I hate it, they translate a book and decide that they want to sell it twice so they split it into two. They did it with every book of A Song of Ice and Fire and yesterday I’ve discovered they also did it with To Sleep in a Sea of Stars. I hate paying twice for one book.
Yes, it happens a lot. Maybe it is to generate more profit, but I also know, that books translated in German need 15-20% more space and pages than in English for example. The first book of “A Song of Ice and Fire” would have more than thousand pages in a paperback, so I understand, why they split each book in two parts.
Here in New Zealand (and probably many other countries) we get each book in Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive split across two volumes. At first I was neutral towards it, but due to circumstances beyond my control, I ended up with the fourth book in just one volume. This thing is gigantic! I’d find myself having to read in much shorter sessions than I normally would due to my arms getting tired. In the end, I had to switch to the ebook for purely ergonomic reasons.
I think I did end up paying more for the books that were split up, but to me it’s worth it. I understand that won’t be everyone’s experience though.
A lot of books get split in English as well simply because they start hitting the limit of what print publication can do.
Most famous is probably the Lord of the Rings, split into 3 books, and Clive Barker’s Imagica, split into two.
I mean, that’s the original. What I’m talking about is that Game of Thrones was one book, while the Czech translated version was 2 books.
Both Lord of the Rings and Imagica started out as single books, then had to be split for later printings when they hit the limit of printing and binding.
I could see that happening with translations, there’s no guarantee the new language will be the same length or shorter, and GoT is long enough in English! ;)
I’ve seen special edition hardcovers split them too for the same reason:
I noticed this with Peter f Hamilton’s Commonwealth universe books. The french versions all have more books and it confused me.
I think the English language versions of 3/5 ASoIaF books are already split into two anyway. Can’t remember if aGoT or CoK are however.
I don’t think this is correct, at least for American editions. I’ve only seen full versions available, in both hardback and paperback
Quick look on Wikipedia and it looks as though the UK, Ireland and Australian versions of SoS got split in two because of length.
Good to know. Too many extra U’s when they typed color I suppose
