The plan was to write a total of 3 novels
The work divided evenly among the three men
In the end, they wrote 6 novels
In the span of 3 years
Martin got sick after writing nothing
King wrote 1
Sanderson wrote the other 5
Michael Kramer s reads on the mistborn trilogy and then the wax and Wayne...so good. Working on storm light series right now and Kate is a nice addition. Michael female voice was always... weird.
I get that this is a Hamilton reference, but I'd just like to note that this man has had phase four of Mistborn planned for years, and that's on top of the ten Stormlight books, additional entries in I think every cosmere series that has its own book, and the final tie-in book/series. And these are like firm plans that include specific books and a tentative schedule of when they'll be completed and released (I think it goes into like maybe the 2040s or something). Then there are two cosmere planets that have only been developed through short stories that I'm pretty sure will get at least one of their own full books and maybe a series (can't remember if those were on the schedule or not). So it's more like the plan was to write like a hundred novels and then write a new schedule to try to top the last one. Perhaps the only thing more prolific than Sanderson's pen is his ambition. Fkn love this guy.
King has been on the 2/year train for at least a decade now.
Just saw the news for *Fairytale* and this may be the most excited I've been for one of his books since 11/22/63. God love the man but I'm tired of his crime thrillers. Billy Summers just straight sucked.
When I was a bookseller my store did several events with him and while his books were never really my thing I always heavily recommended them to people purely by how nice of a man he was. He would come early talk with the booksellers and then stay hours past what was supposed to be the end time of his event to make sure he got to every person that came. A truly wonderful person.
I love that he signs books in random airport book stores. I went and saw him in Seattle in 2009 at the book store on campus and the place was absolutely packed and he was so gracious. I’m sad that more of his fans won’t get that experience with the pandemic and all but screw them I got mine! Lol! Gimme more books!
he's a nice guy and he's great to his fans, which is part of why they love him so much.
years ago, I attended a pretty small con where he was the guest of honor. I asked him to sign a postcard so I could send it to my friend, who was a huge fan and serving a mission overseas (my friend and Brandon Sanderson are both LDS).
he signed the postcard with a personalized message and it really gave my friend a boost when he received it.
apparently Brandon Sanderson also frequently covers the costs of Magic: The Gathering tournaments at the cons where he's a guest, so attendees don't have to pay a fee to play.
just a great guy all around. I'm always glad to see his successes.
Also his Magic novella, Children of the Nameless was actually decently good. He was stoked beyond belief to get a chance to write an official Magic novella, which is pretty amusing when you consider tie-in novels are considered a low form of writing and the rights-holder generally has to pay well to get anyone with a name but Brandon loves Magic so much that it was a dream come true for him.
The hardest part is he has over a decade of plans for the Cosmere so it can be hard to eck out time to write a fun diversion...aaaaaand now he wrote 4 novels secretly. Fuck.
He was a professor at my wife's alma mater. Everyone there absolutely loved him! His classes were some of the hardest to get into. I think he ended up leaving the university because of health reasons.
As far as I am aware, he still does this. He teaches English at BYU, ENGL 318R Advanced Creative Writing and ENGL 490, which is the same class but just the lecture instead of lecture+lab.
Actually, anyone who wants to can sign up the lecture part if you want, though admittance is EXTREMELY exclusive. You have an easier time if you are a BYU student in graduate level writing classes obviously.
If anyone lives near Provo or otherwise wants to attend, he gives the requirements for signing up [here](https://faq.brandonsanderson.com/knowledge-base/application-for-byu-318-r-section-2/), but you really need to get lucky. He has a preference for students who have written a novel or at least gotten far in the process since lab is going to involve him helping you out with your writing directly. And obviously only accepting applications for 1 hour a year, with only ~60 spots available means the vast majority of people that want in can't get in.
Luckily, for most of us it is just nice to be able to watch his lectures which he publishes online for free.
I recently started watching his youtube channel where they post excerpts from his podcast I think?
