The Unofficial Author's Contract

Series. We've all read them. And we've all read an under construction series, id est, an unfinished string of novels. It can be excruciating waiting for the next sequence of events concerning characters you've invested time and emotion in. At the same time, sometimes part of the fun is grouping up with other fans online and trading theories or commiserating. But sometimes you realize it's been several years, and still there's not much news about that next installment... What's going on?

I'd like to address what I term the Unofficial Author's Contract. It reads, "By publishing the first of a series of books, I, the author, do promise to complete the remainder of the novels in a timely fashion. I will honor this agreement even if I occasionally have to ignore other activities that seem more entertaining, and even if I grow weary of my own story and characters."

I finished the first Oneironauts in 2012 and published it in October 2014. I finished the first draft of the second book in March and just finished the second draft tonight. All together, it's about a 200,000 word sequence. I was going to school during the second one, which explains why it took 7 months to write, then I waited for finals to be over to edit. I will have physical copies before July, a 9-month turnaround from book to book. Part of what motivated me to keep writing even though school was pressing was the fact that I had people waiting for book 2. I was locked in the Contract.

Now there are writers like Martin and Rothfuss who have made big promises on books they will produce, but take great periods of time to deliver on those promises. Game of Thrones came out in 1996. The intervals for the next books are 1998, 2000, 2005, 2011, TBA, TBA. That's 5 then 6 years for two books, and it will be at least 5 for Winds of Winter. Rothfuss published in 2007 and 2011, and the third is TBA. So 4 years for the first gap, then at least 5 for the second. The reason why readers are annoyed with Rothfuss' output is that when the first novel came out, it was announced that he had the series complete.

For some contrast, I've compiled a small list (some word counts are estimated from page lengths):

Patrick Rothfuss

720,000 words in 9 years

George R R Martin

1,770,000 words in 20 years

Jim Butcher

3,200,000 words in 16 years (not including his forthcoming novel)

Steven Erikson

3,300,000 words in 12 years (for the Malazan novels alone)

Robert Jordan

3,400,000 words in 16 years

Brandon Sanderson

3,900,000 words in 11 years (this is including short stories and Shadows of Self)

Now, all of these authors have put out a bit more than what's shown here, but the fundamental information is obvious. I won't speculate on the various factors that affect the authors' release schedules, but I will say this: Sanderson, Erickson, Jordan, and Butcher all consider their fans while they write. The fans are the only reason an author can write for a living. If you don't consider a consumer when creating a product, it will likely flop.

Let's draw a parallel to Google+. People were mental about G+ from about 10-4 months before it came out (I can't exactly remember). But Google kept doing invite only. Eventually buzz died down. Then they released it and it flopped marvelously. If they had put it out about half a year before, there would have been a massive migration over to G+. But they waited and people lost interest.

Books obviously have a longer timeline than social media, but honestly, the longer an author waits to deliver on a book, the more the hype dies down (generally). Martin is surfing on back catalog orders for the first five borne by the success of the TV series. Rothfuss is still riding on the fact that he was going to release the three books within 3 years of each other. Butcher, Erikson, and Sanderson however consistently put out new material that readers enjoy. They honor the Contract, and I love them for that.