NO. 6
Why Your Favorite Author Let You Down
Calliope.
According to Greek myth, she is the eldest of the muses. The goddess of eloquence. If you were going to have a muse, Calliope is the one you would want.
And in Neil Gaiman’s short story in The Sandman, someone does get Calliope. It goes something like this: a struggling writer has released a bestselling first book, but finds himself at a loss for words when he sits down to write the follow-up. So he meets with an older, more successful writer, who reveals he’s had the muse Calliope imprisoned. This older writer “gifts” Calliope to the younger writer, who proceeds to kidnap and imprison her, using her to give him inspiration for his writing.
The story’s all rather dark, so I won’t get into the rest of it here. One piece of the story that works well, likely because it is so common, is this: artists struggle with follow-ups. Tremendously so.
How many times has a once-popular book series ended up in endless purgatory because the author has decided they don’t really feel like writing the final book? How often has a TV series ended because one of the star actors decided to go a different way with their role?
The answer is that it’s happened very often. In this piece, I’ll cover some of the most fascinating stories about artists failing to deliver—and offer some reasons why.
Act I: Why fans turned on one of the most popular fantasy writers ever
In 2007, a new author by the name of Patrick Rothfuss published a book called The Name of The Wind. It was a long fantasy story, told in a frame narrative, about a wizard named Kvothe. It went on to become one of the bestselling fantasy books of all time. If you’re reading this and are at all familiar with the fantasy genre, you’ve likely heard of The Name of The Wind. (Unfortunately, we never do find out the name of the wind.)
Then, in 2011, he released a carefully-crafted sequel, The Wise Man’s Fear. Fans loved it. Patrick was on a roll. Just a few more years and he’d write the final book in the trilogy, the capstone for one of the most popular fantasy trilogies of all time.
Except that’s not how it went. At all.
Patrick took his time on The Wise Man’s Fear. He pursued other projects in the meantime, like streaming on Twitch. Which fans liked… Up to a point. By 2016, pressure had continued to mount on Patrick to release something, anything, about his final book (to be titled The Doors of Stone). But Patrick was getting fed up with the fan requests.
According to this Reddit post, in 2016 (on a now-deleted Twitch stream), Patrick said that fans asking for the final book were like “the sound of a nail being dragged across my teeth combined with the smell of someone who just… shit on themselves.”
Naturally, this sort of talk did not go over well with fans. But it was not the end of the drama. In December of 2021, Patrick Rothfuss held a fundraiser for charity. Fans donated over $700,000 to this charity, and in return, they were promised the following:
It’s May of 2023, and Patrick only delivered the prologue. Which, all in all, equated to about one or two paragraphs of new text. Ten years since the second book released, nearly a million dollars of fundraising later, and fans were met with about one minute of Patrick talking to a screen. This was, understandably, the final straw for many fans.
I’ll take a moment here to acknowledge that, yes, lots of money going to charity is a good thing. But the situation, to some fans, reflected poorly on Patrick as a writer.
There’s a lot more drama to talk about with Patrick Rothfuss, but this is not a drama newsletter. It is just the best, most recent story I can think of of an artist failing spectacularly to deliver on their promises—all the while taking actions and saying things to turn their own fans against them.
Now, to a few more examples that illustrate Patrick isn’t the only artist who’s disappointed fans with a follow-up (or lack thereof).
Act II: It’s not just Patrick Rothfuss, it’s lots of your favorite artists
It was 2017, and three-man game studio Team Cherry dropped one of the most popular video games of the last decade: Hollow Knight. The game, which follows a lonely protagonist fighting its way through a world of bugs, was a smash hit—much like The Name of The Wind was a hit when it came out.
And, much like fans haven’t seen The Doors of Stone, fans are also still waiting on Hollow Knight’s sequel, Silksong. This isn’t particularly bad: Team Cherry haven’t leveraged false promises about Silksong to convince fans to part with large sums of money.