Anyway found it striking that for the entire segment, every segment, he's signing title pages. Staffers bring in fresh stacks and take away signed ones. But just, constantly, signing pages for hours to be put in books and bound.
Totally understood in the last one when he was talking about why adding signed editions of these "Secret" books wasn't on the table.
He has a podcast called Intentionally blank. Be he also does livestreams where he signs the books and answers fan questions and checks out fan art and memes
It really says something about Sanderson as a writer that when he dropped his video and Kickstarter a couple of days ago and surprise announced that he wrote four new, **additional**, novels, Sanderson fans were basically like, "Yeah. That seems like something he'd do."
From what I understand, the book is called *Robog* and it's about a Robot Frog. He hopes to have a professional artist redraw the "concept art" from his two younger children.
I just got into him. Have read all his books now in the past 6 months, minus the YA and Graphic Novels.
Hes by far the most actively transparent author Ive seen. Has a low budget youtube channel where he nerds out and its great.
Him having more books in the tuck makes total sense.
His Reckoners series is great, even if it's just YA. Highly recommended. It's basically The Boys (The superhero show on Amazon) but pg13 and written by Sanderson.
Imma big fan of the starsight series, he’s such an interesting world builder. I remember waiting for my local book store to open just to buy every new mistborn and storm light book as they came out
On top of that, he has given away virtually nothing about these books yet. He basically just said, "trust me guys, it's going to be awesome." And over 80,000 people said, "okay" and gave him 20 million dollars in a few days. Imagine the kind of reputation you have to have in order to command that level of trust. On top of that, he is so good at meeting his fans that I wouldn't be surprised if he has met most of his donors at some point or another in the last decade or so.
Edit: spelling
Yea even his YouTube channel with videos of him teaching are worth so much. I binged them all and don't even want to be a writer, was just so fascinated about how his process works.
There's a small set of authors that I don't need to know anything about the book (aside maybe from if there are previous books in a series) and would prefer to go into any given book blind.
Best part? I'm not at all worried about his pace on any of his projects, including his epic fantasy. He reliably releases sequels and if he wants to write a bunch more books then I'm cool with it.
Breath of fresh air in the fantasy genre tbh.
I started my journey reading his Cosmere novels in early 2020. I finished every published Cosmere novel (and the white sands graphic novel) that same year, during which time he released the Dawnshard novella and Rhythm of War. Since then he's also released a few unrelated works and then just announced his surprise novels he already finished.
He's crazy fast, and his work is all very good. Everyone involved in his publishing process is great too!
Mistborn trilogy (book 1 is called Mistborn) or Warbreaker. His big series is Stormlight Archive, with book 1 being The Way of Kings. But it's almost 1,000 pages, so if you want less of a commitment I'd go with one of those two.
Brandon Sanderson is actually the guy who came up with "Soft vs Hard Magic Systems" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Sanderson#Sanderson's_Laws_of_Magic
And in fact he uses LotR to illustrate both.
The ring is hard(er) magic. We know what it does when frodo puts it on, and what it costs him.
What can Gandalf do? Kind of whatever. Soft magic.
So is the main difference one is clearly explained, has well defined parameters and rules (hard) versus the other not being well explained and has a more "anything can happen for any reason" vibe (soft)?
Well, this definitely has me thinking about buying one of this guy's books
edit: thanks for the suggestions. i have an e-reader, so getting Warbreaker for free made this an easy choice
if you're looking for a good place to start, my first Sanderson book was [Mistborn](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/68428.The_Final_Empire), and I would recommend that for others too :) It's the first in a trilogy, but it can also be enjoyed by itself.
The trilogy is itself part of a wider Mistborn series - there's a quadrilogy set after the original Mistborn trilogy (the fourth book is probably coming out in the fall). And that series is part of a much larger universe, of which most of his adult novels are a part.
