I don’t think he cares all that much about the money either, but I think everyone else who stands to get big chunks of it, like the publishers and his estate do care about ~$100 million+. And I think he cares about what they want, and I also think he ultimately will want people to read whatever he has written of his magnum opus when he finally accepts that it will not ever be complete. And I do still hold some small sliver of hope that he will actually finish Winds, I just won’t be holding my breath for it.

I know he doesn’t want anyone else finishing it, he’s been adamant about that for decades, but I never said anything about another author. I still think one way or another, we will eventually be reading a book called The Winds of Winter even if it is not the complete vision he intended when starting out. But none of that has anything to do with another author working on it. Like, the chapters he released on his not-a-blog along with the ones he read aloud to audiences, those come out to about 200 manuscript pages apparently, and the final book was supposed to be a whopping 1500 manuscript pages… I would bet we will see something that is maybe 1000 manuscript pages that carries the WoW title. We will see it either shortly before or not long after his death, assuming he doesn’t finish the book (which was never intended to be the last one of course) while still alive.