In May 2005, Martin announced that his manuscript for "A Feast for Crows" had hit 1527 completed pages but still remained unfinished, with "another hundred or so pages of roughs and incomplete chapters, as well as other chapters sketched out but entirely unwritten." As the size of the manuscript for 2000's "A Storm of Swords", his previous novel, had been a problem for publishers around the world at 1521 pages, Martin and his publishers had decided to split the narrative planned for "A Feast for Crows" into two books. Rather than divide the text in half chronologically, Martin opted to instead split the material by character and location: