
Entitlement issues (2009) - drx
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/05/entitlement-issues.html
======
zaphar
Periodically someone will ask me if I've read any of the Song of Ice and Fire
books. My answer is always no.

Then I launch into a rant about the Wheel of Time series. I got sucked into
that series on book one and chewed through it all the way to book 7. At book
seven I had caught up to the author and the fact that he hadn't written the
next book in the series yet gave me an opportunity to take stock. I realized
that the books had been getting less satisfying and more work to read than
before. I also realized that Robert Jordan didn't know how to finish the
series. He hadn't met a plot line he didn't like. I was sure he would die
before Wheel of Time was finished. Right then and there I decided I was done
and would no longer give my money to the series or any other series that
showed signs of the same problem. I totally called the Wheel of Time. Robert
Jordan died and they had to bring in Brian Sanderson to finish. Brian
definitely knows how to finish. But for me the magic had already gone.

It's not out of a sense of entititlement. I just don't enjoy unfinished
stories. It bugs the crap out of me. George R. R. Martin strikes me as an
author with different symptoms but a similar problem. I'm not sure he knows
how to finish it. I won't spend my money until he proves it.

~~~
seren
I used to have a similar stance, and I agree on most points. Long series tend
to become less and less interesting, and weirder as they go along (Dune,
Gormenghast, Hyperion, ...) Maybe it is the novelty that wears off, the author
has used his most powerful ideas first, or the last book is written because of
children's college tuition. Moreover, even if I enjoy reading, I think that if
the author hasn't managed to enclose a proper story in 500-1000 pages, there
is probably something that is off.

However, I have recanted my previous position because if every series tend to
go downwards, why not reading the first few books? I'd rather enjoy the
journey even if the final destination is a bit underwhelming. In the worst
case, if the latter books are absolutely atrocious, I can live with reading a
quick summary on Wikipedia.

~~~
masklinn
> I think that if the author hasn't managed to enclose a proper story in
> 500-1000 pages, there is probably something that is off.

I really don't agree with that:

1\. a series can be way more than a single story, The Dresden Files is 15
volumes of 300~500 pages each (let's call it 6000 pages), each story is mostly
free-standing but they follow chronologically, it's a very episodic format if
you will. Discworld has similar thematic subsets.

2\. some stories just don't fit in in 1000 pages. Malazan Book of the Fallen
suffered from a lack of editing at times and could probably have been a fair
bit shorter, but not _10000_ pages shorter, not by a long shot, the depth and
breadth of the subject just wouldn't allow it.

~~~
chadgeidel
This is OBVIOUSLY my 2 cents...

Re: 1. I think this is a different thing. If you want to tell a bunch of
stories that are linked, that's fine. If you want to tell one giant story then
at least have a plan. There's no indication that Jordan had "a plan". (I think
this is the point the great-grandparent is making)

~~~
jamie_ca
I seem to recall when the first book came out, that it was planned as a
trilogy. After the second book, it was going to be a double trilogy. I don't
think Jordan's overall plan reached his final 12-book estimate until book 8 or
9, and Sanderson couldn't even fit the final material he picked up into two
books, so it hit 13 by the end.

Now, there's nothing wrong with that in general. Sometimes you write an
outline, and in the process of penning down a quarter of the story and
fleshing out the characters and setting you come up with more and more ideas.
There's two ways out of that: either you let the story get control of the
writing, resulting in a historical-feeling narrative with no clear overall
plot, or you take the time to edit and revise what you have into smaller,
self-contained stories.

I vastly prefer the latter, especially if there _are_ hints to an overarching
plot. 13-book meanderings like Wheel of Time don't do it for me these days,
but Dresden Files (15 books and ~20 short stories) or the Honor Harrington
series (13 books, plus 18 spinoff short stories or novels)? I will chain-read
those like crack, and still feel satisfied almost regardless of where they
stop.

------
padobson
It's disappointing to me that this needs to be said. I read the first _Song of
Ice and Fire_ book in the middle of 2013, and I finished the fifth book this
past March. That's several thousand pages of fiction in less than a year.
Clearly, I like the books.

But I can wait for the sixth book. I did fine in 2012 without _ASOIAF_ , and
I'll do fine in 2015 and 2016 and even 2017 if it comes to that.

Last year I discovered I prefer novels and assorted nonfiction to reading
random articles on the Internet. I prefer to chew on one idea for a long time
than a thousand little ideas at once.

So what I'd really like is a way to find other books to read that I enjoy as
much a Martin's work. I've signed up for GoodReads, but nothing has come of it
just yet.

