I found this on another board I frequent, asoiaf.westeros.org.George RR Martin said this very recently about Donaldson:
Teri Pettit wrote:At both signings George talked mostly about the history of his writing career, the ups and downs of being an author (at Half Moon Bay he told some anecdotes about Stephen R. Donaldson, who also lives in New Mexico and is a long-time friend of George's), and stories about past signing tours.
Ran wrote:Excellent, Teri.
Recall any of those anecdotes about Donaldson? Big fan of his work, as well.
This upset me. It almost suggests that Donaldson wasn't doing so well anymore and that he resorted to the Last Chrons as a means to rake in the cash. Sigh....Teri wrote:Well, let's see. It came up in a context of someone asking him if, after he completes Song of Ice and Fire, he intends to write more stories in that world, or whether he will switch to something different. To which he said that he would prefer to do something new, but he really likes his work to be read (the biggest reason he left the film industry was frustration at writing pilots and concept treatments that nobody but the studio execs ever saw). Then he listed a number of authors who had trouble selling anything set outside the world and characters that made them famous, including Arthur Conan Doyle with Sherlock Holmes, Frank Herbert with Dune, etc.
That led into an account of Donaldson's publishing career. He told about how Donaldson wrote all three volumes of the first Chronicles of Thomas Covenant before sending any of them to a publisher, and he sent the whole package of three books to all 43 companies that were publishing science fiction and fantasy at the time, and got rejected by them all. The publishers all felt the basic premise was unmarketable. "Who is going to want to read about a leper?", they asked. Then he started over at the beginning of the list, modifying his cover letter to address some of the objections. He finally got someone to take a risk on it, and it became a best seller. Suddenly the publishers were all over him to write more of the same. The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant was also a big hit, and he got begged to do a Third Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. But Donaldson was wanting to try something different. So he wrote "Mordant's Need", and, as George quoted Donaldson "lost three quarters of his audience". Not learning his lesson, he followed that with the Gap series, and "lost three quarters of the readers he had left." He found that his best sellers were not due to millions of Stephen R. Donaldson fans, but to millions of Thomas Covenant fans. After that, publishers wouldn't touch a non-TC Donaldson novel with a ten foot pole. Finally he came back in 2004 with The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, which is selling again.
Then GRRM recapped his concern that he hopes he doesn't just have Song of Ice and Fire fans, and suggested that the audience buy the reprints of his earlier works like Fevre Dream, Dying of the Light, and Armageddon Rag, to prove to his publishers that there's a readership for GRRM works set outside the world of Westeros.
To think that books like the Gap were financial failures?!? Just goes to show you how ignorant the public is because of marketing. I bet Star Wars and Halo books sold 10 times better than the Gap...
I've always considered myself a Donaldson fan. How about you guys?
