Why is it so hard to wait for the next season of a TV show, though the timespan is short, while we all know we can wait for the next novel, even when we don’t like that at all? This paper will suggest answers to this question, based on the comparison of the series A song of Ice and Fire by George Martin and Game of Thrones by Weiss et Benioff (HBO). It should allow to spot differences between serialized receptions of TV shows and novels, that are similar in many ways. In our time of transmedia storytelling and even as Martin’s career places him at the heart of convergence culture, his literary work illustrates nevertheless something still specific to books, the author persona and its « intermittencies ».