Brandon Sanderson's Blog, page 8

Signed Copies Of The Lost Metal + Weekly Update

Signed Copies Of The Lost Metal + Weekly Update

Hello! Welcome to the Weekly Update. I am back from New York Comic Con. We will have some videos of the panels that I did there coming up on the YouTube channel at some point. There was a really fun one I did with Diana Gabaldon and with Terry Brooks, which I hope that you guys will enjoy. We got recordings by my team of all of these things, so we can post them for you.
Sorry to miss a week on you but I am, Bing! 50% of the way through Secret Project 4. That’s my main task for this month and I’m feeling pretty good about the revision. This will be the last of the secret project revisions that I have to do, which means that I will soon be able to go into Stormlight 5 again.
And speaking of that, I will probably be doing NaNoWriMo this November. This is where you try to write 50,000 words in one month, and I’ll be posting my progress and updates. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it. You guys all joke about how fast I am as a writer, but I also have a lot of other things besides writing that I need to do in running a company. So I’m hoping that I’ll be able to do 50k in November. And, like I said, I’ll be posting my word counts. So if you’ve been looking for kind of a kick in the pants to get going on your writing, well, you can try to beat me in November. This might be one of the easiest Novembers to do it in. And so we call it SandoWriMo. I’ll be posting my updates each week in this Weekly Updates. I’ll tell you how many words I’m at.
We’ve got some cool things coming up because the Lost Metal is about a month away. This is the final of the Wax and Wayne series. And so I’ve got some cool things to tell you about that. Number one, we’ve been doing preview chapters on TOR.com. Chapter 10 is up right now. I like to have a large list, large chunk of preview chapters, just to give people a chance to kind of read up early and have discussions about it. Once the book comes out it’s kind of hard to have discussions about individual chapters, and I find it’s fun for the fans to jump on Reddit or on that TOR.com page and just have fun discussing a single chapter. It’s like having a single episode of a television show to do a discussion on. So if you want to read those you can but the book’s coming out in a month so you also don’t necessarily have to. You can put it off until then.
We have an update from the store. The Lost Metal hardcover is available for pre-order now. This is the signed, stamped, and numbered version of the book that also comes with a swag bundle. So we have a few personalizations we’re doing. I think they said we’re going to do a thousand of those this year. The personalizations we charge for and the money then goes to charity. Those will go very quickly because we’re only going to do a thousand of them. So watch. Go look at the pre-order. They may be gone already. But if not, maybe go pick up your bundle. We’ve got a really cool swag bundle to go along with the Wax and Wayne book.
So other things that we’re doing. We have the convention that we’re doing, Dragonsteel convention or Expo, we haven’t decided which one it’s going to be. I just call it Dragonsteel 2022. We opened up a new set of badges in case you missed the previous announcement about this. We still have some of them left and so if you were thinking of going and couldn’t make it because there weren’t enough badges, well, we do have some for sale.
We’re also going to be doing a charity Magic draft, and those ticket sales open on Monday, October 24th at 10:00 AM Mountain Time. This is a first come, first serve basis. There will be an overflow draft made available once the event sells out but I won’t be playing with those people. It’s still all for charity. The proceeds will go to the School Zone at the Primary Children’s Hospital. Basically this is for kids who are in the hospital for kind of longer term. We provide school materials and books and things to help them while they’re staying at the hospital. So go check that out. It’s one of the charities that we like to support. And the money from the draft, basically I buy the cards, and all the money that you donate will then go straight to the charity with us taking none of it. So if you want to play against me there will be some slots that’ll have a chance, not guaranteed, to play against me. And then there’ll be lots of other slots to just hang out at the con and play some Magic.
So a few other interesting things. Long update this week. Sorry, I’ve been gone. The Stormlight Mini Kickstarter is over. Wow, it went really well. And if you didn’t know, there’s some secrets being teased in this thing. So you may want to head over and find out a preview of a character coming up in the Cosmere sometime in the future.
We also want to give away some ARCs. These are advanced reader copies of our books. And we found we ran into a problem. It’s not a huge problem but we realized we’re kind of sending ARCs to all the same people over and over again, which doesn’t give us a lot of diversity in the different numbers of people who are getting these books from us. And so we thought we would start up a little program where you can apply if you are an influencer and just want to get an early copy of some of my books. We’re calling it the Ambassador Program. This is not a quid pro quo. You may give us a bad review. It is totally viable. Don’t stress about that. But we just want to cast a wider net than we have been casting and give people who haven’t gotten these early copies from us a chance to get them. You will have to have some sort of review mechanism, meaning a website, BookTube, TikTok, or something like that, where you are consistently posting reviews and things like that. It is meant for reviewers. But details are in the description if you are interested in being part of that program.
Last thing on the list is my BYU class. This is my university course. We will be having the application window open very soon. It only opens for one hour. You have to submit your applications between 10:00 and 11:00 PM Mountain Time on October 23rd. A random drawing of the applications group will determine the 65 applicants that we’re going to read and consider. There’s just too many submissions otherwise. We can’t actually read them all. And we find from among this number that we can narrow it down to the 15 who get in the class. There’s an online application form that will ask you to answer questions and submit writing samples. The writing samples we need, they can be in the opening for a novel, that’s what we recommend, 1,500 to 3,000 words.
You do not need to be a current BYU student. This is an evening class. You will have to go to BYU evening classes and sign up. This is easier than a normal application process to the university but it is something you’re going to have to do. They do require it to be local. During the years of the pandemic we were able to do remote. So you will have to be able to attend the class in person and you will have to go through BYU evening classes application process to join the class. If you get into the class you will be allowed to do this. There is a fee. It used to be pretty cheap. It’s gone up over the years and I think it’s up to, like, a couple grand even right now to take this class. So that’s all university protocol. I’ll point you their direction if you aren’t currently a BYU student about how to do that you shouldn’t worry and stress about getting into BYU because in this case you’re just taking this one class. But you will have to sign up for the class that way. So short version, turn in your applications on that day. If you aren’t a BYU student and you get into the 15 person, ask us for instructions on how to do the rest.
Otherwise, hopefully next week’s Weekly Update will not be quite this long. But thank you all so much for hanging out with me, and I will be back and give you more in the following weeks.

Stormlight Premium Figurines Kickstarter Campaign with Brotherwise Games

Stormlight Premium Figurines Kickstarter Campaign with Brotherwise Games Introduction

Today, we launch a new Kickstarter campaign—for Stormlight minis and painted figurines. This affords me a chance to talk about a few things relating to the behind the scenes of how this Kickstarter came about, why we’ve partnered with Brotherwise for it, and how I want to approach Kickstarters in the future. I want to be accountable to you, and aware of potential issues surrounding crowdfunding and the success I’ve been having with it lately. 

I apologize in advance if this rambles a little. I’ve got several points I want to make, but I hope they’ll all come together cohesively. 

Part One: The Quick Version

Before I dig into it too deeply, I want to get to the marketing portion. Our friends at Brotherwise have been working hard on preparing this Kickstarter for well over a year—and I’m extremely pleased with the product we’ve managed to put together. So I really hope you’ll go take a look at the Kickstarter and consider backing it. They have been a fantastic partner, and they’ve gone above and beyond in trying to get the characters right—often going back to revise a dozen or more times as Isaac and I have requested changes. 

I’ll talk more about what is cool about this Kickstarter later. But I wanted to up front give a good plug for what we’re doing here. The short version of what I’ll explain in detail below is: I’m aware it’s a little cheeky of me to be doing a second Kickstarter this year, while everyone is waiting for their Secret Projects. I’m going to do my best to mitigate potential problems, but if this is a concern of yours, I hear you. It’s a concern of mine too. We’ll try, as always, to be worthy of the trust you show us. 

However, this campaign should be very fun. We’ll be going into depth about how we arrived at the models we created for each of these minis. Even if you’re not interested in the minis, I think you’ll enjoy looking through the Kickstarter page to see my vision for each of the characters. And in the coming days, we’ll be showing off a great deal of concept art that I think you’ll all find very interesting. 

Part Two: On Crowdfunding and Responsibility

I can safely say nobody in our company anticipated the explosive success of our Secret Projects Kickstarter. I’ll admit I knew the seed of something incredible was there, and the showman in me was excited to do my best to make that all come together in a way that would take the world by storm. But even I didn’t expect to get a highstorm instead. 

Our previous Kickstarter raised around 8 million dollars when all the final orders were in. This one did 45 million. That is a huge show of faith from all of you, and we’re ready to earn it. We’ve been working very hard behind the scenes to get everything ready for you come January. I think you’re all going to be very satisfied with what you get.

So why do another Kickstarter so soon?

