The Gathering Storm - Wheel of Time Book 12 Official Discussion NO SPOILERS

[molybdenum]

Shouldn't affect overall sales much at all. If people want to buy the book, and Amazon's not selling it for a time, they are going to a) find another method of buying it, or b) wait until amazon starts selling it again. Week by week sales might take a bit of a hit though.

[ChrisW]

Looks like Tor stuffed up. The poor awareness of the book(most likely cause of poor sales) coming out combined with the misprint problem is certainly going to cost them a fair bit of money.

[PeterWilliam]

I'm sure the misprint is what stopped the sales/listing on Amazon.

Dang, the Evony ad just came up again. WTH are they sellin'?

[SerJaime22]

I am surprised TOR didn't do more advance promotion for this book. How many people didn't even know there was a new WoT novel coming out? I guess they wanted to keep everything under wraps, but I think a lot of readers were caught off guard.

Hopefully for ToM they will do a better job of advertising and promoting the book.

Even so, I expect sales for TGS will be brisk. Good word of mouth will have readers picking up the book over the next few weeks and months.

[Bastard]

Yep, they dropped the ball in many areas. At least I hope Brandon sees his other works increase in sales substantially.

[Rob B]

Poor promotion? What didn't they do to make people aware of the new book?

[kcf]

Originally Posted by Rob B

Poor promotion? What didn't they do to make people aware of the new book?

Agreed - this was by far the most promoted WOT book to date. The only fiction books I can think of that get more promoted are from the likes Dan Brown, JK Rowling, and SK.

[Rob B]

Including certain people as Storm Leaders, right?

The online promotion for this book has been the biggest I've probably seen for any book.

Honestly, what did people expect Tor to do to promote this book?

[kcf]

No kidding, Tor has literally found a way to turn book promotion (through the signing tour) into a grassroots effort.

[molybdenum]

I think it's seeing that second name on the cover that does people in. I can imagine the casual uninformed fan (and there should be quite a few of those) thinking, "Oh, this one's not written by only Robert Jordan, therefore, it can't be a mainstream Wheel of Time novel. This must be another spinoff, something like New Spring."

If I had to guess, that's what I'd blame it on.

The long wait between books 11 and 12 probably hasn't helped either. There's probably people who have forgotten about the series, in a relative sense.

[SerJaime22]

More advance reviews would have been a good idea, to spread the word that TGS is a big step up from Books 8-10. By keeping such a tight wrap on the book, and only giving advance copies to WoT fansites, some people may have thought this book was inferior in quality.

Given the very positive response to the book so far, I'm surprised TOR didn't try to generate more buzz within the online community.

[Jon Sprunk]

I'm really looking forward to reading this book.

[Rob B]

Originally Posted by SerJaime22

Given the very positive response to the book so far, I'm surprised TOR didn't try to generate more buzz within the online community.

... and I ask again, what more could they have done? They have their entire tor.com Web site running a re-read of the series, they've invited bloggers to assist with the book tour. Like Ken said, they've made this a grass-roots thing and have really fostered a sense of community in the genre.

Brandon's been interviewed by a lot of online zines, and not just genre zines, but mainstream ones like Wired and USA Today.

[Evil Agent]

How about better cover art?

[Rob B]

Well, there is that EA, but that road is littered with corpses, nails, barbed wire, and skunks so let's not travel down it again.