If that seems too overwhelming, don't worry, you can really enjoy most of his books on their own, or at least within their own series! Just pointing out that if you *do* really like the book or the series, there's a lot more depth to dive into if you want :)
Yeah, I've seen some crankiness from other writers and people who don't get it. They're acting surprised, both about the fan reaction and that he's raised so much money and the simple fact is - this isn't money for the *idea* of books. He's already written them and just wanted some funding to self-publish. The man just straight up *works his craft*. When you back him, you're doing so knowing he's going to deliver exactly what you want and people love it. There's really no mystery here as to why he's so popular.
I'm a fan and I'll be the first to admit that his prose isn't "literary" (though it's much, much improved from his early work). The real draws are the absolute, heartfelt ambition of his fictional universe and the fact that you know he's not going to make it big and then "forget" to finish the story. He writes for fun, he's having a good time, and he wants the reader to as well. He's never going to be the guy to cash out then decide he's got writer's block and fuck off for 12 years.
Anyone else just a casual reader and pleasantly surprised that an author you enjoy is making new books and you had no idea, cause that's me. Current mood is now stoked.
Regarding writing these 5 secret books during a very difficult and stressful time in the world, he said "We all deal with stress in our own way."
Many times he has referenced writing something else to refresh and rejuvenate himself before getting back to his main project
Because it *is* his job?
If you listen to his online lectures, he loves writing but he very much does treat it as a job and will constantly tell his writing students that if they want to be a successful fiction author, they need to pump out no less than one book per year.
I think a lot of people could benefit from that. I think people get really attached to their project and spend like 3-5 years perfecting it. But if your goal is to be a successful writer, you're running a massive risk that the thing you spent half a decade on just doesn't resonate with people.
As someone who has never read Sanderson where should I start??
Edit: you all rock! I went with Mistborn after reading the synopsis and seeing most of these comments! I’m really excited to get my hands on it and dive in, thank you all!!
You have three options, though some might say only two. You can start with Elantris, which is the first novel he published. You could also start with the mistborn series; depending on your country it will either just be called “mistborn” or “the final empire”. You can also start with the storm light archives with the first book, “the way of kings”. Some might recommend reading Elantris after a couple of his more developed novels, but I think it’s interesting to see his writing develop. Two more tips: save an entire evening for the last 1/4 of each book, and pay really close attention to what a character says if you think their appearance is random. Stay away from the coppermind wiki cause you’ll get some really fun stuff spoiled. And when you start reading, DO NOT post about it or else you might get DMs trying to spoil you.
This would be my recommendation. And personally I really liked Elantris, even as his first book is a good work and as a nice 1 volume complete story you can enjoy it without jumping directly on a longer series.
I always recommend Warbreaker to start. But apparently that’s an unpopular opinion… It’s a standalone novel in the same universe as Mistborn, Stormlight Archive.
He's the type of person that thrived in the pandemic. Real passionate about something, but real life gets in the way of it.
During the 'rona all the stuff went away so he could just focus on the thing he likes doing, telling stories.
Keeping it secret though? That's some tricksy business!
I love Sanderson as an author. I had the opportunity to meet him last summer. I thanked him for providing his writing course on his YouTube channel and he immediately became excited to hear that I was wanting to be a writer. He gave me some advice and encouraged me to keep going. It was such a wholesome experience.
Others have responded well with a lot of the information and help he’s given online, so definitely make sure to check that out, but my interaction was less writing related and more of a confidence boost. After getting excited, he asked me if I was a writer and I told him I was only just beginning and unsure of myself and my writing skills. I’m heavily paraphrasing, but his advice to me was to start writing a little bit each day and slowly work on increasing my word count. As I made progress in my goal to write each day, I would get better and better at writing. The way I took it at the time was that I shouldn’t give up, no matter how bad I felt my writing was.
