Mass_Pincup
Banned
There is a difference between one book being released and all of them. The UK release of Blood of Elves didn't make many waves and it wasn't guaranteed we would get the follow-ups. I would guess they skipped Sword of Destiny initially because the sales of a short-story anthology were seen as lackluster and they hoped that publishing the first novel would boost sales a bit.
But we didn't see another book translated for 4 years after that.
Couple of other items:
The original Orbit (UK) release stated on the back "The International Hit that Inspired the video game The Witcher" so I wouldn't be too sure that the game didn't play a role.
-The Last Wish actually became a New York Times Bestseller....in June 2015, less than a month after The Witcher 3's release. That, all by itself, disproves what Sapkowski states.
But he said all the books were available in English, which is indeed a lie.
I think the English translation continued almost exclusively thanks to the games' success, otherwise I can't see why they waited so many years before publishing the sequel to Blood of Elves.
Are you referring to another quote?
Because in that quote from Triggerhappytel he didn't say that all the book were released before the first Witcher games, he said all the translations, as in every language were the book was brought in was before The Witcher released.
Also I don't see how an editor would put this tagline months before the game was released, not to mention that CDPR was unknown at the time outside of Poland. But I don't live in the UK so I can't verify that.