Sure, there are lots of unfinished series or books out there. Sometimes, an author dies (Charles Dickens and The Mystery of Edwin Drood), sometimes they’re unable to for health reasons (Octavia Butler and her Parable series), and sometimes they make lots of excuses but seem to either have lost interest or just not know what to write next (George Martin and ASOIF).

Sometimes publishers cancel a planned book, usually due to public pressure, but that’s more like the type of canceling you mentioned you’re not looking for.

Winds of Winter, by George RR Martin

One example I can think of is Whose Names are Unknown, by Sanora Babb. She had a publishing deal for the book but it was shelved when Grapes of Wrath came out, as the publisher didn't think the market could support two books with similar settings and themes. It has since been published, relatively recently in 2004 (it was written in the 1930s), by a university press and in my opinion is better than Grapes. It's also very likely Steinbeck used her notes when writing Grapes of Wrath.

I signed a book deal with a very small publishing house but my book didn’t come out due to me showcasing a few too many symptoms of bipolar disorder in my communication with the editor/owner of the press. I don’t know how common that type of stuff is but there’s a few different reasons that people will renege on book deals.

According to this Wikipedia article yes there were books that ended up not being published due to reasons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unpublished_books

Mark Danielewski, author of House of Leaves, had started a series titled The Familiar. He actually did get the first 5 books published, but eventually it was decided that there weren't enough authors to justify publishing the planned 27 BOOK SERIES.

I work at a used book store. I see copies of Volume 1 on the regular, 2 is uncommon, I may have seen 3 once, and I don't know if I've ever seen 4 or 5. House of Leaves was amazing though.

Yes, lots of books get cancelled when editors leave publishers. It happened to me. One of my novels was bought by an editor at Harcourt but when it merged with Houghton Miflin she was laid off. The book did technically get published, it was reviewed in Publishers Weekly and some copies made it to book stores but with no editor in house at the publisher it got zero marketing and publicity and didn’t sell many copies.

It is similar to what happens to movies in production when new studio execs are brought in.

Summer Crossing by Truman Capote.

He wrote the whole novel, but then claimed to have destroyed it. It turns out that a houseguest had retrieved it from the trash and held on to the manuscript for about 50 years. It was then published in 2004.

Capote also was supposed to write a follow-up to In Cold Blood about the Houston Mass Murders in 1973 but was too sick to travel to begin researching. The sketches of what he planned to write are kept as “the Houston Diary 1973-1974”.

As a true crime fan, I cannot begin to imagine what Capote would have had to say about serial killer Dean Corll and his two accomplices. Definitely would have been one for the ages.

All of Terry Pratchett's unfinished novels when he died, destroyed by steamroller

In the 1980s (as well as 70s to 90s) having a book series cancelled happened fairly frequently. At least one fantasy series per year, it seemed.

The usual cause was poor sales of later books in a series. Fans don't understand that for most readers, until they read book two, they are not going to buy book three (or later) in a given series. If book two or book three was released the month some other blockbuster was released, even cross-genre like Stephen King, that could be enough to kill an otherwise successful fantasy series. As books had to sell in the limited time that the store was willing to dedicate shelf space to a given title.

The first book I thought of was The Wind Done Gone by Alice Randall which was a version of Gone With the Wind but told by one of Scarlett O'Hara's slaves. I thought the legal issues from Margaret Mitchell's estate kept it from ever being published but it turned out with some changes it got published anyway.

War of dragons by Jessica Cluess. Had arcs and everything and they just canceled/pulled the book after the author went on a racist and classist tirade on Twitter. Publisher dropped her and we never got the ending

I will never not be sad that Tamora Pierce had planned extra books in the Circle of Magic series, and her publisher wouldn’t pick them up. They’re all out of print now too. Do you know how many copies I could sell if I could order them into the bookstore!!!.

When Terry Pratchett died he had his hard drive squashed by a steam roller so no one could use the 10ish books he was working on

There is actually a Wikipedia category on this subject. But more often: There are lots of unfinished books by authors, either because they died before they finished them, or because they never felt what they were writing worked. (In some cases authors have actually published unfinished books, knowing they will not be able to finish them but still wanting to put out what they have finished.) Similarly, there are unpublished books by authors. I suppose the equivalent of a canceled TV series would be an unfinished book series.

