Sapkowski said:
The belief, widely spread by CDPR, that the games made me popular outside of Poland is completely false. I made the games popular. All of my translations in the West — including the English one — were published before the first game.
Because this is both factually incorrect and generally delusional.
" I made the games popular. All of my translations in the West — including the English one — were published before the first game" Well, that's just a blatant lie.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure this is total horseshit. The books weren't even widely available outside of Poland/Eastern Europe before the games came out. Now I see them whenever I go to Waterstones and look in thfe sci-fi/fantasy section.
It's a semantics argument. Strictly speaking it's true (with regards to English, anyway) but you have to strip it of all context to see it that way.
The Last Wish was first published in English in June 2007. The game came out in Europe in October 2007. So yes, the book came out first.
However the books were obviously licensed off the back of interest in the game, which was in production and having all sorts of press long before the books were translated. They just got the first book out first. They also only managed to get one other book out (Blood of Elves in 2008) before dropping it completely. I thought they dropped it because sales tanked, but
this blog says it was a rights issue, though I can't find any more about that.
Anyway, it's only after they
re-released the first book in 2012 that they actually managed to get further books out -
Time of Contempt hit in 2013, and they licensed further books in
2015 to complete the series, and licensed
Season of Storms earlier this month. I'm sure there's nothing to be read into the fact that all of those announcements reference the games.
The Last Wish is also a NYT bestseller...
as of June 2015, and I'm sure that had nothing to do with the fact Witcher 3 had just come out either.