grendel_one wrote:grendel_one wrote:Thanks for the update, looking forward to it (but 2 years? sheesh . . .)Zakharra wrote: well he is busy with writing several other books in several other series....
It's not that, the book is due to be turned in 'shortly' (besides he isn't even writing it).
But after they turn it in, it's another 18 months to get published
Clothing stores can get new fashions from the designer to the floor in 2 weeks, it's time for publishing to move out of the stone age.
Actually, my writing schedule is a part of the process, since I am, indeed, writing somewhere around half of it myself and editing the entire manuscript as well as spending time in conferences with Joelle on both #3 and #4. As Drothgery points out, however, the delay has little to do at this point with my writing speed and/or "stone age" production (in fact, Baen can turn a book around in less than 4 months in an emergency, although the probability of typos increases significantly on such a rush basis). Other publishers take a year or more, with a "crash" production best time of about 6 months.
The real reason for the delay is that after six or seven years, Baen feels (and I agree) that they need to re-release the two existing books (in trade paperback this time) to reenergize the series. So it's more a question of fitting the two existing books into the release schedule than it is anything to do with the production schedule on this book, per se. And Joelle and I are hopeful that the extra lead time will, indeed, allow us to get #4 written and ready to go by the time #3 releases. If we can, the entire series will be out for new readers in the space of about 18 months to two years, which is pretty darned good, when you think about it.