For a very long time midnight sun by Stephanie Meyer. Some hacker got the first 100 some pages she went nuts and posted it all to read then stops writing it. Then published it 15 so years later

The fifth book of the Eragon series 😭

so my absolute favorite example of this is a book called "love and consequences" by margaret b. jones.

it was a memoir about her life as a half native kid growing up amid gang violence in foster care in south central LA. the book has intense descriptions of drug use, violence, gang warfare, but also intense love and kindness from Jones' foster family. when it was released, it got good reviews, and jones did several interviews where she talked about "her homies" in the bloods and crips, and her "big ma" foster mother. npr was especially kind to her and her story, and jones essentially recited the plot from dangerous minds.

that's because Margaret b jones was actually Margaret seltzer, a lily white woman from a rich family in orange county who attended private schools her entire life. everything about her, from her personal history ("okay but i heard a lot of these stories while writing in a coffee shop in the hood" was literally one of her defenses) to her ridiculous attempt at an AAVE "blaccent" in interviews was fake.

while seltzer probably had good intentions, she of course centered her fake ass memoir around the most pernicious and harmful stereotypes about Black culture she could think of. her publisher, not wanting to be in the business of printing lies and promoting a weirdo trafficking in racist stereotypes, stopped production and pulled the book.

that this thing got as far as it did is mind boggling. im a white dude from the rust belt and clocked seltzer as a fraud within about six seconds of listening to her. it says a lot about the publishing industry circa 15 years ago that there weren't enough POC in positions of power to go "let's uhhhhh maybe check this lady's background, just to be sure"

anyway there are still copies of the book out there, and its goodreads page is a really funny combination of people who either know its a fraud or don't. i recommend looking it up

David Starkey's second part of his Henry VIII biography was cancelled after his publisher dropping him when he was accused of making racist remarks. It's a shame because he's a great historian.

"Under the Same Stars" by Rose Christo, the then-assumed author of the "My Immortal" fanfiction.

As someone who spent the entirety of my teenage years on Tumblr, I was incredibly excited to finally read the story behind the infamous fanfiction and the biography of the author.

Of course the entire thing was a hoax, and the book was canceled, but in the long-run it only added to the immeasurable infamy of "My Immortal".

Not exactly what you're asking, but I think of The Exorcist as a partially cancelled book (and it pisses me off, lol). William Blatty admitted he had to rush into the end because they were pressuring him to publish and that's why it felt WAY TOO out of place with the rest of the book. And it's such a shame, honestly, I would have loved to read the original idea for the exorcism and the ending

The Familiar by Mark Z. Danielewski is one. It was supposed to be a 27-volume series, but only five volumes were published. The publisher ended up putting the project on an “indefinite hold” because the books were too expensive to produce and not enough people were buying them.

One infamous one in Doctor Who is Campaign. It was a book that was commissioned by BBC Books on the basis of a synopsis however Jim Mortimore veered wildly off the synopsis which resulted in the book being cancelled. The download that I've linked even includes a section at the end that explains how the book was written and why it wasn't accepted. Just bear in mind that it was written by Mortimore so we can't say that his view of events is what happened.

It's a very weird book, the basic concept was the First Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan meet Alexander the Great but are scattered throughout time and have to find each other. Given the reason for cancellation, the book as written is not that.

A favorite series of mine in the mid 90s was Nightworld by L J Smith. The last book was set to be released in 2000 and was even in the system at Waldenbooks where I worked at the time but was cancelled due to author health reasons. While the series is very corny to me now I would still love to read the last book!

Books connected to existing IPs get cancelled all the time. There's a bunch of cancelled Star Wars books for example https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Canceled_novels

Under the Same Stars by Rose Christo (Rose's memoir about her brother and her poorly written Harry Potter fanfic, My Immortal)

Canceled at manuscript stage by the publisher due to fraudulent documents provided by the author.

Tolkien was working on a lord of the rings sequel but he found all of the story lines he could come up with really depressing so he dropped it.

Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman got buried by her because she hated it but when she died her heirs published it because money. It was awful and if you don’t realize the author didn’t like it either you’d like her a lot less after reading it.

There was a huge to-do about some nonfiction book by the “it” guy of the moment about 10 years ago. I can’t remember the title or his name but he was paid an insane advance (this in the days of a dying print medium). Anyway, in the editing process - or maybe even after literary critics got advanced copies to write reviews on, it came out that he totally made up a quote he attributed to Bob Dylan. Out of thin air. This was before Dylan won the Nobel Prize, but come on, he’s been famous for 60 years, and specifically for his writing, and the internet exists, so these kinds of checks take about 5 minutes to complete. Anyone with internet access could have confirmed that Dylan never said whatever the author quoted him as saying. So that hit the news and it’s just not a cute look. At all. If you’re going to be faking Bob Dylan quotes, how likely are people going to be to buy your book about brainpower or the art of thinking or whatever?

