George R.R. Martin is not your bitch, but I might be.

Indeed it does get trickier. Two more cases to illustrate:

YA writer L. J. Smith had had nine out of ten planned Night World books written and published, and the tenth announced, when she abruptly dropped off the radar for what ended up being several years. (At the point the books were appearing, she did not have an online presence, but parts of her fanbase was evolving one.)

It eventually developed, via a combination of online gossip and relayed communication, that Life had dealt Ms. Smith a series of epic complications. [The online fandoms have more details than I do, but I gather self-destructing houses and her mother's health were both involved.] Within the last year, however, she's emerged on the 'Net, published a new Vampire Diaries book, and it looks as if Strange Fate will appear at last within a year give or take.

It is worth noting that authorial personality makes a difference here. The person I adduce from Ms. Smith's online presence (and letters as relayed prior to her showing up online in person) is considerably shyer and more reticent than, say, Seanan. I respect her immensely for having established her new Web presence, but I'm not going to expect from her the same level of chattiness one sees from a Seanan or, say, a John Scalzi.

Different case entirely: I have a bookseller friend who's immensely curious about a prospective third book from fantasy author Lorna Freeman, who wrote two books for -- Roc, I think it was -- and then also went entirely off the radar. A third book in her series had been announced, but never appeared, and so far as I've been aware there's never been even the ghost of an explanation from anyone (not author, not publisher, not gossip mill) as to what happened.

One doesn't expect in such a case to learn specific business details, but Ms. Freeman's books had made enough of a ripple among readers that the degree of silence in this instance strikes one as puzzling, and promotes unhealthy speculation in the fan and professional community. (Recall that my curious friend is a genre bookseller, and thus in a position to hear publisher-side gossip.)

See, on that side of things, I'd say the publisher reneged on their social contract.

If a well-known, established, solid publisher, one of the big ones, starts putting out books with covers that shriek about it being a "multi-volume" series and then they decide to pull the plug after two, a reader who finds the backlist titles still on a local bookstore shelf and buys them in good faith only to realize that it's been three years and nothing appears to be happening on book three, said reader should not have to spend five hours online searching the publisher's site, the author's site, the author's blog, the author's discussion forums, and everywhere else Google spits out only to find nothing.

A cranky, irritated, and cliffhanger-frustrated reader might, at that point, start thinking that someone could at least send out a memo as to whether the damn thing is dead or sleeping. And it's reasonable posts and discussions like yours that really make me think this someone ought to be the publisher.

...hi, sorry, my cranky got on your LJ. To sum up, two thumbs up to this, and thank you for reminding me that advertising copy isn't a guarantee. *wry*

I'd say that the author is at least obligated to say something like, "For various reasons, the books I was publishing through YALR are going to stop at book 2. My apologies to my readers."

The publisher should do this as well, but it helps an author to keep the readers informed in cases like you describe.

*nods* Pretty much what I was going to say. Once you've *set* expectations, it's up to you to keep folks informed. (If you never *say* "oh, this will be out in October", then you can legitimately get away with just continuing not to say anything. But once you say something, then you've got to either produce or at least update us. And (speaking from personal experience) "I don't know when life will let me get back to this" is perfectly legit; I had to tell an editor that once, and she said I was free to jump back into the fray anytime. (I still don't know when I'll ever get back to writing professionally. But it's nice to know I have that opportunity!)

And for the record? I do appreciate the updates. Heck, it gives me a better insight into How Stuff Works, which is always useful.

Yes...but if the publisher isn't talking (or isn't talking beyond just not having the books on their list) is it a good idea for an author to publicly trash a publisher?

I realize there's a lot of reasons why the books could be dropped. Maybe the publisher decided to discontinue the line. Maybe there was a merger or re-org and some books got dropped. Maybe the sales sucked. Or maybe the books are in limbo for one of the above reasons, with the publisher still owning the rights but not sure whether they will do anything with them...which means the author doesn't know if they'll be published...

Yeah, it'd be nice to know. But sometimes you don't.