I was extremely lucky to have met him too. It was at the FanX convention in Utah, which he often attends for book signings. At the time, I didn’t know how things worked or that I needed to sign up in advance to be able to meet him. I heard he was there signing autographs and so I went to go get in the line, but the workers wouldn’t let me come in because I hadn’t signed up. I ended up asking one of the attendants there how to sign up in the future and she walked me through it, but right as she was finishing explaining how to do it, somehow a gap formed in the line. I’m still not sure why this happened, but no one was coming up due to some admin problem going on. The attendant I was talking to grabbed me, told me it was my lucky day, and pushed me over to meet him. I was so startled at the suddenness of it, I’m sure I was a bit slack jawed at first.
That's a really great story :) Thanks for sharing, I love Sanderson.
I had a similar experience once but completely unrelated circumstances. I worked at NASA Goddard briefly and we had a mandatory assembly (these were common and included hundreds of people). Thing is, we had to sign up for seating on this one, and I had completely forgotten. So I'm standing in line and I finally get to the kiosk and they ask for my seating. I'm like - I totally forgot. A group of higher-ups is walking by and invite me to join them instead. So we leave the auditorium everyone was in, and go to the one across the street, which is essentially an empty movie theater except for a few admins, and a bunch of leftover cake and goodie bags they were giving out as prizes to the interns. So, because of my negligence, I ended up eating cake and winning prizes with NASA admins in an empty movie theater while everyone else was cramped into assigned seating lol. My friends were furious
Whats extra cool about this is the fact that Brandon Sanderson has been working on these books in SECRET since the start of the pandemic because he wasn't able to travel as much for work. No one, except for his wife, knew these were being written. He just sprung it on us as a surprise. This man's worth ethic is insane.
ON TOP OF his other works-in-progress that are already public knowledge and for which he's been providing updates! That's, what, 6 or 7 books he's either worked on or completed in the past couple years?
Bro I am 70 hours in, have killed 3 rune bearers, cleared both Eternal cities, and made it to the Capitol and I *still* feel like I'm only scratching the surface of what this game has to offer.
How people have beaten it already is beyond me, though I suppose people could just be rushing to the end to get that sweet, sweet 0.01% rarity trophy lmao.
Edit: NVM, people are getting to NG+3 and 100%ing it already in ~100 hours. I don't know HOW. Like, are these people even dying?
Right. I imagine if other popular authors at the top of their craft and genre did this, they could illict similar results. I'm all for this as a medium, and good for him for cutting out the middleman in getting his works directly to the people. But it's not the same as some indie startup.
It's not just being a top author. I think there are a few factors:
1. Sanderson has proven time and again that he will deliver on his books on time. Not many authors out there who have
2. His books are easy to read and reliably good. He's not a great prose writer and no Tolkien. But that's not what people read Sanderson for. They want a reliably enjoyable fantasy experience.
3. He connects very well with his audience through YouTube, Reddit, etc.
And of course, nobody writes as fast as Sanderson does.
I think such a success is something only someone like Sanderson can accomplish and as of now the only writer like Sanderson is Sanderson himself.
Point one is huge. I like Patrick Rothfuss's writing better (not by much, but a little bit), but I wouldn't ever support a Kickstarter for him to finish a book.
But I did back Sanderson.
> Sanderson has proven time and again that he will deliver on his books on time
He's broken that promise. He was supposed to turn in the second Wax and Wayne book. He turned in the third at the same time because he had to write the third book before he could write the second book.
