July 12th, 2011

It's almost like I have magic publication-date-bringing powers or something.

According to Entertainment Weekly, there is a firm publication date for A Dance With Dragons, as confirmed by fan site Westeros.org and interviews with GRRM (the author). In both the US and UK, the book will be published on July 12th. Of this year. This is unusual, as his books are often published in the UK before they are in the US, even though Martin is American, since it's easier to do publication turn-arounds more quickly in the UK since the market there is notably smaller than in the US and fewer copies are printed. However, Bantam (American publisher) and Voyager (British publisher) are not messing around.

This is interesting as, per GRRM's latest update on ADwD a few days ago, he still is not finished writing. However, if the publishers are giving ridiculously firm dates like this, they are not messing around. Apparently this is real.

Really, really happy this week. Awesome, awesome, awesome ASoIaF news all around.

Edited to add: Official confirmation from GRRM on his website can be found here. Only about four months to go :D