Well, the truth was, this one with the Stormlight minis was in the works longer than the Secret Project campaign was. I didn’t hit on doing a Kickstarter for the Secret Projects until later last year—and as I considered it, I got increasingly excited. I’d been wondering how in the world I was going to get those books to people, and this seemed the perfect way. That, however, risked undermining the Kickstarter we had already been planning—for the Stormlight minis. 

This minis Kickstarter had originally been planned for late spring or early summer. After we decided to do the Secret Projects, however, Brotherwise kindly agreed to push their project back a few months to give some space. That also gave us a little more time to prepare the visuals and the models, and I’m glad we had the extra time. We’ve used it well.

That said, an interesting phenomenon happens when you suddenly have the most popular Kickstarter of all time. Companies really want to work with you—as access to people’s attention is one of the most precious commodities in the world right now. However, I would prefer that they not see all of you as a resource to be exploited. I just want to do cool things, tell great stories, and (if I’m lucky) make the world better in the process. Primarily by making lives better through story. 

It would be very easy, after our success, to go crazy with products. That’s not our intention, and I want to promise that to you. At the same time, I have lofty aspirations, and I do want to explore crowdfunding further. So, here, I want to outline a road map for you—and see what you think of it. Internally, at Dragonsteel, I’ve presented an idea for going forward. No more than two crowdfunding campaigns a year. One for books, one for another product. We don’t have to do two, and we might not always do two. But I think this year provides a good model. One primarily for books (the Secret Projects), one for something else (the minis).

Right now, we’re looking at a Kickstarter for the Words of Radiance leatherbound next year. (To address those who are curious about this, no, we don’t need to release the Stormlight leatherbounds via a platform like Kickstarter—but we’ve found that doing so makes our lives much, much easier. The thing is, crowdfunding websites have strong, useful behind-the-scenes architecture for things like fulfillment and customer support. 

It’s really hard to gauge how much of something to make; for example, we’d initially thought we might need 25,000 of each Secret Project. We ended up needing 150,000 of each. Kickstarter makes managing all of this so much easier. So while we don’t need the funding side of Kickstarter to make our projects a reality, we have an acute need for their infrastructure and preorder frameworks.)

In the future, we intend to continue kickstarting Stormlight leatherbounds—but not other leatherbounds we do. That gives us roughly one of these every three years. The other two years between, I’d like to do other things. The Hoid storybook collection (which is picture books and/or coffee-table-style books of The Dog and the Dragon, The Wandersail, and The Girl Who Looked Up) is another one I’d really like to do. On the products side, we’d like to do a Stormlight pen and paper RPG and a Stormlight board game, two of the most requested items you have all been asking us to do.

Now, if it needs to be said, I want to point out that we don’t expect to be breaking our Kickstarter record anytime soon. The Secret Projects were basically a special lightning in a bottle, with just the right way of presenting them, and a huge surprise to propel people to pay attention. So please, let’s not set expectations too high for these others. The goal isn’t to smash records; it never has been. It’s to make cool things. 

As always, we hope you will participate—but I want to note that our goal is not to drive revenue through a sense of FOMO. (Fear of Missing Out.) While we might be able to offer some special pricing and exclusive extras via an initial campaign, our goal will always be to provide post-Kickstarter versions of core products to people who want them later. (This also applies to the minis, which we hope to have in stock and for sale for many years to come.) 

Anyway, this is our model going forward. Two crowdfunding campaigns at most in a year, spaced out if there are two. And this brings me to Brotherwise.

 

Part Three: Why Brotherwise

We met the fine folks at Brotherwise when they came to us and pitched their storytelling game Call to Adventure, for which they wanted to do a Stormlight expansion. We get a lot of requests like this, but this company’s excitement, experience, and product stood out to us. We said yes.

Over the next few years, we found them one of the most knowledgeable and responsive companies we’ve ever worked with. We’ve had some great partners over the years, but Brotherwise seemed to really “get” us and the things we wanted to do. As we thought more and more about it, debating internally, we realized something. We have been getting a ton of requests from people wanting to make things with us, but we don’t want to say yes to very many of them. We want to make fewer products better, rather than flood the market. 

The perfect thing we wanted to do, we realized, was to find a few key partners that we work with really well—and then work with them to make more things. And so, earlier this month, we entered a full partnership with Brotherwise for this Kickstarter. We’re doing it together, rather than as part of a traditional licensing deal where my company just sells the rights and waits to see what is made. 

This leads to my next point. 

Part Four: The Process

It’s been quite the ride to bring these Stormlight minis to life. As I said, we’ve had some great partners in the past, but one thing that my team and I really wanted to do with these minis was level up in terms of quality and continuity. To that end, Isaac (who heads my art department and works on Creative Development for the company) spent long hours working with concept artists, getting versions of the characters that were as close as possible to my vision for them.

This still might shift over time. Like Batman has evolved, I can see us moving characters one way or another. But after hundreds of sketches, and the efforts of a half dozen artists, we’ve been able to present a solid vision to Brotherwise. Rather than just saying, “Here’s the description of the characters from the books,” we were able to say, “Here’s a dozen sketches of poses, expressions, and looks for characters pulled as best we can straight from Brandon’s head.”

I’ve learned a ton in this process, and it’s really helped my mental picture of the characters to get them concepted this way. In addition, it has provided us with a great deal of material we can use for other projects. In the past, I often didn’t want to give artists definitive depictions of the characters, as I enjoy seeing what different artists come up with from my descriptions. Over the last few years though, I’ve come to realize that the books and the Cosmere are big enough that it would be better to be more clear about my vision.

This shouldn’t be seen as me telling you, readers, that you can’t view the characters however you want. I still want to see your fanart of how the character is in your head! But if we’re going to be doing products like an RPG, these minis, and a board game, I’d rather that the characters be consistent across those mediums. It feels right to be doing this now. 

Part Five: The Kickstarter Itself

So, that’s where my thoughts have been lately! I hope you’re still with me. I know this has been a long one!

There are a few things we wanted to do for this campaign. Obviously, we wanted to create a group of gaming-ready, unpainted miniatures. That was the main idea of this Kickstarter. As such, the core tiers of this campaign are for unpainted minis in packs based around the first four books in the Stormlight Archive. (Six minis per book, with each higher pledge level adding six new ones.)

But we also wanted people who aren’t gamers to have something they can grab. This is why we have four painted figurines, done at a bigger scale. (Kaladin, Jasnah, Adolin, and Szeth.) And one thing I’m super excited about is the even larger statue. It’s expensive, but it’s something I pitched to the team. I have always wanted one of those big desk statues like you commonly see in people’s workspaces, often depicting a superhero. At my request, then, we’ve designed and included an extremely cool, large-scale desk statue of Szeth and Kaladin clashing. 

Not all of the designs have been revealed; we’re keeping a few to show off during the campaign. So over the next 30 days, you can check back as we unveil designs for Eshonai, Taravangian, Leshwi, and others. We’ve tried to make something in this for every Stormlight fan, whether you paint minis or just want something cool for your bookshelf. 

Conclusion

I take very seriously the faith and trust all of you show in me, and I’m trying to demonstrate that. I want to be responsible in the way we approach crowdfunding, and never leave you hanging, waiting for updates that never seem to come—and products that are ever delayed. 

I hope that you find what we’re doing exciting, rather than overwhelming—but as always, I do want to hear from you. Let me know, over the coming years, if you think we’re doing too much. I just…well, I have a lot of stories I want to tell and things I want to create. Thank you so much for joining me on the ride. 

Brandon

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Stormlight Five Update One

Stormlight Five Update One

Hello, all!  I know some of you may have been waiting for this.  It’s time for the first in a series of updates about your book!  I wanted to wait until I’d made good progress this month before I stopped to write one of these updates, and I do apologize for leaving you in the dark for so long.  I probably should have written one of these back in January, but it’s been an odd year for me, full of unpredictable timing issues.

So, let’s get the obvious questions out of the way.  Do I have a title yet?  No.  Still thinking.  I’d like it to fit the format of KOWT or KOW, but I don’t like most of the options that have presented themselves.  It requires more thought.

When will the book come out?  I’m looking at fall 2024.  I have tried to be very forthcoming about this one—warning people for a while that 2023 might be too optimistic.  And, as I feared, I have been forced to let the date slide quite far into 2024 because of three issues.  The first is that I set myself up for a TON of revisions this year, and they’ve been taking more time than expected.  I still have two books to revise, though I’ve been spending all of August on Stormlight.

However, that isn’t the primary reason I’ve ended up pushing back the book.  I’d planned for these revisions, and could have done those while working on Stormlight.  The second reason I pushed the book back is that I knew this book, of all the ones in the sequence, deserved a little extra time and attention.  It will likely be the longest of the series to date, and I have to be careful to juggle all the storylines properly.  I didn’t want to be rushed on it, and—though it may shock you—an 18-month production cycle wasn’t going to cut it.