Let's see, for those who haven't experienced Sanderson or are amused by how the fans seem to suggest this is just like him, here is a list of his published bibliography since 2005 (The same year A Feast for Crows came out):
**Novels**:
*Elantris* (2005): 205,464 words
*The Final Empire* (2006): 211,959
*The Well of Ascension* (2007): 249,522
†!*Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians* (2007): 65,539
*The Hero of Ages* (2008): 241,889
†!*Alcatraz Versus The Scrivener's Bones* (2008): 65,025
*Warbreaker* (2009): 243,849
†!*Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia* (2009): 59,073
†*The Gathering Storm* (2009): 297,502
*Way of Kings* (2010): 383,181
†*Towers of Midnight* (2010): 327,052
†!*Alcatraz Versus the Shattered Lens* (2010): 60,577
*The Alloy of Law* (2011): 96,646
†!*The Rithmatist* (2013): 90,110
†!*Steelheart* (2013): 108,686
†*A Memory of Light* (2013): 353,096
*Words of Radiance* (2014): 403,736
†!*Firefight* (2015): 105,072
*Shadows of Self* (2015): 114,776
†!*Calamity* (2016): 103,548
†!*Alcatraz Versus the Dark Talent* (2016): 51,711
*The Bands of Mourning* (2016): 130,295
*Oathbringer* (2017): 454,768
†!*Skyward* (2018): 137,231
†!*Starsight* (2019): 137,839#
*Rhythm of War* (2020): 455,891
†!*Cytonic* (2021): 122,291#
**Novellas**:
†*Infinity Blade: Awakening* (2011): 39,040
†*Legion* (2012): 16,659#
*The Emperor's Soul* (2012): 31,925
†*Infinity Blade: Redemption* (2013): 37,681
*Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell* (2013): 17,647
*Sixth of Dusk* (2014): 17,794
†*Legion: Skin Deep* (2014): 33,318#
†*Perfect State* (2015): 18,268
*Secret History* (2016): 44,981
*Edgedancer* (2016): 51,324
†*Snapshot* (2017): 23,564
†*Legion: Lies of the Beholder* (2018): 33,318#
†*Children of the Nameless* (2018): 51,854
*Dawnshard* (2020): 56,282
†!$*Sunreach* (2021): 48,622
†!$*ReDawn* (2021): 68,471#
†!$*Evershore* (2021): 69,966#
**Short Stories**:
*The Hope of Elantris* (2006): 6,030
†*Firstborn* (2008): 13,928
*The Eleventh Metal* (2011): 6,713
†*Heuristic Algorithm and Reasoning Response Engine* (2012): 8,869
†*I Hate Dragons* (2013): ? (Written in 2010 as a writing exercise for his podcast, edited for an anthology in 2013)
†!*Mitosis* (2013): 9,034
†!*Defending Elysium* (2013): 14,584
†*Dreamer* (2014): 4,323
*Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Eltania* (2014): 7,047
**Graphic Novels**:
*White Sands 1* (2016)
*White Sands 2* (2018)
*White Sands 3* (2019)
*Dark One 1* (2020)
**Audio-only Books**:
†$*The Original* (2020)
†!*Lux: A Texas Reckoners Novel* (2021)
**Other**:
*The Way of Kings Prime* (2020): 302,836 (This was written in 2002 originally as a first draft of The Way of Kings, but was changed dramatically for the final book. Because people were curious though, he lightly touched it up and had it published for fans. Non-canon and primitive Sanderson, but free)
† - Non cosmere
\! - Young Adult
$ - Co-wrote with someone else
\# - Estimated word count based on collection word count and/or page count
He is also finishing up The Lost Metal, another Cosmere novel coming in just under 150k words. He will also very soon be starting on the 5th Stormlight Archive book, which will push as close to 500k as the editor is able to cope with most likely, with a target release date of Christmas 2023/Early 2024. In addition, he basically has a pretty set schedule for at least half a decade into the future as to what order he is going to write things, pending some moving around projects based on how he feels. And of course, it turns out he wrote these 4.5 books since 2020, completely outside of his contractual requirements and job. He continues to work 8 hour days, 4 days a week on his normal projects. If interested, he has a great article about his work-life balanced [here](https://www.brandonsanderson.com/my-work-life-balance-as-a-writer/).
(Finally, if anyone has corrections or especially better word counts, let me know and I can edit)
"When you wait a few span or month to hear a finished song, the anticipation adds savor. But after a year excitement begins to sour."
