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The Dresden Files => DF Spoilers => Topic started by: groinkick on September 07, 2018, 06:20:08 AM

Title: Has this been up on Amazon for long?
Post by: groinkick on September 07, 2018, 06:20:08 AM
Checked Amazon for Peace Talks to see if maybe there is a pre-order available.  This came up. It didn't show a title, only Book 16 with a brief description:  Meet Harry Dresden, Chicago's first (and only) Wizard PI. Turns out the 'everyday' world is full of strange and magical things - and most of them don't play well with humans. That's where Harry comes in. But he's forgotten his own golden rule: magic - it can get a guy killed.

https://www.amazon.com/Untitled-Dresden-Files-16/dp/0356500918/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1536301051&sr=8-2&keywords=jim+butcher+peace+talks
Title: Re: Has this been up on Amazon for long?
Post by: Mira on September 09, 2018, 12:55:35 AM
Checked Amazon for Peace Talks to see if maybe there is a pre-order available.  This came up. It didn't show a title, only Book 16 with a brief description:  Meet Harry Dresden, Chicago's first (and only) Wizard PI. Turns out the 'everyday' world is full of strange and magical things - and most of them don't play well with humans. That's where Harry comes in. But he's forgotten his own golden rule: magic - it can get a guy killed.

https://www.amazon.com/Untitled-Dresden-Files-16/dp/0356500918/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1536301051&sr=8-2&keywords=jim+butcher+peace+talks

Just went there and no pre-order, it said they had no clue when it would be in stock.   I think this came up six months or more ago, same thing...   So I take it to mean no publish date as of yet..
Title: Re: Has this been up on Amazon for long?
Post by: groinkick on September 09, 2018, 06:26:24 AM
Just went there and no pre-order, it said they had no clue when it would be in stock.   I think this came up six months or more ago, same thing...   So I take it to mean no publish date as of yet..

Damn.  I did a search before and nothing popped up at all so was hoping this might be a change of some kind
Title: Re: Has this been up on Amazon for long?
Post by: KurtinStGeorge on October 02, 2018, 02:06:32 AM
I'm certain we will hear when the book is finished from Jim before Amazon knows when it will be released.  Even if Amazon puts out a release date the day Jim announces he has finished Peace Talks I won't believe it because there is still some remaining editing even after all the pre-finishing editing Jim does with the input he receives from his Beta readers.  Only after that occurs can the publisher give Amazon and other booksellers a reliable release date.

Title: Re: Has this been up on Amazon for long?
Post by: raidem on October 02, 2018, 06:31:46 PM
I'm still wondering what exactly is taking Jim this long to finish Peace Talks.  On Reddit Serack mentioned that he told his beta readers about some problem.  But Serack didn't say what it was.  I opined that it might be some mental health issue like maybe depression or something, just something that in some way affects his brain/mind.  Serack shot it down in saying it "wasn't his head".   I'd say though it seems whatever it is, it has affected Jim's ability to crank out books like he use to.
Title: Re: Has this been up on Amazon for long?
Post by: groinkick on October 02, 2018, 07:10:25 PM
I'm still wondering what exactly is taking Jim this long to finish Peace Talks.  On Reddit Serack mentioned that he told his beta readers about some problem.  But Serack didn't say what it was.  I opined that it might be some mental health issue like maybe depression or something, just something that in some way affects his brain/mind.  Serack shot it down in saying it "wasn't his head".   I'd say though it seems whatever it is, it has affected Jim's ability to crank out books like he use to.

He's went through a lot of big changes over the last few years.  His home is finally finished after many delay's, and he got married last month..  Maybe now he's finally in a a place where he can crank them out again.
Title: Re: Has this been up on Amazon for long?
Post by: KurtinStGeorge on October 02, 2018, 09:10:10 PM
I'm still wondering what exactly is taking Jim this long to finish Peace Talks.  On Reddit Serack mentioned that he told his beta readers about some problem.  But Serack didn't say what it was.  I opined that it might be some mental health issue like maybe depression or something, just something that in some way affects his brain/mind.  Serack shot it down in saying it "wasn't his head".   I'd say though it seems whatever it is, it has affected Jim's ability to crank out books like he use to.