The third reason is one I haven’t been able to gauge as easily as the first two—something new to my life.  Lately, I’ve needed to dedicated more and more of my time to running a company.  I still reserve three days a week solely for writing, but that’s down from four days a week in previous years.

The meetings take two general forms.  The first category is meetings with my team.  Things like reviewing the production of the secret projects and leatherbounds to make sure things look and feel right.  Others involve deep dives into concept art for characters and settings, so that when we create products like the upcoming Stormlight miniatures, they can fit with a canon version of the characters.  This is something I resisted for a while, feeling like it was all right if different artists interpreted the singers (for example) differently.  More and more, though, Isaac and I feel that we should have specific canon examples for continuity.

Other meetings are editorial related, or publicity related.  Dragonsteel has kind of grown up the last few years, and I want to do it right.  That means being involved, as long as it doesn’t impact my time TOO much.  But all of that needs to be balanced with the numerous film and television meetings that have been happening lately.  Again, I want to do this right—which means being deeply involved in the projects that are moving forward.  (Announcements should be coming in the near future.)  That takes time.  So, the free time that I had during Covid to write secret projects is now being eaten up by a lot of these meetings.

I’m still finding the right balance, but this last month has seen a lot of good progress on Stormlight.  I’m sitting at 65,000 words right now as of this writing.  Roughly 16% if we assume a 400,000-word final book.  (Though this one will, as I said, likely be longer than that—so that 16% might be more like 15%.)

Unfortunately, progress is going to slow again as I have a couple of other deadlines due.  My goal right now is to do the last two revisions (Defiant and Secret Project Four) in rapid succession, in September and October, and be back to Stormlight in November.

For a teaser, though, here is what I’m working on: I’m going to write this book in phases, straight from beginning to end, through several character groupings.  For example, the first sequence I’m writing is Szeth and Kaladin in Shinovar, including the Szeth flashbacks.  I plan to write all of their plot, from start to finish, before moving on to the next sequence of characters.

All of that 65k so far, except the prologue, has been on this plotline—and I’m loving how it’s shaping up.  I know the Szeth backstory has been a LONG time coming.  I hope it lives up to your expectations.  There are some interesting lore secrets here to reveal, and the climax is something I’ve been building to since book one—indeed, you’ll find death rattles from the first volume referencing the events here in this sequence.

I plotted this sequence at 100k.  It’s looking a lot more like 150k now that I’m neck deep in it.  The picture is related!

I know that four years is a long time to wait for a novel, and it’s been my goal in the past to keep that to 3 years.  My intention is that once this is done, we’ll have another longer-than-normal gap as I turn my attention to Mistborn Era Three (and hopefully the Elantris sequels) before diving back in to do the back five Stormlight books.  From there, I’m hoping to return to a 3-year gap between books until we push to the ending at book ten.

A long journey, I know!  But you’ll almost certainly have television and film projects in the interim to keep you occupied alongside the other things I do.  And I continue to feel that Stormlight works best in ultra-long-form novels, rather than the (far more profitable) option my publisher would prefer of one shorter 100k Stormlight book every year.  The experience of the thick book full of interconnected plotlines and smaller interlude flourishes is part of what makes the artistic vision work for these volumes.

As always, thank you for your patience.  My job is to make sure it’s all worth the wait, and I am striving each day to show respect for the trust you’ve put in me.

Next update should come around the end of the year, where I’ll let you know how my November/December went.  With luck, I’ll have managed another 70k or so across the two months, and land us at around 130k, which MIGHT be the end of the first sequence.

 

Moonbreaker Announcement + Weekly Update

Moonbreaker Announcement + Weekly Update

Hey, guys. Brandon here with your Weekly Update.
First off, Stormlight. We are moving up, bing! 2% to 14% this week. I’ve had a very good week on Stormlight 5. I have one more week to work on Stormlight before I’m required to do some other revisions. It’s going really well. I’m very pleased with it.
The other big thing that I want to talk about is Moonbreaker. So for years, I’ve been teasing a project I called Soulburner. You can go back many years in the State of the Sanderson posts and find me talking about this thing. This is a video game I originally started, then pitched to Unknown Worlds, who made Subnautica. They came to me and said, “Hey, would you be interested in developing a world for us to do a game in?” Their pitch was really cool. It’s better than a miniatures game. It’s like a digital version of a miniatures game. I’ll be talking a lot about Moonbreaker in the coming weeks. I’m really excited about it. I loved Subnautica, and so when Unknown Worlds came to me I was excited for the opportunity. This is the first time I have designed the setting for a video game. I wrote all of the worldbuilding guides and came up with the characters and character guides. Dan Wells has been writing audio dramas about these characters. So it’s going to be really cool. The game—I’m not even sure what their timeline is for releasing the game but now we can at least talk about it!
A couple of other cool things for you to be aware of. The T-shirt design contest for The Lost Metal closes in two days. So if you are planning a design, get those in. Likewise, we have Bastille Versus the Evil Librarians book bundle. This is the secret sixth book in the Alcatraz series. If you’re not aware, it’s my middle-grade series for anyone who loves weird stories. I pitched it as five books but secretly said to my editors years ago, “I want to do six. I want the main character to refuse to write the last book and someone else to have to write it.” My good friend Janci and I wrote this together. The book comes out on the 20th of September. We are doing a book bundle, which opened last Monday. You can get a signed copy of the book, and you can get some swag and a t-shirt, which was designed by someone who watches the YouTube channel. So go check that out.

Thanks, guys.

Brandon

Moonbreaker Announcement + Weekly Update

Free “Shadows of Self” eBook! + Weekly Update

Free “Shadows of Self” eBook! + Weekly Update

Hey! Brandon here with your Weekly Update!

Number one, Stormlight 5, is going pretty well. I’m going to conservatively move the percentage up to, Bing! 12%. It probably will end the week a little higher than that but that feels about right to me now. Writing is going well. If you followed my updates years ago when I was working on Book 4, I got the outline into really good shape. So the outline’s looking good and I’m feeling confident about this. I just have so many things to juggle right now it’s going just a little bit slower than I wanted it to. But 2% nonetheless, which is reflecting around 50,000 words of progress on it.

So a couple of other cool things. Shadows of Self, which is in the Wax and Wayne series, it’s going to be up as a free eBook on August 23 through 26. We’ll give you a reminder here. If you’ve already read the first book and want to get the second book, the second book’s going to be a free eBook coming up here very soon.

The Bastille book, shirt, and bundle are all now available. So you can go and order one of those and we’ll send you a cool t-shirt, a little swag bundle, and a signed copy of the book. It’s the last book in the Alcatraz series, titled Bastille Versus the Evil Librarians because it’s written from Bastille’s viewpoint. Speaking of t-shirts, the t-shirt contest is underway for the last Wax and Wayne book. That ends August 31st.

Only one other thing. The weekend before Dragonsteel convention, there’s a local group putting on a Magic: The Gathering convention, and I’m going to be going there and showing off my cube. The MTG Summit in Salt Lake City will be at the Salt Palace Convention Center- the same place as Dragonsteel Con. I’ve known the MTG guys for a long time, so I’m hoping they have a very successful convention for their Magic Summit. I’ll be there, hanging out and playing my cube, probably with some celebrities and things like that. So there you are. I’ll be back next week to tell you how Stormlight 5 is progressing. Thank you, always, for paying attention, and for tuning in and listening to me ramble.

Free "Shadows of Self" eBook! + Weekly Update

Some FAQs You Might Enjoy

Some FAQs You Might Enjoy

Hey, all.  It has been, to say the least, a wild two weeks for me.  After seeing some of the discourse around what is going on with the Kickstarter, I thought you all might enjoy it if I answered a few questions I’ve been getting.  (Or ones I’ve been seeing people pontificate about.)  Consider this a kind of halfway point retrospective.

This got long, because it’s…well, me.  So I created two versions.  The short version, which you can read here.  And this long version.

So, here we go.  We’ll start easy, then get into some more in-depth explanations of why I approached this project the way that I did.

How Are You Doing?

I’m feeling great.  Really, things are good.  That said, I’m feeling a tad behind–I knew (once I finished Skyward 4) that I probably wouldn’t be able to really start Stormlight 5 in January.  There was too much I wanted to do to Wax and Wayne 4, and beyond that I needed to chill a little bit–and so the first two weeks of the year were pretty low-key for me work-wise.  (Actually low-key, no secret projects being worked on, I promise.)

