Edge of Destiny, the second Guild Wars novel was released just before Christmas 2010. It seemed like a bit of a rush job. The publishers had been showing a release date of December 28th 2010 for several weeks, but around the middle of the months the first few copies started showing up on various doorsteps.

Great news for those who pre-ordered, but not so for those who didn’t. I don’t pre-order things, because I earn interest on money in my bank account and spending it on an object months before I get it loses me money. Plus you never know when something will go wrong with a company that otherwise looks kosher. Those who pre-ordered got the book around Christmas time. Those who wanted to get the book (and I can only speak of my experience here as Brit) after it became apparent what was happening were faced with a 3-5 week delivery time on Amazon UK and complete silence via other outlets.

Now this would be fine considering the circumstances. Clearly someone somewhere screwed up. However, the release of Ghosts of Ascalon was similarly bad for me. The USA release date came around and there was no way of getting it in physical form in UK. Not wanting to miss out on the gossip, I bought the Kindle version and read it on my PC (it wasn’t that great of an experience either). There was no such joy with Edge of Destiny – UK users were blocked from purchasing the book on Kindle until the 28th rolled around. Bollocks. Between Christmas and New Years eve, I went into a local branch of probably the biggest UK book chain, Waterstones, and asked them about Edge of Destiny. I was told that the UK release date wasn’t until February 15th ish, and that Amazon had different rules when it came to selling books – in other words, they can import and sell foreign books when Waterstones.A week or so after the wedding, I decided to go ahead and buy Edge of Destiny and a physical copy of Ghosts of Ascalon from Amazon UK and just wait the 3-5 weeks. It would be either the same or quicker than waiting to buy one from an old fashioned book store.

So there’s a few criticisms of what’s happened. Firstly not having clear release dates for the various nations. Your fans are free marketing – you should be informing them to work for you. If you don’t inform them, that can’t happen. Second not having enough copies of a book. For a first release you don’t necessarily know how many you’ll sell, for the second release you know how many the first book sold. That information should be used for better estimates. Thirdly, why is there a 6 week wait between releases of books in the same languages on different continents. Surely its possible to synchronise release dates in this day and age.

I’ve spent the last 3 weeks avoiding all Guild Wars 2 articles that may mention any kind of spoilers which has probably meant I’ve missed out on a lot of information and entertainment. I’ve avoided heavily reading Guild Wars 2 Guru, GuildFans, Quaggan, GW2Fans and clicking tweeted links. Izari has posted a speculative article on the second Soldier profession for Guild Wars 2, which I’m dying to read but can’t because I don’t want any spoilers. I haven’t been totally successful in that effort (hello guardian) but luckily that’s nearly over.

This morning the books arrived at my house, earlier than I expected them to. It’ll take a couple of days before I can read Edge of Destiny due to prior commitments and start breaking into the activities I’ve had to skip.

We have one more book left before Guild Wars 2 releases which we’ve heard nothing about. I hope that ArenaNet will be looking at the release of Edge of Destiny and trying to make that release smoother so that their fans can work for them.