Does anyone have any suggestions other than browsing Amazon or strolling
through a Barnes and Noble?

~~~
barry-cotter
Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen is a monstrous 10 book (finished)
series with a huge, ancient, complex universe, a great mythos and some epic
plotting. Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber is pretty dark and very well
written. That's all I've got for darkdark fantasy. I can recommend everything
Gaiman has written though you'd be better off starting with the Sandman, his
best work.

~~~
will_work4tears
Personally, like your suggestion for Gaiman, I highly recommend anything
written by Roger Zelazny.

If you enjoy the Chronicles of Amber, you might also enjoy Jose Farmer's World
of Tiers series. Along a similar vein but dissimilar enough that it's worth
the read.

~~~
dllthomas
If I recall my Sandman, I think Gaiman would also recommend anything (or at
least some things) written by Roger Zelazny.

------
knowtheory
Expectation is a fascinating thing.

Gaiman is essentially describing the dichotomy in expectation between products
and consultancy.

This is particularly complicated in fandom, because creators often say (and
legitimately mean) that a body of work exists _because of_ (the encouragement
of) their fans. That's true, but it doesn't mean that what they're creating
isn't a product first, and not bespoke work on the authority of and
responsible to fans.

Apple has fans too, but took basically no heed of complaints that the Mac Pro
hadn't been updated in years.

------
logfromblammo
Creative writing is, much like software development, one of those jobs where
you need to enter a different kind of mental state to be really productive.
And that state cannot be maintained indefinitely.

George R.R. Martin writes big, fat books that are highly multithreaded, as
part of a series that is already complex enough that it makes real life seem
simple. If it were a software project, there would already be four or five
more developers working on it. But he's trying to punch it out solo.

I don't expect him to finish, really. He's probably burned out for the second
or third time, at least, and is getting too much fan pressure resulting from
the television adaptation bump to focus on regenerating the artistic mojo.

If you ever read bestselling authors, they're always thanking their support
people in the dedication or foreword or colophon or wherever. Most of them
only need a few part-time or shared employees, like their editor, agent, and
publicist. Martin probably needs at least one full-time assistant just for
indexing and continuity.

This is why I like books that say "third book of the Whatever Trilogy" and the
other two are right there on the shelf next to it. It lets me know that the
author can finish something, and I don't have to wait for it to happen.

I did read the first few books in Martin's series, but I borrowed those
copies. I don't really want to get sucked in and be left hanging like those
people who got into Wheel of Time. With something like this, you never really
know if the bus that just pulled away was the last one on the route for the
night. So if you sit on that bench, the next one may never come.

------
maerF0x0
I enjoy the musings of the contract between writer and reader. If the author
doesn't agree, on some level, to finish the series and it's the reader's
requirement that a whole series must be read, then the reader is left with no
choice but to wait until a series is finished before beginning. In various
degrees of depth, we enter into obligations to others by beginning something,
whether writing a book, having a child, ordering food etc. Seems the blog
author's opinion is that GRRM has no obligation to his readers. I'd argue he
has some form of professional obligation, but certainly no contractual ones w/
recourse.

~~~
mikeash
There's clearly no obligation whatsoever.

The transaction is quite simple: you spend $X, you get $BOOK. Perhaps later
you spend $X2 and you get $BOOK2.

That's it, end of story.

That's the case for the legal/contractual side of things, but _also_ for this
"professional obligation" side of things.

The flip side, of course, is that readers are under no obligation to _buy_ a
book. If somebody _needs_ to read an entire series, then they should wait
until the entire series is available. To start reading a series that isn't
finished yet, when you _need_ to read the whole series, is stupid.

There's _no_ implied obligation of the nature you discuss as when happens when
you have a child. If you want there to be one, then I suggest contacting the
author and offering to pay him in advance for writing the next book in
exchange for a promise to complete it and some sort of hard deadline. Of
course, you may find that this costs several orders of magnitude more than the
~$25 you'd pay for the initial release hardback if you just sat back and
waited.

~~~
maerF0x0
>The transaction is quite simple: you spend $X, you get $BOOK. Perhaps later
you spend $X2 and you get $BOOK2.

I believe this has analogues to how Jack Welch says (paraphrasing) "At the end
of the week when the you have your paycheck, you and the company are even"\--
implying that there is not further obligation. I find this hard to believe on
a professional level. If I am a key person on a team, I have an obligation to
give no less than 2 weeks notice, and probably much more if I want to remain
in good professional standing w/ the company I work for (eg, more notice for
small companies) . Why? Because despite the lack of contract and resolutions,
there is more at stake than just what is stated on paper, there is reputation,
business continuity and implied continuations in the relationship.

I see it similarly with an author. Yes, there has been a transaction that
takes place and is complete. But if GRRM wants to keep relationship and
reputation intact, then there is more to the picture than money in and book
out. There is the way the customer feels when they hear the series is
cancelled, for example.