However, the last update to Team Cherry’s blog was in 2019, and fans haven’t heard much about the game since. While this isn’t inherently bad, this sort of practice from artists—going silent without so much as an explanation for fans of where they’re at with a much-awaited sequel—is one surefire way to garner critics.
Cherry (get it!) on the top here is that Xbox did release a game trailer for Silksong, with fans assuming the release date would be sometime in June 2023. Unfortunately… That is not the case.
OK, back to books.
Ever heard of a book called The Lies of Locke Lamora? It’s a rather unique fantasy book, which started the beginning of a series… Which hasn’t, to date, been finished. Fans were told to expect the final book in 2016, then 2017, but got nothing in both instances. And Scott Lynch, the author, has made promises to fans about updates that’ve never come out. It’s May 2023, and the book still isn’t out.
And then, of course, there’s George R.R. Martin. He’s the author of the A Song of Ice and Fire series (better-known as Game of Thrones to wider audiences). To fans, however, it seems he spends lots of time elsewhere. At this point, many readers have resigned themselves to the belief that the series will never be finished.
The list goes on and on for artists in just about every industry. But is any of it justified? And is there a solution?
Being an artist, professionally, is a job. And, just like any person at any job, starting a career does not mean you have the obligation to stay in that career for the rest of your life. Nobody expects a software engineer at Microsoft to work on Bing for the rest of their life—even if they quit with some projects still-unfinished.
Add to this the fact that most people are not nearly as talented as we give them credit for. When we say someone is “a good writer”, we are ascribing a statement of skills to them—that they are good at writing, point-blank—that is probably not true. While Neil Gaiman writes excellent fantasy novels, I’m not sure he’d write a great landing page for a SaaS startup (or, at least, not as good as a new advertising grad).
It shouldn’t be too surprising, then, when your favorite author does end up struggling with a new project, or releasing a book that doesn’t live up to their old ones. We are all guided by the invisible hand of context: timing, luck, skill, chance, whatever you want to call it, even the best of us do our best work when the stars align.
All that to say, there are a few implicit assumptions that are fair to make about artwork:
Simple as that? I think so.
Act III: There are some simple solutions here, and they are as follows…
To wrap this up, it only seems natural to write about yet another author. This time, though, I am referring to an author known for his prolific writing. A guy who updates his fans on the progress of each book he’s working on, down to the specific percentage-point. I am writing, of course, about Brandon Sanderson.
He’s arguably the most popular fantasy writer alive, known in recent years for his $43M Kickstarter campaign.
For what it’s worth, most of his writing isn’t for me. But when it comes to communication with his fans, Brandon goes above and beyond. Between weekly updates on his YouTube channel and progress bars for individual books on his website, Brandon is organized & transparent to a level we shouldn’t expect from the writers we enjoy.
But Brandon gets it right. When he makes promises to fans, he tends to keep them.And if he doesn’t—for example, when one of his Kickstarter-backed books had a shipping delay—he’s incredibly transparent about what the problem was and why it happened. Unlike other authors, he doesn’t drop off the face of the planet with no explanation when something isn’t delivered as promised.
And this, I think, is what more artists should strive for. Not false promises which lead to overwhelming pressure which make it harder to do your work in the first place. But honest, transparent communications with fans about what they are working on and when it may reasonably be out.
And as fans?
I think it’s our responsibility to understand that being a professional artist is a job just like any other job is a job. We should not burn our favorite artists at the stake for failing to release a book any more than we should burn a Microsoft backend developer at the stake because he burnt out and took a few extra months to release a new feature to Teams. We should enjoy the art that we have, give critical feedback when appropriate, and keep enjoying life nonetheless.
(Is that too trite an ending? I don’t know. But it’s over, anyway. Goodbye.)
Calliope.
According to Greek myth, she is the eldest of the muses. The goddess of eloquence. If you were going to have a muse, Calliope is the one you would want.
