About the topic (it seems it degenerated a bit in the last posts, uh?
)
Here in Spain we have a small editorial company named Gigamesh. They have great taste in fantasy and scifi books, and they tend to make high quality and customer oriented (which means the same) translations and editions.
They got the rights to publish aSoFaI (I'll use acronyms as they have been stated in page 2) and they started with paperback instead of hardcover (as I said elsewhere, books in Spain are REALLY expensive, and such huge books would be extremely costly) by attending to fantasy fans feedback.
Books 3 (A Storm of Swords) and 4 (Feast for Crows) had to be splitted in two because of their length. They just simply got them wrapped in plastic together (what's it called in English? In Spanish it's "retractilado") and sold as one book.
They were concerned with book 4 because some stores unwrapped them and sold them as two books but I don't think that could happen with aMoL because Tor isn't a small company as Gigamesh.
As I did when they asked, to save pages to the books, I would suggest the appendix (it takes several dozen of pages in last WoT books) to be set a separate small book, so they don't have to publish appendixes in both books.
Oddly, I made the suggestion to save money and they took it to the Deluxe Edition
So, we all know it will be 2 volumes. It is just, what do you prefer? Having both volumes at once in, say, 2010? Or have one volume... say end 2009 and the other in end 2010?
I'm guessing based on what BS tells in his website, no way I can know when they will actually be released.
Also, I would like to tell you about the experience we have here in Spain with WoT.
The biggest fantasy company in here is Timun Mas. It was broke and some supposed fans took up with it. They got WoT rights. They published the first 3 volumes (that's it, till TDR). Then, they decided to split the following books in two. They sold each book at more or less the same price they have been selling the first 3 so........... they got to gain double and we had to pay double. We knew nothing of this practice because the web was not so common those days.
So, we know what it is to get split books. It is weird. Endings of the first halves are untasty. Begginings on the second halves are strange. Moreso when they release one book a year. Definetely, I would rather have aMoL in one book at once, whether it is 1-2 or 3 volumes, than having it on episodes.
Oh, I read French version of Feast for Crows went out in 3 or 4 volumes. THAT must be unnerving.....
