I'm sure it's one thing for those who can read them straight through, at their own pace. But it was quite another thing for some of those who were reading them as they were being published. The deal-breaker for me was waiting five years for a book that had many of the primary POV characters stripped out of it when it finally was released.
I understand (even if I didn't care for) the decision to split the originally planned fourth volume into two books. But the decision on HOW to split it was horrible (I hear we have friend and fellow author Daniel Abraham to thank for that). "Here. In lieu of all the characters you actually
want to be reading about, please accept this book full of ancillary characters and their tedious plotlines while I take another 6 years to finish what was 'nearly complete' when my publisher decided it was too big to publish in one volume." The only bright spots for me were the Arya and Brienne POV chapters.
No Tyrion chapters for a decade!
The "Adventures in Dornish Babysitting" chapters of
A Feast for Crows were positively painful.