Tieba thread discussing Kawahara's release schedule in 2017

First I'd like to explain that I will be referring to the Japanese release dates in the below text. All dates will be local release times in Japan, and will have no relation to the simplified or traditional Chinese translations in mainland China, HK, Macau, or Taiwan.

As everyone knows, Kawahara Reki has always released works at a rate of 6 volumes a year, and at a set schedule of even months (February, April, June, August, October, December). Every December would always be a volume of SAO Progressive, and the other months would go to the 3 works of SAO, AW, The Isolator, alternating between each other without a set schedule. He maintained this publication schedule until 2015.
Beginning in 2016, Kawahara Reki expressed his desire to take a break, so he skipped an October release, and did not release a volume of Progressive that December, but AW instead. From then on, beginning in 2016, Kawahara Reki interrupted his publication patterns of "6 volumes per year" and "Progressive in December".
Here, I want to recall the above-mentioned works. As everyone knows, SAO the web novel fully completed serialization in 2009, so in essence, Kawahara has only been "editing the web rough draft" all this time, and as was the case with <The Isolator>: there were 3 volumes of web novel content, and although the light novel version made pretty significant changes to the setting, it was still essentially revising the rough draft and not a substantial amount of work.
From this, we know that before 2016, Kawahara was essentially only writing 2 new series: <Accel World> and <Sword Art Online Progressive>, and that was why he was able to maintain a publication speed of 6 volumes per year. In comparison, Kamachi Kazuma, that human typewriter, is a truly frightening existence to behold; everything he writes is legitimately new and he is able to churn out a volume every month --- of course, I digress.
At the end of 2016, Kawahara Reki completed SAO Volume 18, and therefore used up all of his rough drafts from the web version, and simultaneously, The Isolator Volume 3 had also published all of *its own* web draft. At the same time he skipped out on a new volume of AW, and then we enter 2017.
Upon reaching 2017, Kawahara Reki has used up the web drafts for both <SAO> and <The Isolator>, but at the end of 2016 he updated a chapter of the web version of the long-hiatus SAO side story <Cradle of the Moon>. He ended up finishing it off and deleting the draft, and then, as expected, <SAO> Volume 19 released February of this year, and its content was indeed Cradle of the Moon. This time, in the truest sense, there is no longer a single bit of SAO web draft left to use.
Let's count again. In 2017, Kawahara must write new content for the following series: <Sword Art Online>, <Accel World>, <The Isolator>, and <SAO Progressive>.
Yup. Without an ounce of drafts left, having used them up completely, the new volume preview that is usually present at the end of the volume has myseriously vanished from the end of Volume 19.
And now we arrive at May. Following a span of 3 months, Kawahara Reki has pushed out an all-new 4th volume of <The Isolator>, and since I couldn't find a single bit of info about it in China, I went to the Japanese site to get info, and I saw this:

http://i.imgur.com/GHCVpVy.png

This is a screenshot of a review of The Isolator Volume 4, and since I haven't read it yet I didn't look at how he reviewed it. I only paid attention to what the preview at the end of the volume was --- and I found the answer in the review --- there was none.
It was only then that I realized something; I realized just how difficult it is going to be for Kawahara to keep up with the publication schedule in 2017 --- with 2 consecutive volumes missing their previews, it indicates that he himself has little grasp on what he's going to release next.
On the other hand, we can see something else, although this really is speculation right now --- 3 months passed between the half-new SAO Volume 19 and the all-new The Isolator Volume 4. In other words, without any previews, this sugggests that we will not see a new volume for at least 2 months, and extrapolating from that, if Kawahara can still maintain his speed this year, the next months he will release anything will be August and November --- meaning that there would only have been 4 books released in total this year.
Simultaneously, beginning from around April of this year, Kawahara Reki began serializing a continuation of SAO Cradle of the Moon on his website --- the future Volume 20. But recent updates have shown instability --- sporadic updates. This is not a good sign at all.
The following is my speculation: Kawahara, originally planning to end SAO at Volume 18, was requested by Dengeki Bunko to continue releasing new content after they saw the enormous value in the SAO IP, to continue squeezing the value from this IP in a commercialized manner. The author himself would ultimately feel at least somewhat discontented and pressured at this, and adding on the fact that all four series need new content, his creative inspiration and writing speed would become deficient or labored. We could even say that he's entered the bottlenecked stage now.
Dengeki Bunko knows better than anyone the enormous value in the Sword Art Online IP. As *the* big player in the light novel publishing industry, stabilizing its revenue and position amongst publishers is key. Dengeki Bunko's complete commercialization and milking of the SAO IP will inevitably bring about changes in many areas, but this is unavoidable. I fear that it will be very difficult for Kawahara to maintain a stable publishing schedule and the quality of content under commercialized publishing, but we can only hope that Kawahara Reki maintain his approach.

