Bantam's editors have been working on the book over the past few years as GRRM has completed chapters. Some of the changes that have resulted in the delays that people are whinging about were instigated by the editors, not by GRRM, such as the movement of some chapters and characters into Book 6 and the rewriting of some material to make it stronger.

So Bantam have been kept informed and been involved in the writing process from the start, and whilst I'm sure they'd prefer the book to come out tomorrow they're willing to wait, because they see ASoIaF as a prestige project that will sell millions of books (publishers are usually happy if a single book sells more than ten thousand), and they're willing to put the legwork in that is required to do that.



Indeed. Because WHEEL OF TIME's sales are waaaay down because it's been drawn out for so long and the last few books didn't hit the bestseller list and, erm, oh yeah...



Looking at the sales of the book growing and what the TV series will do for the books (300% sales increase for the TRUE BLOOD books after the series came out), I don't see this happening either, not this side of about 2020 anyway.



Well, your whole post was about how ADWD was going to be pointless, and nothing in it of any importance was going to happen because those events have been pushed back to a later book. So yes, it does matter what they were going to be called.

Excellent technique, by the way. Base post around point which turns out to be fictitious. This gets pointed out. Claim that point was unimportant. Are you a politician, by any chance?