~~~
mikeash
Welch may get it wrong for an ongoing relationship where you're dedicating 25%
of your life to the company, but I think he has it exactly right for an
occasional one-off that you pay a small amount of money for, and where the
other guy doesn't even know who you are. I mean, you're talking about a
situation with two weeks notice as somehow being relevant to a situation where
the _ideal_ involves multiple _years_ between transactions.

You say "if GRRM wants to keep relationship and reputation intact...." I agree
with that. But "keep relationship and reputation intact" is completely
different from "obligation".

Yes, if GRRM wants to maintain his reputation as the author of a series worth
reading, it would be helpful if he could get new installments out on some sort
of regular basis. (But who are we kidding: people will buy them by the million
regardless.) But if he decides that he _doesn 't_ care about people buying his
books anymore, that's his choice. There's no obligation on his part to
maintain his reputation.

------
bhauer
Title should probably have [2009] added.

------
carlob
While I agree wholeheartedly with the article I feel there is a flip side to
this: announcing what you're going to do can be a way to put some pressure on
a late project. Be it a business project (signaling we're in crunch because
we've half announced it), or a personal (as in a way to fight
procrastination).

Now I don't know how much GRRM tells about his progress on his blog, because I
don't follow it, but I'm sure some authors in the past have used this
technique to feel some pressure to finish up something.

~~~
joezydeco
Martin is in a tough spot, and Gaiman points that out.

It's a known quirk that announcing you're going to do something decreases the
likelihood that you'll actually get it done.

[http://sivers.org/zipit](http://sivers.org/zipit)

But if you actually publish a book that's labelled "BOOK ONE OF A SERIES" then
you're implicitly saying that you will be working on a sequel. You don't need
to say anything to anyone. This is why Gaiman says _" Both of these things
make me glad that I am not currently writing a series"_.

~~~
carlob
Interesting read. I wonder how universal that is. Some years ago I told a
bunch of friends that my new year's resolution was quitting smoking and if
they were to see me smoke they were allowed to call me an idiot. It worked
pretty well for me.

~~~
syntheticnature
Ah, but that was adding social pressure as opposed to just saying "I'm going
to do X."

------
vacri
Very bad intro for the main article, because apparently Gaiman doesn't realise
that American Airlines is 'not his bitch' either, and similarly he has no
right to be _outraged_ that his laptop didn't plug into their power adaptors.

I'm actually a bit sad that Gaiman went with "is not letting you down" rather
than "is letting you down, but seriously, it's not that big a deal". If you
build an audience with an expectation, and you don't see it through, you've
let them down. That doesn't give the audience the right to do anything nasty
to you, but you have disappointed them.

If you, as a writer, have stated an intention to make a series of X length,
but any of the Life things that Gaiman mentions happen and you fail to
complete it, that's fair enough. Life happens. But you've failed to see
through on your commitment - that's a disappointment to people that wanted to
see it through. It's not the end of the world - those people don't lose their
jobs or their cats or whatever - but it's still a let-down.

The final moral of the story really should have been "So what, move on, Life
happens", rather than implying that the questioner is a bad person for
expecting someone to see through on something that they said they'd do.

~~~
steveax
Or perhaps the AA interlude was very intentionally ironic.

~~~
vacri
I thought it might be at first, but I didn't see anything else in the body of
the article that tied back to it. It wouldn't make much sense if it was
intentional, because it undermines the very lengthy point he was making in the
rest of the article.

~~~
allannienhuis
I think it reinforces it rather brilliantly. As someone else mentioned - he's
a very bright writer :)

~~~
vacri
There was a Mad Magazine article that said that you know you've made it as a
successful movie director when critics started finding symbolism in your
movies that you'd never put there in the first place. :)

------
jhwhite
I think part of this is the contract that exists would be between Martin and
the publisher. They're the ones that would need to get the finished product
from GRRM.

But what about kickstarter projects? If I'm now the one funding or partially
funding does the artist then, in Neil Gaiman's words, "become my bitch"?

What the difference in expectations when you're a consumer of a product (GRRM
to me) or a funder of a product (kickstarter to me)?

~~~
preinheimer
I think part of the difference there is that you haven't pre-purchased GRRM's
next book. Maybe you're good friends with your local bookshop, and they've
agreed to put a copy aside for you when it comes out, but that deal hasn't
made it up to him.

