How Game of Thrones mirrored A Song of Ice and Fire’s success

George R. R. Martin, author of Game of Thrones, is one of today’s most accomplished authors and has written several best-selling works. Martin is now working on many offshoot projects, including House of the Dragon, the predecessor to Game of Thrones. Martin once remarked how the Game of Thrones TV adaptation’s success mirrored his own books.

How Game of Thrones slowly gained traction

In an interview with Time, Martin recalled how both his books and the TV show weren’t that popular early on, “It did build, too. When the show first came out, some of the early reviews were critical, though some were very positive, but we were not even close to the top HBO show at the time. True Blood was getting far more viewership than we did. But over the first season, second season, [and] third season, word of mouth spread, the storm spread, and it built. The same thing is true of the books.”

George R. R. Martin credits the ‘word of mouth spread’ for his success

Martin continued, “A Game of Thrones, when it initially came out in 1996, didn’t hit any best-seller list. None at all. A Clash of Kings, the second book, when it came out in 1999, that hit, I think it was the Wall Street Journal list at #13 for a week and then was gone. A Storm of Swords, a year later, was higher-up on the list and stayed around for a couple weeks.

Each book has done better than the one before it, each season of the show has done better than the one before it. Which I take as a real compliment — it’s word of mouth.”

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