I’m pretty sure it was cancelled immediately. And I think the guy had to return the advance. I’m not sorry about it. You don’t lie while presenting yourself as an authority, but even worse, you don’t f*ck with Bob Dylan.

The Omega Canyon by Dan Simmons was slated to be released in 2017 but it keeps getting pushed off. I consider it canceled and will take a miracle for it to ever come out.

Clive Barker claimed he was going to finish the Abarat series, but he won't.

One that I can think of off the top of my head is The Mandalorian: An Original Novel by Adam Christopher.

It was announced in mid 2020 and slated for December of that year. Then it was pushed to almost a year later, in November of 21. But then in March of 21 it was cancelled entirely.

I have wondered if the book focused on Cara Dune in some capacity, and since she was fired from the show they shelved the book instead of rewriting.

Dead souls by Nikolai Gogol. He had severe depression and burnt the following two parts of the book

Videogames, movies and tv shows are hideously expensive to make and just as expensive to market. The marketing budget for blockbuster movies is often as much if not more than the production budget itself.

Pulling the plug on such a production is a big decision. A cancelled book on the other hand isn't such a big deal. It's mostly a contract thing between the writer and the publisher. It's like millions have already been spend.

The final book of L.J. Smith's Nightworld series never came out, so that's one.

The Poor Man and the Lady by Thomas Hardy .

It was his first completed novel, written in 1867. After not finding a publisher, he showed it to George Meredith (a famous victorian era author) who advised Hardy to not share this work with the world since it was too controversial. Hardy ended up destroying it.

I am so curious about this novel! I wish he hadn't destroyed it.

Probably not what you had in mind but I remember the Goosebumps series having a range of cancelled books like that of the Goosebumps Gold series. I just really appreciate those illustrations on the book's covers that go unused.

Oh, yeah. I edited a ms. for somebody who'd gotten a $500K advance ... well, that's what was promised but only a small portion was doled out because the publisher canceled ... the guy was making an ass out of himself boasting, bragging, trying to promo his second book, which was only a concept, before the first one was in final edits. The guy had an ideal platform too -- reporter for a major newspaper with a part-time gig on national TV.

But yeah, he was a walking red flag, and I can only assume that the publisher decided he was too much trouble and they didn't want him on the roster.

BTW, the guy never paid me for the edit.

The Goosebumps Gold series. It was originally announced in like 2000 but got scrapped probably because of licensing issues. Books that were supposed to be released were The Haunted Mask Lives!, Happy Holidays from Dead House, and Slappy New Year. However, Slappy New Year was later released under the Horrorland series, but I'm unsure if it shares the same story as the one originally planned.

Lol rothfuss

The Familiar by Mark Z. Danielwski was planned to have 27 parts, but only 5 were released.

Aside from that, there are a bunch of HP Lovecraft stories that were canceled, in a sense. Things like Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath or The Case of Charles Dexter Ward were only released posthumously because HPL thought they weren't good enough to see the light of day.

Antony Horowitz "Power of Five" series, is actually a remake of an older series called "Pentagram", which got cancelled part way through.

One of my favorite sci fi authors, Jo Walton, had a book called Poor Relations which was very close to publication (even had cover art already) that was pulled and will never be published. It is a future sci fi but in a Dickensian class system, that involved the two main male characters becoming female under family pressure. Based on her other books, I think Walton would have handled this with intelligence and grace, but I can see why forced gender change is controversial and potentially dangerous territory to wade into and made the publisher nervous.

Stoned Souls by Mercedes Lackey and Joshua Sherman. It was meant to be part of the SERRAted Edge novels but was never published.

I'm sure plenty of books get cancelled all the time. I have one novel published and a second written. However, I had trouble getting beta readers for the second book. So it remains finished, but unpublished. Maybe one day I'll return to the series, finish it off, and publish all the books, but until then they're cancelled.

I think it's pretty messed up someone can write and entire book, only to have a publisher just not release it.

Maybe Emma by Charlotte Bronte? She only wrote a few chapters herself. There's speculation that her husband discouraged her from writing it so it was unfinished upon her death.

So supposedly Robert Jordan had intended to continue his Wheel of Time world. With some novels about Matt and the Seanchen. But when Jordan Passed away they Hired Brandon Sanderson to finished the series for Jordan. And all other books were canceled.

Probably the vast majority of books fall into this category.

There are a variety of reasons a book may cancelled and not published.

I believe there are a not to measure number of books out there that have been written, but didn't find a publisher interested in publishing it.

So so many writers out there who never got a break.

"Dragons of Winter" apparently...

Not long before Sue Townsend died, there was an announcement of another volume of Adrian Mole series. Then she passed away and the publisher didn’t find what she had managed to write fit for publication.