I really wanted to get finished with the revision of Wax and Wayne earlier than I have, however.  I hoped to be done in early February, but I only just finished.  (I sent in the 4.0 last night.)  This does mean that I’m officially on Stormlight 5 full time.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that the delay means that I didn’t have time to do the Skyward 4 2.0 draft, so that book might end up being put off until summer next year instead of spring next year.  I won’t feel comfortable doing the 2.0 on that until I have at least a month of daily progress on Stormlight and I have Secret Project One turned in.  Fortunately we have the Skyward Flight sequence to pick up the slack–and if you haven’t looked into those, I would recommend them.

Regardless, I’m roughly a month behind on Stormlight 5.  That isn’t terribly bad; the way I pace these things it’s fully possible that I can finish by the end of the year, as I’d like to.  But it will depend on a lot of factors.  As I’ve been saying for a while now, I’ll allow Stormlight 5 to slip into spring 2024 instead of fall 2023 if I need the extra time.  The end of a given sequence (like is happening with W&W 4) deserves extra attention.  If Stormlight 5 does slip, it won’t be the Secret Projects slowing me down, but instead the extra attention to Wax and Wayne that has done it–or specific needs of Stormlight 5.  Again, I’ll keep you in the loop.  (The bright side here is that I added about 25k words to Wax and Wayne in this revision.)

I’d love to be playing Elden Ring right now, but I think I’ll need to put that off also until I know that I have momentum on Stormlight 5.  This would not be a good time to start a new video game.  Particularly not one by my favorite game developer.

How Are You Going to Spend the Money?

I got this question from the journalist from the Associated Press who interviewed me.  He gave an excellent interview, and we had a really great conversation.  But this question stopped me for a moment.  It’s a valid question, but it took me by surprise, as I haven’t been looking at this the way that some people seem to be.  I didn’t hit the lottery, any more than any other business hits the lottery when they have a product that connects with their market.

I will spend the money as I spend the rest of my money.  Part into savings, part into paying salaries (along with nice extra bonuses because the Kickstarter did well), part reinvested into the company.  (We’re still planning on building a physical bookstore, and this will help accelerate those plans.  Also, it’s not outside of reason that as I move into doing more film and TV, I will want to partially fund some of the projects.)

While this Kickstarter is an incredible event, and (don’t get me wrong) is going to earn me a good chunk of money, it’s going to be comparable to other projects I’ve done.  Also, don’t underestimate how much money it costs to maintain the infrastructure (like a warehouse–or in this case, probably more than one) it takes to be able to ship several hundred thousand books.  It will likely be years before we can be certain how much this actually earned us after all expenses.  More than we’d get from New York on the same books, but potentially not that much more.

That said, I will almost certainly buy myself some nice Magic cards.  Still have a few unlimited duals in my cube that could use an upgrade to black border.

Did You Anticipate This Level of Success for the Kickstarter?

I did not.  I knew the potential was there, but I didn’t think it (getting to this astronomical number of backers) would happen.

My guess was that we’d land somewhere in the 2–4 million range, though I really had no idea.  My team can attest to the fact that in the lead-up, I was very conservative in my estimates and expectations.  This was an experiment from us that I’d been wanting to try for a while.  (I’ll talk more about that below.)  I didn’t have any idea how well it would go.

To pull back the curtain for you a little, Rhythm of War’s first week sales were somewhere around 350,000 across all formats.  (That week was 50% audio, 25% ebook, 25% print.)  Starsight’s numbers were around 80,000 copies across all formats for the first week.  (This one was 54% audio, 29% ebook, and 17% print.)  Those are US numbers only.  Note, these are both what I’d consider very successful projects.  Both of these books sold enough to claim the #1 spot on their respective New York Times bestseller list, for example.  And though Stormlight sold 4 times as much–it also took 4 times as much work.  (In the long run, because of its larger price point, Stromlight does earn more though.  Which is why it amuses me that people sometimes accuse me of writing the YA books to “cash in.”  Um, no, my friends.  I earn less on those.  Not significantly less, but still.  I write them because they are stories I want to tell.)

The first year for Rhythm of War was about 800,000 copies total.  Starsight ended up somewhere around 250,000 copies after one year.  (Rough estimates.)  It’s too early to tell for Cytonic on this second metric, which is why I used the previous book.

Now let’s look at a less successful Sanderson book.  Legion: The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds is my worst-selling recent book.  First week was under 10,000 copies–and it’s only sold about 80k copies so far in the three years it’s been out, with the first year being roughly in the 50k range.  These numbers weren’t surprising to me–it was not only a short fiction collection (which is a tough sell to a lot of readers), it was also in a genre I’m not known for and the first two novellas had been out in ebook for years, with quite good sales.  So while this isn’t the best comparison ever, another good thing to look at was the Way of Kings leatherbound, which had roughly 30,000 backers.

Together, this knowledge gives a rough idea of my readership.  It’s hard to judge apples to apples with this Kickstarter, as I am giving the ebook with the other editions–and it’s hard to know how many of those readers above are buying two copies instead.  But I could guess that the upper end of the number of people willing to show up to buy a Sanderson book in the first year of release is somewhere around 800k, while the lower end of people who will show up for one is around 50k.  That’s why I say I knew the potential was there.  If the 30,000 people from the original Kickstarter showed up and bought the lowest tier, we’d be right around a million for the Kickstarter.  We knew it would likely be bigger, but how much bigger?

Modern media consumption is, for better or worse, very platform-specific.  People don’t like to be moved from one platform to another–and I get it.  The convenience of having your media collection all in one place, of already having your credit card info stored, of not having to do much besides click a button (or grab something at the bookstore where you’re already visiting) is huge.  The question wasn’t if people would want to read these books.  It was this: Would they be willing to move from their comfortable platform to Kickstarter?  Would we be able to even make them aware of these books?

How many of those potential 250k–800k people who normally buy a Sanderson book in the first year could be convinced instead to move and preorder it through Kickstarter?  Our guesses, it turned out, were way low.  But at the same time, it is interesting that (not disregarding our huge success, which I’m not at all complaining about) even this huge Kickstarter breaking all records is only grabbing a fraction of my normal audience.  So maybe you can see why we knew we had potential, but were conservative in our estimates.  We didn’t know what to expect, but assuming that we’d do a fraction of what a Stormlight book did in the same space (even if it was a reprint) was at least a reasonable baseline.

Note that if you want to consider a really daunting fact, realize that if all 800k first-year Stormlight readers showed up (these are the ones willing to buy the hardcover or the more expensive ebook, since the prices don’t drop to mass-market levels until after the first year) to buy these books on Kickstarter…  Well, our current average spend per backer is over $200.  So we’d be talking about a Kickstarter of $150 million plus, in that pie-in-the-sky case.

No, we’re not going to try to do that by releasing a mainline Stormlight novel in first run on Kickstarter.  The reason why has to do with the next questions.

Is This the End of Traditional Publishing For You?  Is That Why You Kickstarted These Books?

I know some of you know the answer to this, having read the sound bites I’ve put into various news media interviews I’ve done recently.  But if you’ll humor me, I want to go into more depth.  To do that, first let me tell you a story.  (Totally unexpected, I know.)

In 2010, Macmillan (the parent company of Tor Books) got into some finicky contract negotiations with Amazon.  The publishers felt that Amazon was selling ebooks at rock-bottom prices to move Kindles–something they wanted to do to dominate the market and control the reading platform.  During negotiations, Amazon–to put pressure on Macmillan and try to starve them out–stopped selling any Macmillan books.  (Except for used copies through the extended marketplace.)

This was within Amazon’s power; as a retailer, they can decide what they want to sell and what they don’t.  They used a common, if cutthroat, strategy here.  They had a flood of money during that time they actively didn’t want to turn a profit at the end of the year.  They knew that if they sold ebooks at a loss, Nook and Kobo would have to do likewise–and they weren’t flush with cash they literally needed to burn.

I don’t like that mindset, using our pieces of art as the thing sold rock-bottom.  But it’s not like the publishers have been angels in their treatment of Amazon.  The two have had a rocky relationship for basically forever.  Plus, the publishers have historically been backward-thinking about electronic mediums (see my next point).

The point here is that this event twelve years ago taught me something.  Amazon turning off the ability to buy books didn’t really hurt me in the long run. (Amazon, notably, picked the month of the year with the lowest book sales to do this.) But it did really hurt the careers of some newer authors who were releasing that month.  And it told me just how fragile my career was.  And it’s only gotten more fragile in the years since.

Judging how much market share Amazon has is famously difficult, as people keep sales figures close to their chest.  But many estimates put Amazon at around 80% of the ebook market, 90% of the audiobook market (they own Audible), and 65% of the print book market.  (You’ll sometimes see much lower guesses for ebooks, but I can tell you that at least for me, 80% is low.  It’s probably closer to 85%.)