I don't expect Jim to be finished until at least the end of this year and I won't be surprised if it takes a number of months longer than that.  In one of the YouTube videos featuring Jim that was put out early this Summer, he told his audience he was only half way done with Peace Talks, but added that in a few weeks his personal situation; his new home and writing set up (and I think his life in general), would finally be in a place where he could concentrate on his writing and hopefully finish PT by the end of September. 

On the general theory about the best laid plans of mice and men never quite working out the way they were intended to do so, I guessed Jim getting everything the way he wanted it to be would take longer than he estimated and I always thought his estimate of how little time he needed to finish Peace Talks (half the novel in a little less than four months) to be somewhat over optimistic.  So I'm guessing PT will be finished sometime between Jan. 1 and June 30 of next year. 

I sure do miss the tweets Jim made when he was writing Ghost Story where would update what where he was by the percentage of his estimated word count.  "I fired up my laptop and I'm at 75% of my estimated word count."  Of course Jim went over his estimated word count, but those tweets really showed us the progress he was making.  It made me feel I was less in the dark about Jim's writing process, and for me, helped build my enthusiasm for the release of that book.  (Of course, Jim also tweeted about things that had nothing to do with his writing and occasionally responded to other tweeters, and doing so must have taken time away from his writing, so I understand why he's cut out a lot of the social media stuff, but I wish there was some middle ground where we could be a little more informed.)   
Title: Re: Has this been up on Amazon for long?
Post by: morriswalters on October 02, 2018, 10:24:09 PM
Put your expectations in your hip pocket and say zen things.  It will be here when it gets here.  On a more practical note imagine you were excited by the Aeronauts Windless,  you will have to wait another year after Peace Talks finally drags it sorry self to the publisher.  A sad part of me finds that faintly amusing.  You can read that as I won't be a reading that series going forward.

Today in this vein, I read a blog post of something Neal Gaimen (http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/05/entitlement-issues.html) said, "George R.R. Martin is not your bitch".
Title: Re: Has this been up on Amazon for long?
Post by: flying peach on October 03, 2018, 10:49:59 AM
Today in this vein, I read a blog post of something Neal Gaimen (http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/05/entitlement-issues.html) said, "George R.R. Martin is not your bitch".

Of course George Martin isn't our bitch. He's HBO's bitch. It's entirely possible that after the HBO series finale, that most people that started as fans of the book series won't care how the book series ends.
Title: Re: Has this been up on Amazon for long?
Post by: morriswalters on October 03, 2018, 03:49:20 PM
I really don't care who thinks they own him, as I don't favor that kind of book.  However Gaiman makes an interesting point.
Title: Re: Has this been up on Amazon for long?
Post by: flying peach on October 06, 2018, 10:53:26 AM
That post has been going up in relation to Dresden Files for years. The flip side of that post is just like the author isn't our bitch we aren't their bitch either.

I started reading George Martin's books before the HBO's series came out. I then quit reading them because it took too long between books and I didn't remember what happened in the books that I hadn't read for years. So George Martin wasn't my bitch, and I wasn't his either, and as a consequence I'll never buy another one of his books again. Not angry, just lost interest and don't care enough to reread the series. Similarly, I thought Patrick Rothfuss' books were ok but not great. I don't know what all the fuss was about. I might read the last book when it comes out, but I doubt it. I didn't like his books enough to reread them for the third book. If the third book had of come out years ago I probably would of bought it.

The marketplace punishes authors for not publishing books for years. Even rereading Neil gaiman's post, yeah the author isn't the reader's slave but how many years have to pass before the wait between books is an insult to the fans?
Title: Re: Has this been up on Amazon for long?
Post by: Mira on October 06, 2018, 11:36:16 AM


I doubt that we will see Winds of Winter till the series is finished next year...  One expects the film version to differ somewhat from the books, that is the way of the world.  However having said that
I really doubt that either the television producer or Martin want to not just piss off fans but alienating
them by making different endings... Those two ducks I predict will be in a row and agree, even
if nothing else does...
Title: Re: Has this been up on Amazon for long?
Post by: morriswalters on October 06, 2018, 11:51:15 AM
The idea of not finishing a series, or in the series being delayed, as an insult to the reader is interesting.  But I'm not sure if the idea is really rational. I doubt that anyone will suffer in any real sense because the series is delayed.  Eventually if he doesn't finish his income stream will die.  And as such, he will suffer more than I could.  I fail to see how I am harmed.
Title: Re: Has this been up on Amazon for long?
Post by: Mira on October 06, 2018, 11:09:21 PM
The idea of not finishing a series, or in the series being delayed, as an insult to the reader is interesting.  But I'm not sure if the idea is really rational. I doubt that anyone will suffer in any real sense because the series is delayed.  Eventually if he doesn't finish his income stream will die.  And as such, he will suffer more than I could.  I fail to see how I am harmed.

