'The Winds of Winter' Release Date, Spoilers: Here's Why George RR Martin Is No Longer Releasing Sample Chapters from Anticipated Novel

When George R.R. Martin announced on his blog that “Fire and Blood” was on its way, fans were still asking about “The Winds of Winter” in the post's comment section. Martin responded to one of the fans asking for more updates on the possibility of having more sample chapters from the much-anticipated sixth book to the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series.

Martin tells the fan that he used to release the chapters or read them at conventions as he felt that fans enjoyed the experience of getting sneak peeks of what “The Winds of Winter” would be delivering.

Unfortunately, based on the experience of releasing chapters of material that would eventually make it to the “Book of Swords,” releasing or reading chapters ahead of publication tends to, at least in Martin's perspective, result in reviews which point out how the material is “old, retread” storylines. Some fan reviews of “The Sons of the Dragon” describe the faux-history account as unnecessary and would prefer if Martin focused on working on “new material.”

Martin has fired back at such claims in another comment on his blog. While not being specific about which reviews he was pertaining to, Martin does mention that he finds reviews that call “The Sons of the Dragon” old material annoying as the story itself was an entirely unpublished piece.

Martin has already made at least 11 chapters available to the public from 2011 to 2016. The moderators of r/ASOIAF have compiled a database of all the released and unreleased but confirmed chapters of “The Winds of Winter” for any fan still not satisfied by the novel's unpublished state.

The released chapter links point to archived posts on George R.R. Martin's old blog as it seems the author has already taken the posts down to reflect on how released chapters may be diluting the experience for fans when they encounter the same material when the novel actually gets published.

“The Winds of Winter” still does not have an official release date seven years after the publication of the last novel in the series, “A Dance With Dragons.”