Brandon Sanderson's $14.5 million Kickstarter

[Bill Hiatt]

Of course, Sanderson has already sold 20 million books, so he has quite a fan base. We ordinary mortals couldn't pull this off. (I'm lucky if I can get people to click buy. There aren't many people who'd throw money at me just so that I can write my next book.)

What is interesting is that even someone like Sanderson sees being a hybrid as worthwhile. However, he isn't just self-publishing. He's basically using the Kickstarter and similar efforts before to run his own publishing company. That even includes a warehouse to store the paperbacks. No POD for him!

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/03/books/brandon-sanderson-kickstarter.html

(He's apparently been self-publishing ebooks since about 2010, which I didn't even realize.)

[Bill Hiatt]

Yes, his operation is several orders of magnitude bigger than the typical self publisher. It doesn't surprise me that he has his own editorial staff.

It is interesting, though, that trad publishing can't entirely fulfill his needs. You'd think he'd be able to negotiate any deal he wanted. But perhaps his publisher isn't keeping up with the times. (I don't know offhand who his publisher is.)

[LilyBLily]

That happened last year, so it would be interesting to hear an update on how his project is coming.

Sanderson offered a fairly complex array of items of interest to fans, in which his regular publisher would not have expertise or interest. A number of sf/fantasy authors do well with special autographed and illustrated print editions, for instance. Most trad pubs are in the business of simple mass production, not leather bindings and embossed slipcases. They'll shell out for a cover artist, and they'll maybe offer a good advance and a nice royalty break, and their sub rights department will sell translation rights to Hungary, but when it comes to specialized sub rights like autographed limited editions with leather bindings, they're at sea.

For any trad author with a following, the money to be made in self-publishing, plus the control, could be very substantial. Is it worth the aggravation? Sanderson is willing to find out.

[djmills]

I have studied Kickstarter and participate in some, but have not run my own Kickstarter, but what I have heard so far is that putting each new book up on Kickstarter before self publishing makes more money than an advance from a publisher. Then once the Kickstarter is full filled, publish the new book on Amz, etc. That way you get the usual sales while "word of mouth" is happening.

This process/practice is better than wasting years trying to get a publisher, then having to accept the small advance and low percentage of each sale.

The Kickstarter Publisher section has been slowly building a group of readers for ages. The Sanderson Kickstarter spread the word to every reader everywhere, which is very good for Kickstarter and Indie publishing. 

[Bill Hiatt]

Beginning each book on Kickstarter would be an interesting approach, but I imagine it would take a decent following to get very far with it. I've seen Kickstarters dribble along with very little money accumulating, though that was some time ago. But at least at the time, many of the ones I saw barely got off the ground.

[djmills]

The ones that barely get off the ground can be cancelled. Then restructure with a lower Kickstarter amount to be raised, and with more giveaways in goals once funded for the small amount.

Each Kickstarter would be announced to own email list, on own blog, on Proboard groups. Then ask each person who donated to the kickstarter to blog/tweet/etc to their own friends.

[Luke Everhart]

That's a really old NYT piece. His kickstarter reached $41,754,153 in its 30 day run.
The guy is a good writer and a great storyteller.
Since he was brought up, anyone not selling well should really look up his BYU lectures on writing. He teaches a college class at BYU every year (for the last decade at least) and allows the content to be shared on youtube for free. Between his channel and other randoms you can find all the lectures (roughly 1 hour per class) of each year on youtube going back to 2012. While the broad strokes of each year's class are the same, the particulars vary a bit so it's worth watching the same lecture subject from different years in many cases.

Happen to have a few years linked so here's some:

2016 series (1st vid and rest of that years classes available in the channel)

2014 series (1st vid and rest of that years classes available in the channel)

2020 series (1st vid and rest of that years classes available in the channel)

[Bill Hiatt]

Yes, it's an older article than I realized. I forgot to set the time filters to only pull up recent stuff. Still, it's interesting for people who haven't heard about it (as I hadn't).

Thanks for the information about the Sanderson college course. I'll check those out when I have time.

[Luke Everhart]

Yes, it's an older article than I realized. I forgot to set the time filters to only pull up recent stuff. Still, it's interesting for people who haven't heard about it (as I hadn't).

Thanks for the information about the Sanderson college course. I'll check those out when I have time.

To be clear, I certainly wasn't implying it wasn't worth posting by virtue of being old. It was a cool event in books/publishing and worth another thread. I just wanted to emphasize that the $14 mil grew to over $41 million by the kickstarters 30 day end since the NYT highlighted the first 24hrs take.

👍 YW re the course info. When a writer's off-contract, covid-shutdown-downtime writing (why he wrote the kickstarter books this time) garners $41.7 million in fan support that writer knows how to entertain readers.

[Bill Hiatt]

Yes, the Kickstarter is a great testimonial to how much he's impressed his readers.

[Hopscotch]

Stuff I learned from Brandon Sanderson.

 

[Cabbages and kings]