Naw, he is writing another series and people are still buying him books, so his income stream will not
die....  However it could be that after all this time it is harder for him to come up with a good book for the series we know and love... 
Title: Re: Has this been up on Amazon for long?
Post by: morriswalters on October 07, 2018, 01:15:58 AM
Naw, he is writing another series and people are still buying him books, so his income stream will not
die....  However it could be that after all this time it is harder for him to come up with a good book for the series we know and love... 
Then he has nothing to worry about I suppose.
Title: Re: Has this been up on Amazon for long?
Post by: flying peach on October 07, 2018, 05:57:20 AM
The idea of not finishing a series, or in the series being delayed, as an insult to the reader is interesting.  But I'm not sure if the idea is really rational.
I'm rewriting stuff I've written before in other posts, but in essence there is an implied promise that if a reader buys into the series that the author will make a good faith effort to finish the series. This isn't always possible for various reasons and this is ok. Certainly, it wasn't required for Robert Jordan to spend the last of his life outlining the WOT series, but I'm certainly glad he did. But when an author really doesn't appear to make an effort to finish a series then yeah that is an insult to the fan, because it broke the trust that the fan placed in the author to make an effort to finish a series.

In the days before kindle, books might have blurbs on the cover or maybe in an advertisement in the back that might say something like "the first in an exciting new trilogy by 1980's fantasy author." Why would any reader buy the first book in a trilogy if there was never going to be a third book? The answer is that the reader wouldn't. There is always an implied promise that there will be an effort to finish the trilogy or else fans wouldn't buy trilogies until all the works are written.
 
Fraud, as defined by the first internet definition from google is: "wrongful...deception intended to result in financial or personal gain." In the case of the author not finishing a series just because, the wrongful deception was that the author would make an attempt to finish the series and the financial gain was the sale of the book. I excluded the legal bits of the definition, because I have no interest in typing a long legal analysis. If an author commits a fraud, in common parlance, on the fan then yeah that's an insult.

I doubt that anyone will suffer in any real sense because the series is delayed.
Who said anything about severe physical or mental anguish?
Title: Re: Has this been up on Amazon for long?
Post by: Mira on October 07, 2018, 11:44:35 AM
I'm rewriting stuff I've written before in other posts, but in essence there is an implied promise that if a reader buys into the series that the author will make a good faith effort to finish the series. This isn't always possible for various reasons and this is ok. Certainly, it wasn't required for Robert Jordan to spend the last of his life outlining the WOT series, but I'm certainly glad he did. But when an author really doesn't appear to make an effort to finish a series then yeah that is an insult to the fan, because it broke the trust that the fan placed in the author to make an effort to finish a series.

In the days before kindle, books might have blurbs on the cover or maybe in an advertisement in the back that might say something like "the first in an exciting new trilogy by 1980's fantasy author." Why would any reader buy the first book in a trilogy if there was never going to be a third book? The answer is that the reader wouldn't. There is always an implied promise that there will be an effort to finish the trilogy or else fans wouldn't buy trilogies until all the works are written.
 
Fraud, as defined by the first internet definition from google is: "wrongful...deception intended to result in financial or personal gain." In the case of the author not finishing a series just because, the wrongful deception was that the author would make an attempt to finish the series and the financial gain was the sale of the book. I excluded the legal bits of the definition, because I have no interest in typing a long legal analysis. If an author commits a fraud, in common parlance, on the fan then yeah that's an insult.
 Who said anything about severe physical or mental anguish?

