However, it appears that UK fans waiting for the final book - or indeed like myself waiting for the final book to come out so they can read the whole series - may be in for a sore disappointment. Bantam UK, Durham's British publisher, has so far failed to schedule the novel. Indeed, there appears to be a strong possibility the book will not be published at all:
"My British publisher has been dragging their feet. I think my editor is supportive, but the number crunchers are complaining that The Other Lands didn't sell as many copies as they wanted. The verdict is still out on whether they're going to bite or not, but the delay isn't a good sign."Bantam UK does seem to be the most drop-happy of the UK SF&F publishers, having canned Paul Kearney's Sea-Beggars series after the second volume. In fact, the circumstances seem to be almost exactly the same: they market Book 1 strongly and it sells quite well. Then Book 2 sneaks out with no fanfare at all and sinks without a trace (I had no idea The Other Lands was on its way until it was already on the shelf). They then panic at the under-performance of the second volume and drop the series. The only difference is that with Kearney they also retitled the second book just a few weeks before release, completely confusing the few people who did know it was coming out.
Of course, releasing the third book with a great deal of fanfare and getting people to pick up all three books would have been a smarter move, but clearly Bantam have some other plan in mind. Very odd behaviour from the same publishers who carefully supported Steven Erikson through many years of very modest sales before he finally broke into the big leagues with the last couple of novels in the Malazan series.