--- fengxiaogang97 (2017-05-14 01:21)

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We can already see from SAO v20 (temp name) which is currently being written that Kawahara didn't properly plan it out. Like Kirito's various hacks and cheats. The thing in most need of time is Accel World, but its commercial value is far, far from SAO so Kadokawa abandoned it. Since he's hinting so strongly in AW that he clearly wants to connect it to SAO, then he needs to stop writing Cradle of the Moon, which will have no effect on a continuation at all. Even if he wants to write more SAO, it's better to stick with SAOP, since there's a lot more to write about there with Red Player fights, relationships between various guilds and stuff.

--- krayton (2017-05-14 07:31)

	Reply by BlackWarrior28: Connect AW and SAO? No! :cry:
		Reply by krayton: Even if you don't want it, ever since Graphite Edge appeared AW 		began using a ton of stuff from SAO, it's hard to prove that Kawahara doesn't have the intention to do so
			Reply by BlackWarrior28: Although I can't help but admit that Kawahara does have the intention, I really don't want to be reading and then suddenly, Kirito...
		Reply by PokemonZuiAi: SAO and AW began connecting even before the Disaster Armor arc started...

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I hope that Kawahara can pull through, and give SAO a good ending.

--- yjkdd (2017-05-14 09:01)

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After all this is the busiest time for Kawahara, busier than he's ever been by a long shot... I hope he can maintain quality

--- Zuomeng de Mocha (2017-05-14 13:33)

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Quality's the most important

--- SIEHEVV (2017-05-14 22:31)

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I feel that AW's publication periods are getting longer and longer...

--- Shengguang zhi Cai (2017-05-15 02:44)

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I don't think that the continuation of the SAO main series only has to do with Dengeki. SAOP and SAO's sales aren't that different, and if Kawahara can make sure that he can write 2 or more volumes of SAOP, it wouldn't affect Dengeki much either way. Dengeki might not necessarily be forcing him to continue the main series.

--- tj8lyq22 (2017-05-15 11:02)

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The pressure on Kawahara is high this year... probably due to Dengeki being unable to produce a new mainstay series after SAO.
You can actually see that the faster Kawahara writes, the worse his quality becomes. This is very clear in the final volumes of Alicization and the recent volumes of AW, and in comparison, SAOP's content is starting to get a lot more fluff as well.
Moon Cradle is getting more and more unstable updates but at least it's still slowly being updated. In theory an August release should be no problem. They're selling KiriAsu anyway so SAOP isn't that different from Moon Cradle. :smug:
As for AW, it feels like it's nearing its end. It's up to Kawahara whether he wants to concretely connect its story with SAO (even if it connects to an "if" raised by SAO's continuation). But that AWxSAO game... I hear that Kawahara wrote the story himself? Feels pretty weird to me...
Ultimately, it's likely due to the SAO IP expanding too far and wide and throwing his experience into chaos. No matter how you look at it, an author coming from a web novel background is no match for Kamachi but their typing speeds shouldn't be that different...

--- PokemonZuiai (2017-05-15 11:33)

	Reply by fengxiaogang97: The game's story was indeed written by Kawahara himself...

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