How Game Of Thrones Almost DIdn't Get To TV

Airlock Alpha has the following from GRRM himself about how he nearly backed out of the television adaptation of his stories at the last minute:

Martin made the revelation in an upcoming companion book to the HBO series called "Inside HBO's 'Game of Thrones,'" as part of the preface the author wrote, according to the New York Post. In the book, Martin said he approached producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and told them that "Hollywood Boulevard is lined with the skulls and bleached bones" of those who were unsuccessful in adapting popular books into visual media like television and movies. 

It wasn't that Martin didn't want to expand the audience for his book series, "A Song of Ice and Fire," which "Game of Thrones" is based on. It's that he feared that if the television version of the first book in that series was a failure, it would "cause fans to question their dedication to the series," and thus, destroy the community of readers that had grown around the book series. 

Hollywood highlights the triumph books successfully adapted into television series and movies (like the Harry Potter series as a prime example). But for each success, there have been far many more failures.