I do believe an author intends to finish the series he or she has planned..  However problems do arise that prevents it from happening, or sometime as in "Game of Thrones,"  a trilogy becomes extended to several more books.    I think a problem arises when an author promises too much
to his or her readers.   It's great to promise a 20 book series, but is it realistic?  There are a lot of factors that decide if this becomes a reality or not, putting aside just what life throws at anyone, but the ability/desire of the author to devote the next twenty or so years to finish the series...  If Martin had strictly devoted his writing time to the series itself, "Game of Thrones" would have been finished long ago...  But while he written and published several books about the world it is in the last few years, the series itself remains undone.  While it seems like Jim is taking longer between books and he has had a lot of personal things in his life, he still has managed to begin a new series with a pretty long novel..  He throws a crumb our way once in a while with a short story set in the Dresdenverse, but that hardly satisfies..

No, he isn't our bitch, and no, he isn't obligated to finish this or any other series.   However he may owe it to himself as well as his fans if Harry continues to find a cooler and cooler place in the back of the stove of his mind, to perhaps realistically rethink the scope of the story...  One last thought, it has been my experience that some wait and anticipation of book, movie, or television series can be good, too long and it usually backfires and disappoints...
Title: Re: Has this been up on Amazon for long?
Post by: morriswalters on October 07, 2018, 04:33:38 PM
Who said anything about severe physical or mental anguish?
As a matter of form use the complete quote. Here's the chain.
Quote
The marketplace punishes authors for not publishing books for years. Even rereading Neil gaiman's post, yeah the author isn't the reader's slave but how many years have to pass before the wait between books is an insult to the fans?
Quote
The idea of not finishing a series, or in the series being delayed, as an insult to the reader is interesting.  But I'm not sure if the idea is really rational. I doubt that anyone will suffer in any real sense because the series is delayed.  Eventually if he doesn't finish his income stream will die.  And as such, he will suffer more than I could.  I fail to see how I am harmed.
The word insult implies some form of suffering.

In a real sense a reader buys into something that isn't a certainty.  The reader vests in the idea that the author will or can be true to his word.  When looked at in that way it could be construed as a breech of faith.  Much is the same way a 2 dollar nag who drops dead out of the gate  breeches a gamblers faith.  My  grandfather suffered a lot. ;) And this is a general statement rather than being directed at anyone.
Quote from: Mira
One last thought, it has been my experience that some wait and anticipation of book, movie, or television series can be good, too long and it usually backfires and disappoints...
As Light Saber sounds come faintly from the background. :)

Title: Re: Has this been up on Amazon for long?
Post by: Mira on October 07, 2018, 05:02:59 PM
Quote
As Light Saber sounds come faintly from the background. :)

  There can also be too many prequels or sequels...  Diminishing returns... :(
Title: Re: Has this been up on Amazon for long?
Post by: flying peach on October 08, 2018, 04:18:16 PM
The word insult implies some form of suffering.

The first googled internet definition which provides the explicit definition of insult as a noun is "a disrespectful or scornfully abusive remark or action." Offhand, I can't think of an instance of 'insult' as being used to imply suffering. Although, the definition did reference injury to the body as a use of 'insult.'
Title: Re: Has this been up on Amazon for long?
Post by: groinkick on October 10, 2018, 06:03:17 AM
It all seems to be a moot point.  Looks like it was picked up by Fox for a tv show according to the interwebs.  Another source said the book will be out in early 2019. 
Title: Re: Has this been up on Amazon for long?
Post by: wardenferry419 on October 10, 2018, 11:12:48 PM
The first googled internet definition which provides the explicit definition of insult as a noun is "a disrespectful or scornfully abusive remark or action." Offhand, I can't think of an instance of 'insult' as being used to imply suffering. Although, the definition did reference injury to the body as a use of 'insult.'
I would say that the amount of suffering a person experiences from an insult is proportional to the amount of feelings the insulted person has with the insulter. Hence, if a stranger insults you; flip them the bird and go about your day.
Title: Re: Has this been up on Amazon for long?
Post by: morriswalters on October 11, 2018, 12:44:50 AM
I remember being quite hurt by the insults hurled by the other kids.  All it took was being different.  Pick your poison.
Title: Re: Has this been up on Amazon for long?
Post by: wardenferry419 on October 11, 2018, 09:50:04 AM
Kids are all emotion and no reason. The older you get; the less you give a crap what others think.