And in Neil Gaiman’s short story in The Sandman, someone does get Calliope. It goes something like this: a struggling writer has released a bestselling first book, but finds himself at a loss for words when he sits down to write the follow-up. So he meets with an older, more successful writer, who reveals he’s had the muse Calliope imprisoned. This older writer “gifts” Calliope to the younger writer, who proceeds to kidnap and imprison her, using her to give him inspiration for his writing.
The story’s all rather dark, so I won’t get into the rest of it here. One piece of the story that works well, likely because it is so common, is this: artists struggle with follow-ups. Tremendously so.
How many times has a once-popular book series ended up in endless purgatory because the author has decided they don’t really feel like writing the final book? How often has a TV series ended because one of the star actors decided to go a different way with their role?
The answer is that it’s happened very often. In this piece, I’ll cover some of the most fascinating stories about artists failing to deliver—and offer some reasons why.
Act I: Why fans turned on one of the most popular fantasy writers ever
In 2007, a new author by the name of Patrick Rothfuss published a book called The Name of The Wind. It was a long fantasy story, told in a frame narrative, about a wizard named Kvothe. It went on to become one of the bestselling fantasy books of all time. If you’re reading this and are at all familiar with the fantasy genre, you’ve likely heard of The Name of The Wind. (Unfortunately, we never do find out the name of the wind.)
Then, in 2011, he released a carefully-crafted sequel, The Wise Man’s Fear. Fans loved it. Patrick was on a roll. Just a few more years and he’d write the final book in the trilogy, the capstone for one of the most popular fantasy trilogies of all time.
Except that’s not how it went. At all.
Patrick took his time on The Wise Man’s Fear. He pursued other projects in the meantime, like streaming on Twitch. Which fans liked… Up to a point. By 2016, pressure had continued to mount on Patrick to release something, anything, about his final book (to be titled The Doors of Stone). But Patrick was getting fed up with the fan requests.
According to this Reddit post, in 2016 (on a now-deleted Twitch stream), Patrick said that fans asking for the final book were like “the sound of a nail being dragged across my teeth combined with the smell of someone who just… shit on themselves.”
Naturally, this sort of talk did not go over well with fans. But it was not the end of the drama. In December of 2021, Patrick Rothfuss held a fundraiser for charity. Fans donated over $700,000 to this charity, and in return, they were promised the following:
- Patrick reading the prologue of The Doors of Stone
- Patrick reading the first chapter of The Doors of Stone
- A talented voice acting team reading the first chapter of The Doors of Stone
It’s May of 2023, and Patrick only delivered the prologue. Which, all in all, equated to about one or two paragraphs of new text. Ten years since the second book released, nearly a million dollars of fundraising later, and fans were met with about one minute of Patrick talking to a screen. This was, understandably, the final straw for many fans.
I’ll take a moment here to acknowledge that, yes, lots of money going to charity is a good thing. But the situation, to some fans, reflected poorly on Patrick as a writer.
There’s a lot more drama to talk about with Patrick Rothfuss, but this is not a drama newsletter. It is just the best, most recent story I can think of of an artist failing spectacularly to deliver on their promises—all the while taking actions and saying things to turn their own fans against them.
Now, to a few more examples that illustrate Patrick isn’t the only artist who’s disappointed fans with a follow-up (or lack thereof).
Act II: It’s not just Patrick Rothfuss, it’s lots of your favorite artists
It was 2017, and three-man game studio Team Cherry dropped one of the most popular video games of the last decade: Hollow Knight. The game, which follows a lonely protagonist fighting its way through a world of bugs, was a smash hit—much like The Name of The Wind was a hit when it came out.
And, much like fans haven’t seen The Doors of Stone, fans are also still waiting on Hollow Knight’s sequel, Silksong. This isn’t particularly bad: Team Cherry haven’t leveraged false promises about Silksong to convince fans to part with large sums of money.
However, the last update to Team Cherry’s blog was in 2019, and fans haven’t heard much about the game since. While this isn’t inherently bad, this sort of practice from artists—going silent without so much as an explanation for fans of where they’re at with a much-awaited sequel—is one surefire way to garner critics.
