Honor Harrington book 14

I would guess that it is the Honor books that make his career. I saw damn few of the Safehold books on sale at Barnes and Noble. On the other hand, most of the Honor series is there.

Yes, the libraries buy his Tor books but the fans buy a real lot of Honor books.

More Honor books would provide cash. Some of the other series, well, I don't know.

kzt wrote:The core issue is that David is getting older and sicker. He'd like to get off the treadmill of slaving over the next book so he can put shoes on his kids feet and pay the doctor bills. So he also writes books for people who pay him better than Baen can so hopefully his kids can go to college without his having to work 12 hours a day until he's 83.

So we are not going to get closure of the MA arc unless David does a "rocks fall, everybody dies" like Steve Stirling did in the Islands series. And I doubt you'd be any happier about David doing it that we were at Steve doing it.

ldwechsler wrote:I would guess that it is the Honor books that make his career. I saw damn few of the Safehold books on sale at Barnes and Noble. On the other hand, most of the Honor series is there.

Yes, the libraries buy his Tor books but the fans buy a real lot of Honor books.

More Honor books would provide cash. Some of the other series, well, I don't know.

I have heard the Tor advances are significantly bigger.

kzt wrote:

ldwechsler wrote:I would guess that it is the Honor books that make his career. I saw damn few of the Safehold books on sale at Barnes and Noble. On the other hand, most of the Honor series is there.

Yes, the libraries buy his Tor books but the fans buy a real lot of Honor books.

More Honor books would provide cash. Some of the other series, well, I don't know.

I have heard the Tor advances are significantly bigger.

This is only meaningful if the books don't sell enough to pay out the advance. Once they do, the size of the advance is less important since there will be an income stream from royalties.

Using the number of posts on this site as a very rough proxy, we have:

Honorverse: 1463 topics, 68195 posts
Safehold: 1798 topics, 57235 posts
War God: 114 topics
Multiverse: 96 topics

In other words, he has two series that are paying the bills, and I'm not sure I've seen a Safehold fandom that's similar in size to the Honorverse fandom.

This leads me to wonder about future plans if both the Honorverse and Safehold are going to end in the next year or so.

JohnRoth wrote:This is only meaningful if the books don't sell enough to pay out the advance. Once they do, the size of the advance is less important since there will be an income stream from royalties.

In theory.

JohnRoth wrote:
This is only meaningful if the books don't sell enough to pay out the advance. Once they do, the size of the advance is less important since there will be an income stream from royalties.

Using the number of posts on this site as a very rough proxy, we have:

Honorverse: 1463 topics, 68195 posts
Safehold: 1798 topics, 57235 posts
War God: 114 topics
Multiverse: 96 topics

In other words, he has two series that are paying the bills, and I'm not sure I've seen a Safehold fandom that's similar in size to the Honorverse fandom.

This leads me to wonder about future plans if both the Honorverse and Safehold are going to end in the next year or so.

Don't forget that pretty much all the books DW has written since this forum launched are in those 4 categories, not any others (the only other book was Out of the Dark), and War God and Multiverse have only had 1 or 2 books apiece in that timeframe, while there have been 6 or 7 Safehold books and ~10 Honorverse books. I would say the forum activity is linked to the publication amount.

Theemile wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:
This is only meaningful if the books don't sell enough to pay out the advance. Once they do, the size of the advance is less important since there will be an income stream from royalties.

Using the number of posts on this site as a very rough proxy, we have:

Honorverse: 1463 topics, 68195 posts
Safehold: 1798 topics, 57235 posts
War God: 114 topics
Multiverse: 96 topics

In other words, he has two series that are paying the bills, and I'm not sure I've seen a Safehold fandom that's similar in size to the Honorverse fandom.

This leads me to wonder about future plans if both the Honorverse and Safehold are going to end in the next year or so.

Don't forget that pretty much all the books DW has written since this forum launched are in those 4 categories, not any others (the only other book was Out of the Dark), and War God and Multiverse have only had 1 or 2 books apiece in that timeframe, while there have been 6 or 7 Safehold books and ~10 Honorverse books. I would say the forum activity is linked to the publication amount.

That's undoubtedly got something to do with it, but I suspect there's another, much larger factor. Most of the activity on this forum has to do with either in-universe military or political issues; there's a significant fraction of posts dealing with the characters.

I don't read the Safehold books, but from what I know the balance is probably pretty similar, with technology replacing military to some extent.

War God has a very small number of relateable characters, a pretty static political map and essentially no military or technology progression. Similarly for Multiverse. There are other things you could build a fandom around, but these don't seem like series that would hold people's interest over decades.

Louis R wrote:Well, if that's the way you feel, you're going to have to arrange sales of another 5-6000 copies of the existing books. And, probably, guarantee similar volumes for any new works.

I'm sure as hell not going to do it alone, so get off your *** and jump in with me...

UNLESS of course you want to face me skill to skill, weapon to weapon, on the battlefield!

you're on!

rev up your Fokker, I'll go pick up a Blowpipe

['fraid i don't need second copies of the books]

RedBaron wrote:

Louis R wrote:Well, if that's the way you feel, you're going to have to arrange sales of another 5-6000 copies of the existing books. And, probably, guarantee similar volumes for any new works.

I'm sure as hell not going to do it alone, so get off your *** and jump in with me...

UNLESS of course you want to face me skill to skill, weapon to weapon, on the battlefield!

Louis, I knew just from your first post the kind of person you are - a useless layabout that expects others to do everything for them and only get off your butt when it's time to collect the results.

If you can't be bothered to roll your sleeves up and help, then do the world a favor...

Sit down and shut up.

I'm tired of lazy cowards like you. If you were a character in the Honorverse, you'd have already been shot or hung.

Hell, I barely have first copies of his Honorverse books. Almost all of which I have bought second hand. Stephanie... Yawn... Manticore ascendant... I am sorry to say, I purchased it, but quickly wised up and peddled it at half price books. Safehold? Ug, nothing past the first book(used) which was good and then the whole thing fell apart, 7 Billion characters with no development or screen time no one gives a fart in a vacuum suit about, gobs of useless minutia pertaining to barely there characters no one gives a damn about, the same way all of DW's writing style has changed. There are still flashes of his brilliance though, but becoming rather rare.

RedBarron, do DW a good solid and buy 20,000-->60,000 copies of poorly written stories no one wants full of useless barely there 2D characters without any background, foreground or emotional attachment to the reader. You can use them to heat your home this winter. You don't even have to wait for the "firewood" to dry. They come nice and humid free. Probably on recycled paper to boot.