Waiting for Release. A Reader’s Rant.

There is one large drawback to reading genre pieces. The problem, is of corse, the wait. Many of the books that exist within Fantasy and Science Fiction especially are structured in series, usually spanning several books. Series mean a waiting period. This is quite possibly the most aggravating aspect of a reader’s life. To find a good book, and the discovery that this book is part of series presents joy at first, which quickly turns to annoyance when a fan runs out of material. To know that the story which you adore continues is to know you. To find the end of the written material is to know frustration. Being that series novels are chapters in a larger whole, it stands to reason that many of the novels written in series have no beginning or end, only the continuation of the saga the author writes of, it stands to reason the novels are often far deeper than their standalone counterpoints.
This is not to say that standalones do not have merit. But the author who creates a series has a lot more room to play with his characters and world.

The authors are not at fault (most of the time), but the frustration a reading fan fells is far greater than other groups. A person waiting for a television show or movie only waits for an amount of time, but that time is limited to a year or two. But this time moves quickly compared to what some authors put readers through. Though it may seem like a long time to someone who is waiting for the movie, sometime they should try waiting for a slow author to release the next chapter of their ever expanding epic. A reader is subjected to only the possibility of future release. It’d be like seeing three shows, then waiting 5 years for the next episode to come out.

I would like to clarify that many authors do not make their fans wait. Many good authors often put out a new novel in one or two years, and this is acceptable to the average reader. A few author examples of who generally write prolifically and with great talent are Terry Brooks, Terry Goodkind, Brandon Sanderson, Jim Butcher, and many others.

But there are some authors that move like molasses. Because of this, many fans begin getting anger and frustrated at those authors. I know that it takes time to write a good novel, but there are a few authors that piddle away their time. These writer often have great talent, but don’t finish books in any type of timely manner. George R. R. Martin has gained this reputation, and is probably the most infamous name when it comes to slow output. It has now been five years since his last publication in his Song of Ice and Fire series.

Martin has a great talent for writing, and he’s created one of the most fascinating and complex stories in recent times, but he does not produce new material often. When his blogs are checked, there area pages upon pages of football commentary, but not so much as a peep about the book progress. Even under the section of his site that declares updates specifically for the book, the last update was more than two years ago.

This problem of waiting is constantly plaguing the reader. I understand that writers must write, and to write well requires time. But for an author to abandon his fans for longer than three years is a slap in the face to all the people supporting you in your craft.

That being said, I’ll still wait along with millions of others for the latest book out from my favorite authors. They are after all, favorites for a reason. And that’s the problem, too.