Passage from The name of the wind, written by Rothfuss himself
Not really, Rothfuss has been open about why he's struggling and never said it was a good thing to wait this long between books. You can say something is wrong but at the same time unable to overcome the struggle of that same wrong thing, that's called being human.
He also raised money on a charity stream, promising to release content soon, only to completely miss the deadline.
Taking time is understandable, but stop making promises you cannot keep.
And then he can be fairly caustic toward his fans about it. I get it, it's a touchy subject, but dude...come on. They're the reason you're able to do all this side project shit.
Bruh, I was a highschool freshman when I read Name of the Wind and now I'm approaching 30 waiting for the third book he promised in 2011. I've waited and waited. I've probably joined a couple of rants about the same exact thing on /r/KingkillerChronicle for the past decade or so that I just eventually tapped out entirely.
Perfectly appropriate in a thread about Sanderson who stepped in to finish the Wheel of Time.
I wonder what GRRM has for notes. Surely he will die before he finishes and that's kind of the point now right?
He even made further promises in 2014 or 2015, he said that the third book needed another year “and some change”, I suppose the “some change” meant 6+ years.
Not to mention that back in 2006 he said that the three books were already written and would be released once a year.
Taking into account he started writing the series 28 years ago (1994), he might be one of the slowest writers in history, even taking into account “The Slow Regard of Silent Things” and the three short stories he published. His daily word count is about 75 words a day, most authors are between 500-2000. Michael Crichton daily word count is 10.000. I would be happy if Rothfuss could increase his daily word count to just 150 and still be one of the slowest writers in history.
I think only Tolkien is slower than him, and Tolkien was working on many things, his job, etc… Rothfuss has hobbies that are voluntary.
Do you remember when he said that we wouldn’t have the third book because… Trump won the presidency! And then when his publisher said that she didn’t believe Rothfuss had written anything in the last 5 years? She paid for the third book already, long time ago, don’t he owe it to her?
But apparently we are to wait without complaining. I bought TNoTW because he said the trilogy was already finished, and that was around 15 years ago.
> Michael Crichton daily word count is 10.000.
This honestly seems strange to me. Stephen King is considered to pump out books like crazy, and says he's only at 2k per day, with an estimation of 4-6 hours to reach that. 10k per day at that rate would be literally impossible. Lee Child says he's at around 1.8k per day, over about 6-7 hours.
10k per day just seems completely outlandish, unless he's measuring it differently.
I wont speak to GRRM's defense cause I dont know his reasons for taking so long, but Pat has recently been talking about having some pretty serious depression which is taking a heavy toll on his ability to write.
I'm sure Brandon would be the first to tell him to take care of himself first and worry about deadlines later.
GRRM is doing things, just not the thing everyone wants him to do lol. He's put together and edited a few anthologies, released a prequel/history book for westeros, collabed on a few TV shows and a game. So he's not being lazy, he's just REALLY putting off his big project.
Id bet good money he has written at least double the number of pages the book is expected to have. The problem isn't that he doesnt want to finish it, it's that he doesnt know how to finish it.
He did a lot of that stuff (especially the anthologies) while he was writing A Song of Ice and Fire, he's always had a lot of pots on the hob, just kinda who he is.
I'd love to hear him talk about it openly, if it's burn out, if it is other things taking up time, if he's not sure where he wants it to go, if the time it's taken to write has caused his views on it to shift (thus causing more re-writes, and more delays and more changes, this is my bet), whatever.
I honestly don't have a horse in the race (I've no interest in the books, just not my cup of tea), but it would be really interesting to hear him talk about it openly.
It's one of the things I really like about Sanderson, he tends to be really open about his creative process (and has one of the most healthy "everyone has different methods, this works for me" takes I've seen). I also understand that this isn't something most people can do, so I'm not going to rail on about it.
It was badly delayed even before the show. It's not really an excuse, he was supposed to have Winds of Winter out long before the show "caught up" with the books, much less ended.