To use Gaimen's terminology, GRRM may be his publisher's "bitch", but at this
level of success they're probably pretty happy to have him. His contract may
in fact say "when it's done" rather than "June 3, 2014, minimum 20,000 words,
and someone the readers love must die".

~~~
zrail
> someone the readers love must die

Other than royalty terms this is actually the entire contents of his contract
with the publisher.

------
Tyrannosaurs
Authors have been missing deadlines pretty much as long as they've been
writing books. If you wish to have an expectation that author X or book Y
isn't going to fit that pattern then feel free, but I'm not sure you should be
terribly surprised or outraged if / when it doesn't happen.

The simple solution would seem to be that if you are someone who likes reading
things in a nice predictable pattern the wait for the series to complete
before starting. After all, it's not as if there are a lack of things to read
in the meantime.

------
thedaveoflife
Ironic, the entitlement he feels about having an adapter on his AA flight
before complaining about entitlement issues from his/GRRM's audience... or was
that the point?

~~~
kelukelugames
I'm sure that was the point. Gaiman is a pretty smart guy. :)

------
nasmorn
If he made it an app instead people would be up in arms the updates don't come
fast enough too. But with books at least they would pay him again if he
released a new one.

------
VLM
Site's dead. Can someone summarize better than the title?

(edited an hour later, nobody's posted a cache link and nobody's summarized
the actual post... so all I got is along the lines of "somebody's expectations
collided with reality" and a bunch of off topic yet interesting literary
discussion. And it seems to have something to do with the multiple laptop
power standards that I already know about for aircraft and their airlines)

~~~
inspectahdeck
"George R.R. Martin is not your bitch."

~~~
danielweber
That felt a little hostile; maybe I wasn't reading it in the proper voice, or
reading the letter writer in the proper voice, but in my head the letter
writer seemed to _know_ that GRRM didn't owe him anything, and just wanted
some more meat put on those bones of an idea.

~~~
calibraxis
I think that even with free software authors, it's easy to act entitled to
their work. (Undervaluing people's work is one of the world's great issues...)

~~~
danielweber
True. I remember people getting angry at the TrueCrypt guy(?) for daring to
quit.

------
Ntrails
I can only say that I was very glad that Robert Jordan had time to plan out
and pass on the whole of his story to another writer.

I know it's entitled - but I really expect GRRM to make considerations to
ensure that the whole story will be told. I don't think he owes me the story
_now_ , I don't mind waiting for him to do the writing as he envisions it -
but I do kind of feel that he owes me a complete tale.

~~~
mikeash
Why do you feel he owes you anything at all? Unless he held a Kickstarter in
which he promised to finish the series if he got enough money, or something
like that, why is there _any_ obligation of any kind whatsoever?

I feel you owe me a reply, so get to it. (Kidding, but I hope you see how
absurd that is.)

~~~
lmm
There's a convention, when you sell a book, that it's a complete story. An
implicit contract, if you like. If you sold a book that was half a book - just
stopped mid-sentence and you had to buy a different book to finish the story -
most people would consider that a dick move. Likewise a book that's advertised
as part of a series can be understood to come with an implicit promise that
the rest of the series will exist.

Why do I feel he owes me anything at all? Well, I did pay him for it. If I
bought some software and the author refused to fix bugs, I'd feel cheated. An
unfinished story is somewhat like that.

~~~
mikeash
Clearly there is no such convention that books are complete stories, because
then series wouldn't exist. And clearly there is no such convention that a
series will be finished, because then there wouldn't be permanently unfinished
series out there, and there are a lot of them.

You paid him for the book, which you received. Transaction complete. Debt
paid. He no longer owes you more.

~~~
Shamanmuni
I feel this kind of reasoning is weird. If an author writes a book as a part
of a series he's clearly telling you "this book is part of a bigger story
which I have my most sincere intention of telling and reaching its
conclussion, eventually". There's clearly a convention here, which doesn't
necessarily translate into an actionable obligation (which is what you wanted
to say).

You don't want to get into that implicit contract? Then don't write a series,
or write it for yourself and don't publish it. I don't agree with those who
whine because Martin doesn't finish the series, but I also don't agree with
those who say that we should expect nothing from him.