Cherry (get it!) on the top here is that Xbox did release a game trailer for Silksong, with fans assuming the release date would be sometime in June 2023. Unfortunately… That is not the case.
OK, back to books.
Ever heard of a book called The Lies of Locke Lamora? It’s a rather unique fantasy book, which started the beginning of a series… Which hasn’t, to date, been finished. Fans were told to expect the final book in 2016, then 2017, but got nothing in both instances. And Scott Lynch, the author, has made promises to fans about updates that’ve never come out. It’s May 2023, and the book still isn’t out.
And then, of course, there’s George R.R. Martin. He’s the author of the A Song of Ice and Fire series (better-known as Game of Thrones to wider audiences). To fans, however, it seems he spends lots of time elsewhere. At this point, many readers have resigned themselves to the belief that the series will never be finished.
The list goes on and on for artists in just about every industry. But is any of it justified? And is there a solution?
In defense of the artists…
Being an artist, professionally, is a job. And, just like any person at any job, starting a career does not mean you have the obligation to stay in that career for the rest of your life. Nobody expects a software engineer at Microsoft to work on Bing for the rest of their life—even if they quit with some projects still-unfinished.
Add to this the fact that most people are not nearly as talented as we give them credit for. When we say someone is “a good writer”, we are ascribing a statement of skills to them—that they are good at writing, point-blank—that is probably not true. While Neil Gaiman writes excellent fantasy novels, I’m not sure he’d write a great landing page for a SaaS startup (or, at least, not as good as a new advertising grad).
It shouldn’t be too surprising, then, when your favorite author does end up struggling with a new project, or releasing a book that doesn’t live up to their old ones. We are all guided by the invisible hand of context: timing, luck, skill, chance, whatever you want to call it, even the best of us do our best work when the stars align.
All that to say, there are a few implicit assumptions that are fair to make about artwork:
- If an artist starts a series, they should finish it. By writing a series of books, or creating a series of movies (or anything else), they’re asking fans to invest some money, and a significant amount of time, with their work. The implicit assumption here is that, at some point, that investment will pay off with a conclusion to the series.
- If an artist makes promises, they should do their best to keep them. And they should not make promises irrationally.
Simple as that? I think so.
Act III: There are some simple solutions here, and they are as follows…
To wrap this up, it only seems natural to write about yet another author. This time, though, I am referring to an author known for his prolific writing. A guy who updates his fans on the progress of each book he’s working on, down to the specific percentage-point. I am writing, of course, about Brandon Sanderson.
He’s arguably the most popular fantasy writer alive, known in recent years for his $43M Kickstarter campaign.
For what it’s worth, most of his writing isn’t for me. But when it comes to communication with his fans, Brandon goes above and beyond. Between weekly updates on his YouTube channel and progress bars for individual books on his website, Brandon is organized & transparent to a level we shouldn’t expect from the writers we enjoy.
But Brandon gets it right. When he makes promises to fans, he tends to keep them.And if he doesn’t—for example, when one of his Kickstarter-backed books had a shipping delay—he’s incredibly transparent about what the problem was and why it happened. Unlike other authors, he doesn’t drop off the face of the planet with no explanation when something isn’t delivered as promised.
And this, I think, is what more artists should strive for. Not false promises which lead to overwhelming pressure which make it harder to do your work in the first place. But honest, transparent communications with fans about what they are working on and when it may reasonably be out.
And as fans?
I think it’s our responsibility to understand that being a professional artist is a job just like any other job is a job. We should not burn our favorite artists at the stake for failing to release a book any more than we should burn a Microsoft backend developer at the stake because he burnt out and took a few extra months to release a new feature to Teams. We should enjoy the art that we have, give critical feedback when appropriate, and keep enjoying life nonetheless.
(Is that too trite an ending? I don’t know. But it’s over, anyway. Goodbye.)