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A neighbour of mine works for a publishing house, and they were working on a book about conspiracy theorists when COVID hit. They kept at it for a while, but decided to shelve it when QAnon stuff started making its way over here (Netherlands) and some Qultists started doing really extreme stuff.

I hope they still publish it at some point in the future, it sounded interesting, it was written by an anthropologist studying the ‘culture’ of conspiracy theorists.

The Wheel of Time was ALMOST cancelled

I just got around to reading a sequel of a book I loved (book I loved was Dewitched, sequel is Unhitched) and the end has a synopsis for the third book in the series. The second came out in 2013 and there's no word at all for the third book.

But considering how disappointing Unhitched was and how bad the book 3 synopsis sounded, I'm not upset.

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When Desmond Bagley died he left one book unfinished (Juggernaut) and the manuscript of another that he had written years before, and not submitted to a publisher since he felt it wasn't up to his usual standard. (Night of Error)

Both books were later published, doing his reputation absolutely no good at all, although giving his publishers some extra money. Not cancelled, but they should have been. This is where a literary executor would have been useful.

I’ve been waiting since about 1997 for Melanie Rawn to finally write book three of her Exiles Trilogy…

I read a book as a kid that was a sequel to a book that hadn't been written/published yet.

Seriously the author put in footnotes to check out a book that was coming soon. I don't know if it ever got published but really weird the author started with the sequel first.

JD Salinger is a great rabbit hole to go down. “Three Stories” are bootleg short stories and the Unpublished short stories Vol 1 and 2 are hard to find. Then all the unpublished novels and stories that his son Matt has been getting ready to publish since Salinger’s death in 2010

I've been waiting for Karen Miller's second book in The Tarnished Crown series for years. I'm guessing she maybe has writer's block? It's a shame because the first one is absolutely amazing and her best work so far.

One day, maybe.

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At this point, pretty sure the Doors of Stone has been axed

How Opal Mehta Got Kissed - a planned YA book about an Indian-American girl who tries to become a more “typical” teen to look more well-rounded for college applications. Got a 6-figure advance (the author had only just graduated college I think) and it was supposed to be a more diverse take on Gossip Girl and other reigning YA fiction of the day. Turns out the whole thing was plagiarised, tons of passages ripped straight from other books in the genre (Princess Diaries etc). All copies were recalled and destroyed! I remember being in middle school when this happened, the author grew up locally to me and it was mentioned quite a bit in teacher lectures about plagiarism.

Pretty recently (and with much media coverage) Woody Allen's memoir was canceled after significant internal and public backlash. I suppose it's an example of being both social-media canceled and actually *canceled*. https://time.com/5798335/woody-allen-memoir-canceled/

Displaced by Michael Cooper (Elizabeth Gilbert's first ex) was to be released by Hyperion at the same time that the movie "Eat Pray Love" was released. It quietly disappeared.

Mike Carey of Hellblazer fame wrote of series of Urban Fantasy books. Think Constantine but the main character is an exorcist. He wrote 5 books and there was plans for a 6th book that hasnt happened yet and that was 10 years ago.

I used to work for a mediocre publisher that did a lot of tv-to-book stuff, like novels written by the (fictional character) Richard Castle from the tv show Castle, etc. Those Castle books, at least the first couple, were best sellers so some people in leadership got it into their heads that this was a cash cow. But most of those kinds of projects didn't do well or never even got off the ground, At one point we were meeting with Proctor and Gamble and an ad agency that worked with them talking about creating a "novel" (and potential series!) written by a character from Old Spice commercials. Honestly the whole thing was fucking embarrassing, luckily everyone realized after the first couple proposals that this was a terrible idea and the whole thing was dropped. Unless they later went to another publisher and actually did this shit, but I'm guessing not because the "virality" of those particular commercials dried up real fast.

Book # 4 of the Half Blood Chronicles by Mercedes Lackey and Andre Norton was contracted to be published but never did. I've read that when Andre Norton died there were rights issues and that's why book 4 was never finished. I loved those books as a teen and am still bummed about it all these years later.

I think Barracoon The Story of the Last Slave by Zora Hurston is, it’s short, (1 hr audio on YouTube) and written in order to preserve the dialect of the last slave brought over to Mobile, Alabama. Some 100 years after importing slaves was made illegal. Was unpublished for + years IIRC. Definite must read. (Or listen on YouTube like I did)

There's a funny example of an almost reverse-publishing, which is William Gibson's Agrippa, (A Book of the Dead). The book ink is designed to vanish when light hits it, so as you read it disappears until you have a blank book. There was a digital version on a floppy disk or something like that which was encoded to wipe itself after a viewing.