Gigamesh will stop publishing the saga 'A Song of Ice and Fire', the books that inspired 'Game of Thrones'

Illustration from the book 'Fire and Blood' by George RR Martin, about the Targaryen house.Alex Onciu

Ediciones Gigamesh, the Barcelona publishing house that has edited the series of novels

by George RR Martin in Spanish since 2002, announced last Friday that it will stop publishing the books of the saga that inspired the popular production of HBO

.

The publisher has written on its Twitter account that it cannot meet the demands of Martin's agent and retweeted comments that point to an increase in the cost of rights to the Spanish series of publications.

Although we are very sorry, we will not be able to continue publishing # Song of Ice and Fire because the agent demands too much of us.

There are risks that we cannot take.

In the @GigameshTienda they still have copies for shipping: https://t.co/Mvrf8cUwzq pic.twitter.com/ZewxKVQaIm

- Gigamesh Editions (@EGigamesh) November 6, 2020

A representative of Gigamesh has told EL PAÍS that they have "no more to say" about A

and its publication.

The saga, whose first volume was published in the United States in 1996, is one of the biggest publishing phenomena of the last decade, with more than 90 million books sold internationally.

In Spain, titles have topped the charts in recent years.

Set in a medieval world full of magic, dragons, and palace intrigue, Martin's influences range from

Robert Jordan's

to

Maurice Druon's

.

There are also elements of

,

or the saga of the dragon riders of Pern, by Anne McCaffrey, and even

by Robert Graves.

The author has acknowledged having also been inspired by historical events such as the War of the Two Roses - the clash of great families for the throne of England - and the construction of Hadrian's Wall in Great Britain.

Much of the success of Martin's books - who was previously a well-known and appreciated name in fantasy - is due to the series

, an adaptation of the HBO channel that shares his name with the first book of A

and that since its premiere in 2011, it has become a global phenomenon.

This dragged Gigamesh in its wake, which started as a bookstore of the genre in 1985 and began publishing books in 1999. Its founder, Alejo Cuervo, stated in a 2015 interview that the success of the book series had served him to fulfill your desire to have a great fantastic reference library.

The profits made with the publication of the books on the history of the Seven Kingdoms allowed Gigamesh to go from a small cult venue to a megalo store, the most important dedicated to science fiction, fantasy and horror genres in Spain, and to deploy with strength its editorial work.

• Swords, wizards and dragons of today

• The new thing from the creators of 'Game of Thrones' will be to adapt 'The trilogy of the three bodies'

• "Gender literature is the victim of those who believe they are defenders of the canon"

Martin and Gigamesh have had a great rapport since Cuervo, who has always been an admirer of the American writer and has promoted him from his bookstore, began editing the saga.

Martin, who has a personal friendship with Cuervo, has visited Barcelona several times and signed copies at Gigamesh.

In an act of uncommon generosity - and which also had to do with Cuervo's enthusiasm for Martin - the author decided to respect his agreement to publish A

with what is a small independent publisher of the genre, although his books became

and the major labels began offering him much more succulent contracts.

Not even when the HBO series became a planetary phenomenon and astronomically empowered the books, did Martin stop following Gigamesh.

The controversy over the progressive deviation of the HBO series from the Martin saga, motivated among other things because the writer could not keep up, and the delivery of the last two novels, which culminate the story, was a headache for the author.

Martin's fans have come to harass him for going too slow and the added pressure from the industry to finish the series and deliver other successful products has ended up making him a little less than anguished man, far from the cheerful and full of author. bonhomie that was.

It is possible that this human factor has now added to the demands of his financial environment, turning Martin into a big business, where old friends no longer count.

Gigamesh has promptly recovered, reissuing them, some other works by Martin that had remained in the background after the success of A

, such as the science fiction novel

and

, an emotional revisitation of the myth of the vampires. On the other hand, several peripheral books to the main saga, such as encyclopedias and independent stories located in the same universe, had been published in recent years by other labels such as Plaza & Janés and Debolsillo.