Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cthulhu's Librarian" data-source="post: 1611462" data-attributes="member: 11064">Since I used to work in editorial at HarperCollins, I can answer this.    From acceptance of the ms in the office to publication varies from author to author, and publisher to publisher. I've seen it go as quickly as 3 months to as long as 2 years. My best guess with Martin's manuscript, when delivered, will be closer to 3 months, maybe 4 or 5. It all depends how fast the publishers work on copyediting, how fast he gets the copyedit corrections approved, how much re-writing he does during the copyedit corrections, how fast the publishers can get the final ms into layout, and how quickly the printer can get the books off the presses.    The fastest turnaround I ever saw (just over 2 months) was at Tor Books, where my wife used to work in marketing. When Robert Jordan turned in his ms for one of the books (I don't remember the title, the one that came out in 98 or 99), Tor flew him into NY to drop it off personally in the office, put him up in a hotel room, and had a team of 10 or 12 copyeditors work on the ms overnight. The next day, they delivered copyedited chapters to him as they were being completed, and did this for several days. As he finished chapters, they picked them up and delivered them to their layout and design department, which had the blank design waiting for the text to be dropped in. After several days of layout and final proofing, they had the book ready to go and off it went to press. 2 months later, books were on the shelf.    Will BDD do the same with Martin? Probably not, but I'm sure that once he finishes, they will do their best to get that book ont he shelf ASAP.    As for books being published earlier in the UK than in the states, the first two were available in the UK earlier, but the 3rd was a simultaneous publication, IIRC. This often happens as the UK print runs are much smaller than US print runs, and I believe the UK publisher had purchased the rights to the books from Martin before the US rights were sold, so they were able to start on the books earlier than the US publisher.    As far as the 2 trilogies goes, that is essentially correct. When the books were first pitched, it was one trilogy. The editor I worked for at HC was one of those that the proposal was pitched to (although we didn't end up getting it), and he discussed it at length with GRRM. GRRM decided that the story he wanted to tell was too large for one trilogy, so they then pitched it as a trilogy, with an additional trilogy on a seperate contract after the publication of the first trilogy. Thats where this extra book comes in, it is essentially on a third contract that falls between the first and second, jsut like the book will stand by itself between the two trilogies.</blockquote>

Verification