So how many of those 800k copies of Rhythm of War did Amazon sell?  Probably around 650,000 copies–maybe more.  Somewhere around 80%, by my more conservative of estimations.  And in my most popular format, audio, they completely dominate the market.

This is deeply unsettling.

Now, it’s hard to blame Amazon for this, at least not entirely.  I absolutely blame them for their terrible treatment of workers.  And yes, they’ve engaged in some predatory practices, as I talked about above.  But I honestly think that the bigger factor is that they’re just really good at selling things.  Kindle has the best user experience, and was the innovation that finally broke open the ebook market.  Audible championed the credit model and finally brought audiobooks to a reasonable price point.  (Old people like me will remember the days of $70–$80 Wheel of Time audiobooks.)   Amazon’s delivery speed is incredible.  Their stock, near-infinite.

Beyond that, I have friends at Amazon.  I like the people at Amazon.  I’ve worked with them on many things, and the people there have universally been excellent.  Book lovers, passionate about their jobs, and really easy to get along with.

Still, their market share should terrify authors.  Innovation is strangled by market dominance.  And the problem with loss leading (like Amazon did over the years) is that eventually you have to start making profit.  And then the squeeze comes.  Indie authors are feeling this right now.  Amazon created the indie book market, quite literally.  Before it, indie publishing was an enormously expensive and risky affair.  One of my neighbors when I was growing up was a journalist who decided to try to indie-publish a book, and he ended up with the proverbial garage full of tens of thousands of copies he was unable to sell.

The ebook revolution, spearheaded by Amazon paying a whopping 70% royalty to indie authors who published on their platform, was huge.  (For reference, traditional publishing currently pays 17.5% on those same ebooks.)  This, mixed with authors having far more power to choose what they want to do with said books–including walking away whenever they want–created an extremely author-friendly boom that has legitimately done great things.  Smaller voices have a much better chance, the New York gatekeepers have lost some of their control, and there’s a feeling of democratization to publishing that has never existed before.

At least there used to be.

You see, since Amazon controls a huge chunk of the market, this gives them a lot of control.  For example, to get the good royalty, indie authors are forced to sell their ebooks under a maximum price chosen by Amazon.  (And that maximum price hasn’t changed in the last twelve years, despite inflation.)  The bigger problem, however, is how Amazon changed its advertising game–targeting indie authors with a kind of “advertise to sell” model.

You see, Amazon wasn’t making as much as it needed/wanted to from those books–in part because it insisted on keeping the prices low to maintain market share.  In part because it had promised kindle buyers this was their perk: cheap ebooks.  But it didn’t want to change its famous 70% royalty.  Otherwise it would look bad to indie authors.

So instead, it changed its recommendation algorithm and its page layout.  It moved organically recommended books down, and added advertisement slots across most book pages (particularly popular ones).  These slots were available for indie authors to buy.

If you go to the Way of Kings page on Amazon, you will find twelve advertisements between the top of the page and the reviews section.  Nine of these are for indie authors trying to sell their books to fans of the Stormlight Archive.  The other three are ads for non-book Amazon products.  This is better than it once was when Amazon first implemented this “feature” five or six years ago.  I once counted even more advertisements, and you had to go all the way to the bottom to find the traditional “books related to this one” list.  (This is the organically generated recommended books list, where other titles rated highly by readers of the book’s author could be found.)

These days, according to some of my indie author friends, you have to spend a great deal to sell on Amazon.  Not everyone’s experience is the same, but I hear this time and time again.  To make it as an indie author, you need to shell out for expensive advertising on the very website selling your books.  I have indie author friends who are spending a good portion of their income on these advertisements–and if they don’t, their sales vanish.  Amazon has effectively created a tax where indie authors pay back a chunk of that glorious 70% royalty to Amazon.  (And this is for the authors lucky enough to be allowed to buy those advertising spots, and therefore have the chance at selling.)

This might seem good.  Publishers spend to get their books in front of people, so it’s good for indie authors to have the same chance.  Except I think this system–as it stands now–takes power away from writers.  In the old days before this system, the primary way that you sold books on Amazon was by having people read them and like them.  If fans of the Stormlight Archive read your book (even in small numbers) and left good reviews, then your book showed up for free on my page.  Amazon might claim that it would be hard for indie authors to compete with traditional authors this way.  But if they really cared, then on the Stormlight page they could make a section titled something like “Independent authors liked by fans of the Stormlight Archive” and help them that way.

The truth is that while the people at Amazon are wonderful, Amazon itself doesn’t care about the indie authors as much as it claims.  If it did, it would let them raise their prices with inflation, and would promote them for free like it once did.  And we shouldn’t expect Amazon to be benevolent.  It is a corporation.  Indeed, this is exactly what we should expect Amazon to do in a system where it has a near-monopoly.  It lacks competition, and so where are these authors going to go?  There’s no other game in town.  So, now it’s time for Amazon to cut into what they’re being paid.  (With Audible, the move was more transparent.  Audible just dropped the royalty they’d been paying indie authors from 60% to 40%.)

This is a long-winded way of saying what many of you probably already knew.  Monopolies (or if you insist on being technical, near-monopolies and monopsonies like Amazon) are bad for everyone.  I insist this is bad for Amazon.  They could collapse this very market they created, and squeeze too much on both the publishers and the authors.  They could stagnate to the point that their user experience is bad, and we lose readers to other forms of media.

Regardless, this has been bothering me for over a decade.  I feel that the current system has a gun to my head.  Heck, all that has to happen is for someone at Amazon read this blog post or see my Kickstarter and decide they just want to make an example out of me.  Poof.  85% of my sales gone.  And while some people might go to another vendor to get my books, the painful truth is that many would not.  Time and time again, studies of contemporary tech media consumption have shown that the person who controls the platform is the one who controls the market.  And users like their platforms.  I mean, I’m as guilty of this as anyone.  I still haven’t gotten around to playing Starcraft 2, despite loving the first one, because I just am so used to Steam (where Starcraft 2 isn’t available) that I haven’t overcome the inertia to go buy it.

That said, even if Amazon weren’t a dominant force, there are some problems with traditional publishing that I’ve been fighting for years.  This is another reason for the Kickstarter.

So, You’re Leaving Traditional Publishing?  You Still Haven’t Answered That Question.

I’m not leaving traditional publishing.  I like both of my publishers quite a bit.  I have no plans to move Stormlight or Mistborn from Tor–and I foresee many more years of working with them on those novels and others.  I have no plans of stopping my YA line with Delacorte Press (part of Penguin Random House).   Both of my publishers have bent over backwards to accommodate my sometimes odd demands and my unconventional vision of how I want to approach publishing.  They’re good people, and I’m pleased with the job they’ve been doing.

That said, I have some problems with traditional publishing as a whole.

For one, their ebook and audiobook royalties are too low.  I’ve already bored you with math, so I won’t go into this one here.  The short version is this: publishers have benefited more from ebooks (making more money from them as a percentage over print books) than authors have.  Publishers took the opportunity of a new format as a way of shaking things up and getting a better deal out of authors than they’d historically had.

I try to listen to my audience.  One thing I’ve heard for years is that readers want to get an ebook with a print book, bundled together.  And I think this is an extremely reasonable request.  The cost to create an ebook once you have the print book is negligible.  Just some basic formatting work.  (This is different from an audiobook, which costs a lot more to host, and needs the paying of a narrator and additional work to put the whole thing together.)  Hollywood often gives you a digital download of a film when you buy the DVD.  Why can’t we get digital copies of books with print ones?

I spent years trying to make this happen.  I spent long phone calls with John Sargent, then CEO of Macmillan, arguing with him about what I considered his backward view of ebooks.  (He only recently left, so maybe things can change now.)  He felt that bundling an ebook with a print book would devalue the ebook.  I argued that it’s the text, not the format, that people are paying for.  An ebook is worthless–it’s the text that is worth something.

In books, we are lucky in some ways, compared to music, video games, and film.  Physical books are showpieces.  (Calm down, game owners.  I know you like your physical collections of old media too.)  But in general, the public considers physical books to be more collectible than other physical mediums.  They want to own books, display them, feel them.

One hallmark of my career has been to make those showpiece print editions as desirable as possible.  Lavish art.  Solid construction.  Extras such as foiling and the like.  I’ve been arguing about this with publishers for years too.  My view is this: bundle the ebook with a nice print edition, and many of them will buy that edition.  We’ll not only have a happy reader more likely to buy from us in the future, but we will also make a little more money in the long run.  We won’t devalue the ebook.  We’ll create an audience who wants to own and display our books–as long as they don’t have to sacrifice the convenience of reading the ebook when they want.

My kickstarter has proven this.  52% of people, when given the option of a free ebook with their print copy, have chosen to get the print copy.  Compare this to the 25% or 17% of my recent New York publisher releases.  The fans have done this even though these books (by nature of the fact that we’re commissioning a lot of artwork for them and are paying for the expensive cover treatment and construction) cost more than a lot of hardcovers.