When I started reading this series (about 15 years ago) they were supposed to
be 4 books to be released at 2-year intervals. Then he added more books, took
a lot of time to write them (between 5 and 6 years for the last 2) and now I
can't even say "could I at least expect that you will finish the series
sometime?".

~~~
mikeash
Many series simply go on forever without any plan for a conclusion. Many
series plan for a conclusion but it doesn't work out for a variety of reasons.
What's the point of declaring an "implicit contract" for something that is so
frequently unfulfilled?

------
crazy1van
GRRM is not my bitch. Point taken, for sure.

However, I hope GRRM realizes that the opposite is also true. His readers
aren't his bitch either. Without new quality material, interest in his books
will fade. Also, HBO isn't his bitch either. If he doesn't produce new
material, the TV show plot will pass the book's and he will lose some control
over what people consider _the_ real tale.

~~~
curun1r
On the HBO point, that was my thought while reading Gaiman's thoughts. Us
readers have no claim to his work. Buying his books doesn't form a contract
that means he owes us something.

But HBO is a completely different story. They do have a claim to his work.
When they bought the rights to bring his books to TV, they most certainly did
sign a contract and I'm sure that, given the series was unfinished when the
contract was signed, there were provisions for the possibility that he
wouldn't finish in time.

The way things are looking, it's a pretty good bet that HBO's writers will be
the ones that finish GoT and he'll eventually have to write the last two books
to follow the plot that HBO settles on. Hopefully he'll be consulted on plot
points, but HBO isn't going to put the show on hiatus while they wait for him
to finish it himself.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The way things are looking, it's a pretty good bet that HBO's writers will
> be the ones that finish GoT and he'll eventually have to write the last two
> books to follow the plot that HBO settles on. Hopefully he'll be consulted
> on plot points, but HBO isn't going to put the show on hiatus while they
> wait for him to finish it himself.

ISTR reading that GRRM has provided, and continues to provde, HBO's writers
plot outlines and drafts ahead of what has been published, as well as being
actively consulted on plot points in the show (which don't always follow the
books precisely.)

------
jangel
While I agree with the comments with respect to GRRM, I can't let Patrick
Rothfuss off the hook.

I started reading the Kingkiller Chronicle with the understanding that he had
already finished the books, and would be releasing them each year for three
years. Now that he's blown each deadline by a couple years, I'm a lil' salty.

Was I incorrect to infer some light social contract there?

~~~
fredleblanc
It seems like the general idea for the full story was done, and "The Book" (as
he called it) "existed" in a very rough draft, but with each release he's
going back, re-editing and re-working them, adding bits here and there,
improving the story until it's to the point that he wants it to be. It would
make sense to me that, with each book, the ripple of stuff that needs fixing
in the story later on needs more and more re-work.

I believe the first two books were released 4 years apart. It seems that
that's the cadence for the books. And hey, Auri novella this fall! :D

------
frobozz
GRRM could take a leaf out of Douglas Adams' book(s) and just declare ASOIAF a
trilogy.

------
thirdtruck
And there's a song about this: [http://scifisongs.blogspot.com/2009/08/sci-fi-
song-20-george...](http://scifisongs.blogspot.com/2009/08/sci-fi-
song-20-george-rr-martin-is-not.html).

------
wgx
"Sometimes it happens like that. You don't choose what will work. You simply
do the best you can each time. And you try to do what you can to increase the
likelihood that good art will be created."

Great advice.

------
rglover
Favorite bit that I constantly struggle to explain to people who are biding
for my time:

“But what if he wanted to paint his house?”

Great find :)

------
felix
tl;dr GRRM is not your bitch. Remember that.

~~~
jmelloy
This blog post has become so famous I just assumed the title was "GRRM is not
your bitch."

------
Marazan
If I promise to produce a piece of work in a time frame and then didn't
produce that work in that time frame then I would expect to take some shit.

~~~
mcphage
Who did he promise?

~~~
Jemaclus
In the Author's Notes of Book 4 in 2006, he writes that he completed the book,
and it was so large (2000 pages) that he was forced to cut it in half, and
that first half was Book 4, and that Book 5 would be out the following year.
Then he took another 6 years to publish Book 5, which was ostensibly done back
in 2006. Granted, he said he changed his mind about a lot of things and had to
rewrite stuff, but the fact remains that he said it was "done" in 2006. In the
meantime, his blog posts were about his football predictions and painting his
house.

I have sympathy for authors who don't put deadlines out there, but there's no
excuse for being 6 years late after saying it was already done. Considering
that the release of the 5th book coincided with a TV series, it strikes me as
nothing more than a cash grab.

One of the (many) reasons why I don't support GRRM or his work anymore. Which
is a shame. The aSoIaF series was fantastically written.

~~~
mcphage
Maybe you and I have different definitions of the word "promise", then.

