (except, perhaps, the first). Readers who start on book three will be confused and stopping midway through book four is the same as finishing it.
Because each book is narratively incomplete few, if any, readers want a single book of A Song of Ice and Fire. They want all seven and agree to wait on delivery for the rest. They’ve made a $175 purchase paid in seven, $25 installments in exchange for a several-thousand page story delivered in seven, several-hundred page installments.
Martin knew this when he took their money.
Readers bought into an unfinished series and agreed to wait while Martin finished that whole. But sooner or later delay becomes nondelivery. Artistic license doesn’t spare Martin that, neither does writer’s block.
Once you take people’s money, no less allow them to make you incredibly wealthy, you’ve made a deal. You owe them the entire work you promised.
George R.R. Martin may not be your bitch, and this may not be enforceable in any court of law, but that doesn’t mean he owes his readers any less. It’s a simple installment agreement, and he’s in breach.