Bundle the ebook with the print book, and of course more people will buy the print book.

This isn’t even getting into DRM, which is a practice that punishes only those who want to do what is right by supporting the release, rather than pirating.  There hasn’t been as much talk of this lately, but I haven’t forgotten.  I think people should be able to move their ebooks between devices, and store them locally in case their chosen platform vanishes.  (To their credit, Tor Books has released DRM-free ebooks.  That is not the case at my other publishers.)

Collectively, however, I feel that the publishing industry is backwards-thinking about ebooks.  They should be finding a way to include an ebook for every print book sold, especially the hardcovers and trade paperbacks.  (I can understand better not doing it on the small “pocket-sized” mass market paperbacks, which tend to have very low margins.)  I think they should be paying a higher royalty, and should be looking for answers other than DRM.  (User convenience, over time, has proven to be a bigger factor in preventing piracy than anything else.  Beyond that, I mean…  Look at me.  My audience is a smart, tech-savvy group.  And they buy Stormlight books, even though they are DRM-free and undoubtedly among the quickest on the market to show up to be pirated.)  People want to support authors.  They get excited by doing so.

 

My next point proves this as well.  For years, I’ve talked to publishers until I’m blue in the face about providing a premium product for those who want to buy it.  A step above the hardcover.

I don’t know how many of you remember when the Lord of the Rings Special Editions first launched, but they came with bookends.  The DVDs…you could buy an edition that had cool bookends.  Those things were, as the kids say (used to say?), dope.

For years I’ve been trying to get publishers to understand what the video game industry learned long ago: provide a larger spectrum of price points, and let people choose what they want.  I think we, in books, are in an even better position.  The ballooning cost of video games means that they can’t often sell games as cheap (in digital) as we can sell books.

I believe strongly in the existence of a low-priced ebook and a low-priced audiobook, along with a nice hardcover above that, and a really nice merchandise bundle above that.  Bookstores are struggling.  I guarantee if we could figure out how to make it work logistically, they’d love to be able to sell a really nice bundle for books that includes swag.  I mean, Barnes and Nobles are one-third toy stores already.

One of my biggest regrets with the Kickstarter is cutting bookstores out.  That’s part of why this will only be one of my tools going forward, not my primary one.  I want bookstores to stick around.  I believe that a browsing experience (and at the best bookstores, a hand-selling experience) is vital for keeping a good environment for up-and-coming authors to be discovered.   It helps mid-list authors a great deal as well.  People walking along and looking for something new to buy helps them find new authors organically, and I believe my career was (in part) made by booksellers hand-selling my books and by people browsing for new authors.  Things that are much harder to do digitally.

Beyond that, the bookstores are the only hedge we have against Amazon right now.  We lose that, and things get really bad.  This is another big reason why I’m not going to be kickstarting the next Stormlight book, despite what is happening here.  I will use kickstarter more in the future, obviously.  (We’ll be doing Stormlight miniatures later this year, and then the Words of Radiance leatherbound next year.)  I’ll likely even find some other first-run books to Kickstart in the future.  (I really would like to someday do a collection of picture books based on “The Dog and the Dragon,” “Wandersail,” and “The Girl Who Looked Up.”)

But I also really think traditional publishing is ignoring opportunities.  I’ve talked to them a lot about what I wanted to do with bundling merchandise with books in a way that lets readers choose what they want.  And lo and behold we have this Kickstarter, again lending me some weight.  24% of people at the time of writing this chose to get physical swag with their books–without even knowing what’s in the boxes!  (It will be awesome, I promise.)

This is huge.  I know it would be even bigger if we could get them to Europe, Canada, and Australia without insane shipping prices.  (We’re working on this, I promise.  It’s more tricky than we thought it would be, but we will figure it out.  We’ve got some friends who’ve made it work better, and we’re getting advice for them.  I hope to have this worked out for the Words of Radiance leatherbound.)

Now, let me be clear on some things.  I’ve said that I both believe in low-priced ebooks, but also am annoyed that indie authors can’t price higher.  That’s because I think these things aren’t mutually exclusive.  I think that options for authors are good.  I think most ebooks are fine (even preferable) at the $10 price point (or below) that Amazon has mandated.  But not all books are created equal.  If an indie author wants to write a 400,000-word epic like The Way of Kings, they can’t charge more for it than the 100,000-word book that most authors are releasing.  So they either have to take a big hit in earnings, after spending four times as long on this book, or they have to split it apart–and interrupt the flow of the pacing.

So the option to choose is important.  And I do think fans should look at things like length and art inclusions when determining whether an ebook is overpriced or not.  (Although Amazon still charges the authors for the size of their ebooks when downloaded. Usually this charge is miniscule–but adding a lot of art can drive this price up to really relevant levels.)

My final point on this one, I promise, is that I think a variety of price points for books (each with good value, mind you) benefits everyone.  If we look at ten hypothetical fans, and the way traditional publishing has approached presenting them with goods, we basically get two price points.  We get what I’ll call middle-expensive ($35) and we get what I’ll call middle-cheap ($15).

Of those ten fans, two might not be able to afford either edition.  Of the remaining eight, four might choose the middle-expensive (in this case, the hardcover or more expensive ebook during the hardcover run.)  Four might choose the middle-cheap (paperback, or ebook after price drop to match.)  We have earned $200.

If we were just to create four options instead, however, we much better serve fan desires.  We create a cheap option as the ebook at $10, or the pocket paperback for the same price.  We could keep a middle-cheap version as a nice, oversized paperback ($15).  We could keep a middle-expensive version as a hardcover ($35).  And we could create an expensive version as the leatherbound or merchandise edition ($100).

What we find in economics is that some people (say one of the ten) will want the really expensive option.  Let’s say one of the four in the hardcover category moves to buying a cheap option, as we’re now releasing it simultaneously–so they don’t have to choose between buying an expensive product they don’t really want and getting the book a year later.  We assume maybe two in the paperback category move to buying the cheap option, because they always just wanted a disposable copy, and will just buy the cheapest option available.   But two in that category take the $15 nicer paperback as they do want something nice for their shelf, just not the more expensive hardcover. Then the two people who couldn’t afford it before move in to buy, now, the cheap edition.

Our final distribution is this:

$100: One fan

$35: Two Fans

$15: Two Fans

$5: 5 fans

How much do we make?  $225.  We make more money, and magically do it by making more of the fans happy.  Those who weren’t able to buy books now can.  Those who were buying editions they didn’t really want now have the editions they do want.  And the fan who really wanted to buy in and get something cool for their shelf–well they’ve got a product that they like more as well.

We’re seeing this happen right now in the Kickstarter.  I don’t have to charge $15 or $16 for my ebooks, as Tor often does even for my shorter novels at release.  I can offer a variety of price points.  (I can’t do paperbacks yet, as that’s too much for my people to distribute.  But I can do an audiobook for that middle price point, and across my various kickstarters, I can offer leatherbounds and/or swag bundles at the higher price points for those who want them.)

With this distribution model instead of the more rigid one used by New York forever, I can give everyone an experience closer to what they want.  Everyone is happier.  Fewer people (ideally no people) have to buy an edition they don’t want in order to read the book sooner–and I actually make a little more.  This is what I think traditional publishing should be doing.

TLDR: Why Kickstart This Project?

For many reasons.

First, I want to give my team experience with direct fulfillment of a frontlist (meaning new, not a reprint) book.  This is to build an infrastructure and experience to make it so that if something catastrophic did happen (traditional publishing collapses, Amazon delists my books, etc.) we have the knowledge to handle this ourselves.  That takes the gun away from my head.

Second, I wanted to prove some things to my publishers in New York.  We should be bundling ebooks with the print editions.  We should be offering merchandise bundles on new hardcovers.  We shouldn’t be afraid of DRM-free ebooks.  I think one of the best things we could do to help independent bookstores would be to find a way to include an ebook code inside hardcovers.  (For a DRM-free ebook, able to be read on any major device.)  Obviously, we have to overcome the hurdle of those being taken by people browsing the books, but other industries have solved this.  We can too.

Third, I want to try to help create an alternative to Amazon for independent authors.  Platform is king in our current world, and persuading people to migrate is hard.  Every new person who signs up for Kickstarter to buy this bundle is one who might hop over to browse other publishing projects.  Or at the very least is one who is now familiar with the platform–so that when another author says, “Hey, I’m Kickstarting this book” they already have an account and are more likely to back it.

