Jimmy asked Michael J. Sullivan:

Hi Michael: Loved all 6 Riyria books and am excited about First Empire series. You said you complete the entire series before publishing the first one. My preference is to read a series after all the books has been released, so are the release dates really one every June through 2020? I take it there is an advantage to staggered release dates, but I would buy all 5 now. Thanks, Jimmy

Michael J. Sullivan Hey thanks for the support. As for release dates for the Legends of the First Empire, I don't know yet what they will be. We have tentative dates listed on the gooodread's book pages, but those are really nothing more than placeholders. What I do know is this.

* Age of Myth is out now. Yeah!!
* Age of Swords is currently scheduled for Summer 2017 and that is probably a pretty set date as the publisher has already started moving the gears toward that date
* Age of War will likely come out a year after Age of Swords, but since the whole series is written Del Rey could speed up the releases if necessary. They of course have to juggle my own books along with a bunch of other authors books so it's really too soon to know exactly when they will come out.

As for advantages, yes there are many. Not the least of which is it takes time to produce a proper book. My publisher hasn't even started reading Age of Swords yet, and likely won't until they are closer in the production line. We still need covers for all the books, and time to create marketing copy and so fourth. Orbit released their books in "back to back" months but that meant a lot of work in a small amount of time, and I think some things (for instance the covers) could have been better if they weren't so rushed. Plus, marketing campaigns have to be planned out very far in advance and marketing departments are notoriously overworked. So doing six books in a short span really strains them when six books with release dates of six months or a year is much easier to do. Plus there are all kinds of things like "best of" and "most anticipated" lists and a series could hit them for all the books if spread out. If they are "clumped together" then they'll likely compete with one another.

I understand the desire to "binge read" like we "binge watch" Netflix shows. But it causes all kinds of headaches on both me and the publisher to try and get them out all at once. Just because a book is "written" doesn't mean it's "done."

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