<P> In early January 2016, Martin confirmed on his Live Journal that he had not met an end - of - year deadline that he had established with his publisher for release of the book before the sixth season of the HBO show . He added that there was "a lot still left to write" and that completion of the book was "months away still...if the writing goes well". Martin also revealed there had been a previous deadline of October 2015 that he had considered achievable in May 2015, and that in September 2015 he had still considered the end - of - year deadline achievable . He further confirmed that some of the plot of the book might be revealed in the upcoming season of Game of Thrones but one of the showrunners, David Benioff, claimed that while certain key elements would be the same, the show would diverge from the book in many respects . In February 2016, Martin stated that he had dropped all his editing projects except for Wild Cards, and that he would not be writing any teleplays, screenplays, short stories, introductions or forewords before delivering The Winds of Winter . </P> <P> In September 2014, Walt Hickey of FiveThirtyEight and Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post estimated the release date sometime between 2015 and 2018, based on extrapolation of Martin's writing pace . In 2017, Goodreads advertised its expected publication in 2020 . </P> <P> On January 10, 2017, Martin announced on his blog in a response to a comment that he believed that The Winds of Winter will be released "this year", referring to 2017 . However, he also noted that he had believed the same thing would occur the previous year . He confirmed on his blog that he was still working on The Winds of Winter as of July 22, 2017, being "still months away" from finishing the book . He also indicated that it may not be published until 2018 or later . </P>

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