(As a note, I recognize that some feel I have received undue attention for this kickstarter–or that I’ve sucked the air out of the room for other projects.  It’s possible that you’re right.  However, my gut tells me the opposite is true.  That a rising tide raises all boats.  I feel the best thing I can do for other authors right now is persuade more readers to look into getting books direct from writers.  Bringing a hundred thousand more people to kickstarter, many of whom have never brought from the website before, is–I think–going to achieve more for authors in the long run than most other things I could have done with my time.  Publishing these books through my traditional channels certainly wouldn’t have changed anything for anyone.)

I don’t know if Kickstarter is the perfect solution to the problems I’ve outlined in this post.  It has its own issues.  I mean, the top ten projects I managed to leapfrog over this week includes at least one notable disaster that didn’t end up fulfilling.  (Along with some other tragic stories.  Video game Kickstarters seem particularly rife with these problems.)  Kickstarter is a bad venue for people who don’t have an existing fan base or some other way to get attention.  If you are a brand-new author, you are unlikely to have success convincing people to Kickstart a book without some kind of really good hook.  It’s therefore a bad place to launch new talent.  (Something that, for all their flaws, both Amazon indie and traditional publishing can do far better.)

Beyond that, doing a Kickstarter that delivers physical media like I am is beyond the abilities of most authors, even ones of my equivalent sales in the publishing world.  I have a large fulfillment team I’ve built over years to send people our leatherbound books and merchandise.  I have in-house editorial, publicity, and art teams–I even have an HR director now.  Most people don’t become authors so they can have an HR director, I can tell you that.  I recommend you have a look at John Scalzi’s explanation of this point; he’s a smart man, and explains it very well.

But suffice it to say this: I likely have the largest support team of any novelist in the world.  And even we are going to have to work hard and level up to fulfill all these orders.

At the same time, I do think it’s good to have more options.  And if Kickstarter became a way to help indie authors deliver ebooks and audiobooks (the latter having a pretty big start-up cost for a lot of indie writers) digitally without having to be part of the Amazon system…well, I’m all for that.  Again, not because I hate Amazon.  Amazon has been net positive for the book world and has created a great deal of opportunity for authors.  I’m glad Amazon exists, and I’m going to continue to work with them. But we also need more options.  Even having one more place to realistically self-publish would be wonderful.

This is a step I could take.  It’s something I’ve wanted to try for years.  I’m certainly not the first to try it–not even the first bestselling fantasy novelist.  (Michael J. Sullivan has been using Kickstarter for almost a decade now to indie publish books.  He’s an excellent writer, and recently had a very successful Kickstarter of his own that deserves attention.)

I don’t think this is the death knell of traditional publishing (as some have claimed) or even the singular event that will change everything.  But I do think I’ve proven some things, and this might help me and others pry the door open for future changes.

The goal was to prove something to myself, to my team, and to my publishers.  We’ve done that handily.

And storms.  We still have two weeks remaining.

Brandon

I Am Flabbergasted!

I Am Flabbergasted!

Adam here. I will update this text once the video has been transcribed.

The Lost Metal (Mistborn 7) + Weekly Update

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Sunreach Sunreach Sunreach Sunreach Click Here Click Here Click Here PREORDER HERE Now Available! The Stormlight Archive Book 4 LEARN MORE setREVStartSize({c: 'rev_slider_2_1',rl:[1240,1024,778,480],el:[300,240,180,110],gw:[1300,1024,778,480],gh:[300,240,180,110],type:'standard',justify:'',layout:'fullwidth',mh:"0"});if (window.RS_MODULES!==undefined && window.RS_MODULES.modules!==undefined && window.RS_MODULES.modules["revslider21"]!==undefined) {window.RS_MODULES.modules["revslider21"].once = false;window.revapi2 = undefined;if (window.RS_MODULES.checkMinimal!==undefined) window.RS_MODULES.checkMinimal()} STATE OF THE
SANDERSON

Every December
Brandon updates
readers on the state
of each of his projects.

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Adam here. I will update this text once the video has been transcribed.

The Lost Metal Weekly Update

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Sunreach Sunreach Sunreach Sunreach Click Here Click Here Click Here PREORDER HERE Now Available! The Stormlight Archive Book 4 LEARN MORE setREVStartSize({c: 'rev_slider_2_2',rl:[1240,1024,778,480],el:[300,240,180,110],gw:[1300,1024,778,480],gh:[300,240,180,110],type:'standard',justify:'',layout:'fullwidth',mh:"0"});if (window.RS_MODULES!==undefined && window.RS_MODULES.modules!==undefined && window.RS_MODULES.modules["revslider22"]!==undefined) {window.RS_MODULES.modules["revslider22"].once = false;window.revapi2_2 = undefined;if (window.RS_MODULES.checkMinimal!==undefined) window.RS_MODULES.checkMinimal()} STATE OF THE
SANDERSON

Every December
Brandon updates
readers on the state
of each of his projects.

#default-btn-b9543c38030eb692e97a5440fa751470 { border-radius: 1px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px;}.btn-shadow#default-btn-b9543c38030eb692e97a5440fa751470 { box-shadow: 0 1px 6px rgba(0,0,0,0.12); transition: box-shadow 0.2s ease-out, opacity 0.45s;}.btn-shadow#default-btn-b9543c38030eb692e97a5440fa751470:hover { box-shadow: 0 5px 11px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.18), 0 4px 15px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15);}.btn-flat#default-btn-b9543c38030eb692e97a5440fa751470 { box-shadow: none;}.btn-flat#default-btn-b9543c38030eb692e97a5440fa751470:hover { box-shadow: none;}#default-btn-b9543c38030eb692e97a5440fa751470.ico-right-side > i { margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 8px;}#default-btn-b9543c38030eb692e97a5440fa751470 > i { margin-right: 8px; font-size: 12px;}#default-btn-b9543c38030eb692e97a5440fa751470:not(:hover) { border-width: 0px; color: #b63636; background: none !important; padding: 12px 18px 12px 18px;}#default-btn-b9543c38030eb692e97a5440fa751470:not(:hover) * { color: #b63636;}#default-btn-b9543c38030eb692e97a5440fa751470:hover { border-width: 0px; color: #b63636; background: none !important; padding: 12px 18px 12px 18px;}#default-btn-b9543c38030eb692e97a5440fa751470:hover * { color: #b63636;}#default-btn-b9543c38030eb692e97a5440fa751470.ico-right-side > i { margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 8px;}#default-btn-b9543c38030eb692e97a5440fa751470 > i { margin-right: 8px;}READ THE LATESTEVENTS

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#default-btn-42964f34e3695ae4756100b1ebfd27b2 { border-radius: 1px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px;}.btn-shadow#default-btn-42964f34e3695ae4756100b1ebfd27b2 { box-shadow: 0 1px 6px rgba(0,0,0,0.12); transition: box-shadow 0.2s ease-out, opacity 0.45s;}.btn-shadow#default-btn-42964f34e3695ae4756100b1ebfd27b2:hover { box-shadow: 0 5px 11px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.18), 0 4px 15px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15);}.btn-flat#default-btn-42964f34e3695ae4756100b1ebfd27b2 { box-shadow: none;}.btn-flat#default-btn-42964f34e3695ae4756100b1ebfd27b2:hover { box-shadow: none;}#default-btn-42964f34e3695ae4756100b1ebfd27b2.ico-right-side > i { margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 8px;}#default-btn-42964f34e3695ae4756100b1ebfd27b2 > i { margin-right: 8px; font-size: 12px;}#default-btn-42964f34e3695ae4756100b1ebfd27b2:not(:hover) { border-width: 0px; color: #b63636; background: none !important; padding: 12px 18px 12px 18px;}#default-btn-42964f34e3695ae4756100b1ebfd27b2:not(:hover) * { color: #b63636;}#default-btn-42964f34e3695ae4756100b1ebfd27b2:hover { border-width: 0px; color: #b63636; background: none !important; padding: 12px 18px 12px 18px;}#default-btn-42964f34e3695ae4756100b1ebfd27b2:hover * { color: #b63636;}#default-btn-42964f34e3695ae4756100b1ebfd27b2.ico-right-side > i { margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 8px;}#default-btn-42964f34e3695ae4756100b1ebfd27b2 > i { margin-right: 8px;}READ THE LATESTPROGRESS BARSCytonic Final Proofread 100%Wax & Wayne Book 4 (Mistborn 7) Draft 2.0 100%Skyward Four Draft 1.0 100%Evershore (Skyward Novella 3) Final Draft 100% .vc_custom_1632865261459{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-right-width: 0px !important;border-left-width: 0px !important;padding-right: 0px !important;padding-left: 20px !important;background-color: #000000 !important;}.vc_custom_1574525412312{padding-top: 20px !important;padding-bottom: 20px !important;background-color: #040c16 !important;}.vc_custom_1571836774767{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-right-width: 0px !important;border-left-width: 0px !important;padding-right: 0px !important;padding-left: 0px !important;}.vc_custom_1605229319047{margin-right: 10px !important;margin-left: 20px !important;padding-top: 10px !important;padding-right: 10px !important;padding-bottom: 10px !important;padding-left: 10px !important;background-image: url(https://477612.smushcdn.com/1512865/w...) !important;background-position: center !important;background-repeat: no-repeat !important;background-size: cover !important;}.vc_custom_1573153541066{margin-right: 10px !important;margin-left: 10px !important;}.vc_custom_1573153549868{margin-right: 20px !important;margin-left: 10px !important;border-right-width: 10px !important;padding-top: 10px !important;padding-right: 20px !important;padding-left: 20px !important;background-color: #1f2c3e !important;}.vc_custom_1574844535369{padding-top: 10px !important;padding-bottom: 5px !important;background-color: #1f2c3e !important;}.vc_custom_1574844544176{margin-top: 20px !important;padding-top: 10px !important;padding-bottom: 5px !important;background-color: #1f2c3e !important;}The Lost Metal Weekly Update

Hey! Brandon here with your Weekly Update. Not a whole lot to talk about this week, just I’ve been plugging away at Wax and Wayne 4, The Lost Metal. I am, bing!, right at 70%, and I am ready for the home stretch to finish this thing off. I’m very pleased with the book but there’s still a lot to do. I’m going to have to do this revision, and then there’s going to be one more that’s the final polish once this goes to the line editor. So we’re not quite done with this book yet, but this is the hard revision. So I am glad to be working my way through that, and I plan to finish that very soon and then launch into the new Stormlight book as my next big project.

Somewhere in here I’m going to have to do some revisions on Skyward 4, but we’ll see when I manage to do that. I think that I need to be doing Stormlight. So keep an eye on this channel. We’re going to have—as I launch into it, I’ll be showing you things. We actually have some concept art for Stormlight 5 that I’ll start showing off as I start working on the book. So that’ll be fun.

As always, thank you, guys, so much for reading my books and following this channel.

Update on The Lost Metal

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Sunreach Sunreach Sunreach Sunreach Click Here Click Here Click Here PREORDER HERE Now Available! The Stormlight Archive Book 4 LEARN MORE setREVStartSize({c: 'rev_slider_2_3',rl:[1240,1024,778,480],el:[300,240,180,110],gw:[1300,1024,778,480],gh:[300,240,180,110],type:'standard',justify:'',layout:'fullwidth',mh:"0"});if (window.RS_MODULES!==undefined && window.RS_MODULES.modules!==undefined && window.RS_MODULES.modules["revslider23"]!==undefined) {window.RS_MODULES.modules["revslider23"].once = false;window.revapi2_3 = undefined;if (window.RS_MODULES.checkMinimal!==undefined) window.RS_MODULES.checkMinimal()} STATE OF THE
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Every December
Brandon updates
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of each of his projects.

#default-btn-b9543c38030eb692e97a5440fa751470 { border-radius: 1px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px;}.btn-shadow#default-btn-b9543c38030eb692e97a5440fa751470 { box-shadow: 0 1px 6px rgba(0,0,0,0.12); transition: box-shadow 0.2s ease-out, opacity 0.45s;}.btn-shadow#default-btn-b9543c38030eb692e97a5440fa751470:hover { box-shadow: 0 5px 11px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.18), 0 4px 15px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15);}.btn-flat#default-btn-b9543c38030eb692e97a5440fa751470 { box-shadow: none;}.btn-flat#default-btn-b9543c38030eb692e97a5440fa751470:hover { box-shadow: none;}#default-btn-b9543c38030eb692e97a5440fa751470.ico-right-side > i { margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 8px;}#default-btn-b9543c38030eb692e97a5440fa751470 > i { margin-right: 8px; font-size: 12px;}#default-btn-b9543c38030eb692e97a5440fa751470:not(:hover) { border-width: 0px; color: #b63636; background: none !important; padding: 12px 18px 12px 18px;}#default-btn-b9543c38030eb692e97a5440fa751470:not(:hover) * { color: #b63636;}#default-btn-b9543c38030eb692e97a5440fa751470:hover { border-width: 0px; color: #b63636; background: none !important; padding: 12px 18px 12px 18px;}#default-btn-b9543c38030eb692e97a5440fa751470:hover * { color: #b63636;}#default-btn-b9543c38030eb692e97a5440fa751470.ico-right-side > i { margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 8px;}#default-btn-b9543c38030eb692e97a5440fa751470 > i { margin-right: 8px;}READ THE LATESTEVENTS

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Brandon updates readers on Reddit.

#default-btn-42964f34e3695ae4756100b1ebfd27b2 { border-radius: 1px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px;}.btn-shadow#default-btn-42964f34e3695ae4756100b1ebfd27b2 { box-shadow: 0 1px 6px rgba(0,0,0,0.12); transition: box-shadow 0.2s ease-out, opacity 0.45s;}.btn-shadow#default-btn-42964f34e3695ae4756100b1ebfd27b2:hover { box-shadow: 0 5px 11px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.18), 0 4px 15px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15);}.btn-flat#default-btn-42964f34e3695ae4756100b1ebfd27b2 { box-shadow: none;}.btn-flat#default-btn-42964f34e3695ae4756100b1ebfd27b2:hover { box-shadow: none;}#default-btn-42964f34e3695ae4756100b1ebfd27b2.ico-right-side > i { margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 8px;}#default-btn-42964f34e3695ae4756100b1ebfd27b2 > i { margin-right: 8px; font-size: 12px;}#default-btn-42964f34e3695ae4756100b1ebfd27b2:not(:hover) { border-width: 0px; color: #b63636; background: none !important; padding: 12px 18px 12px 18px;}#default-btn-42964f34e3695ae4756100b1ebfd27b2:not(:hover) * { color: #b63636;}#default-btn-42964f34e3695ae4756100b1ebfd27b2:hover { border-width: 0px; color: #b63636; background: none !important; padding: 12px 18px 12px 18px;}#default-btn-42964f34e3695ae4756100b1ebfd27b2:hover * { color: #b63636;}#default-btn-42964f34e3695ae4756100b1ebfd27b2.ico-right-side > i { margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 8px;}#default-btn-42964f34e3695ae4756100b1ebfd27b2 > i { margin-right: 8px;}READ THE LATESTPROGRESS BARSCytonic Final Proofread 100%Wax & Wayne Book 4 (Mistborn 7) Draft 2.0 100%Skyward Four Draft 1.0 100%Evershore (Skyward Novella 3) Final Draft 100% .vc_custom_1632865261459{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-right-width: 0px !important;border-left-width: 0px !important;padding-right: 0px !important;padding-left: 20px !important;background-color: #000000 !important;}.vc_custom_1574525412312{padding-top: 20px !important;padding-bottom: 20px !important;background-color: #040c16 !important;}.vc_custom_1571836774767{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-right-width: 0px !important;border-left-width: 0px !important;padding-right: 0px !important;padding-left: 0px !important;}.vc_custom_1605229319047{margin-right: 10px !important;margin-left: 20px !important;padding-top: 10px !important;padding-right: 10px !important;padding-bottom: 10px !important;padding-left: 10px !important;background-image: url(https://477612.smushcdn.com/1512865/w...) !important;background-position: center !important;background-repeat: no-repeat !important;background-size: cover !important;}.vc_custom_1573153541066{margin-right: 10px !important;margin-left: 10px !important;}.vc_custom_1573153549868{margin-right: 20px !important;margin-left: 10px !important;border-right-width: 10px !important;padding-top: 10px !important;padding-right: 20px !important;padding-left: 20px !important;background-color: #1f2c3e !important;}.vc_custom_1574844535369{padding-top: 10px !important;padding-bottom: 5px !important;background-color: #1f2c3e !important;}.vc_custom_1574844544176{margin-top: 20px !important;padding-top: 10px !important;padding-bottom: 5px !important;background-color: #1f2c3e !important;}Update on The Lost Metal

Brandon here with your Weekly Update. I have been working hard on Wax and Wayne 4, The Lost Metal. I dedicated a lot of time to it last week and I am at, bing!, 60%, just under the 2/3 mark on that one. I will cross the 2/3 mark next week and be pushing towards the end pretty quickly next week. Which is really good because I need to be getting to Stormlight. Fortunately, I have—in my schedule there’s a little bit of wiggle room. And so even though I wanted to start it earlier than this, I should be just fine. We’ll see. You’ll be able to follow along once I get going at it. But I’m feeling really good about Wax and Wayne. I’m excited. I’m really excited for you guys to be able to read it.

That is all I have for you this week in the Weekly Update. But we will be back next week to tell you how things are going again.