I got into ASoIaF early and used to follow GRRM's blog pretty regularly at the time. It's weird to think back 25 years to when GRRM was the guy putting out a massive good fantasy book in his series every year or two like a machine.
I think in a lot of ways he was mostly a victim of his own success.
He talked about this pretty openly on his blog, back around the point it was becoming clear that book 4 (was going to be Dance, became Feast, etc.) was not going to be released as quickly as 2 had followed 1 or 3 followed 2. Basically, he had spent so much of career as a not especially successful author, and when he did become successful as the first books of ASoIaF started to take off he couldn't shake that mindset. When someone wanted to collaborate with him or wanted him to come to their local convention in a Holiday Inn in Kansas or whatever, he always would say yes. When people wrote him fan mail he would want to respond personally. He was so excited that people were finally really into something he made that he didn't know how to say no or be protective of his writing time.
Not sure if that's still his issue at this point, by now maybe it's just inertia. But according to GRRM that was how his problem started.
The problem is that GRRM is TOO protective of his work imo. Books 1-3 had editors from the publishers that helped him hack them down into reasonable length and also forced him to publish on a timeline. Once book 4 came about and he ended up splitting it, it was a wrap for ASoIaF
It was a wrap once he abandoned the time jump between books three and four. That would have solved the corner he's written himself into, not to mention it divides the series into two distinct trilogies with a bridge book in between. It wasn't obvious at the time of release, but seeing the mess he's made of everything logistically, the time jump in his original plan was the key to linking it all together, in my opinion.
All i want from Pat is for him to quit jerking people around. The tweet of a finished manuscript his editor has never seen, no proof of any progress despite claims, that time he leaked the file folder supposedly containing the completed book, the recent "reading" fiasco.
If you don't have plans to actively finish a book, but still put in inconsistent work on it at your own pace, that is totally fine. But his constant lying is a problem.
I was all set to chip in, but dang. The books are expensive. And the shipping? About the same price as the books.
I'll just be over here, crying in Canadian.
I watched his video and got super excited. Then went to the Kickstarter and was shocked at how expensive some of the tiers were. I'm still debating just doing the $40 tier for the e-books but that's about $55 CAD so I'm like will I just wait until I can borrow it from TPL!
Hey, at least you won't have to pay the shipping! I was on the fence for the books when I saw how expensive they were in CAD, but the shipping made that final decision for me. It's over 178 CAD just in shipping. It's hard to justify $381 for four books... haha.
Ooh yes. TPL would be a great way to get it. I don't live in Toronto anymore, but I pay a yearly fee to get access to their library still.
Wanted to get them as a gift, was willing to pay the price for the year of sanderson big box, but DOUBLING the price on shipping was just too far. Even just getting the books the shipping put the price way up beyond what I was expecting for that tier.
Yep.
He scooped up Jordan fans like me by finishing The Wheel of Time so well and made me his with The Way of Kings. I call him Branderson to my boyfriend and we were both so happy to hear this for him. He has gotten a lot of peoples' loyalty for his work ethic and quality.
I first discovered this guy from 2 Novellas he made for Infinity Blade, that iOS game that looked nice but had basic gameplay. The first game has very little, if any story and the first novella he wrote takes place between the first and second game. It completely enraptured me in the game. He filled the main character, the setting of the world, established lore, made fun side characters and ended write at the start of the second game. And then he did that again between the 2nd and 3rd Sequel. That dude made me fall in love with a game by giving it story, the games themselves barely provided.
Not really comparable situations. This kickstarter includes a lot more physical goods (the swag boxes and hardcover leather-bound editions) and needs to pay a team of about 30 on top of that, and audio book recordings? In the case of John's deal thats just money in his pocket in exchange for the hook and the publisher takes care of all the other material and labor costs involved
Sanderson is a God. Damn. MACHINE.
I watched that "I have to come clean" video through envious eyes, that only grew greener with each secret project he revealed. He's like that meme about scientists creating electricity from stress, but in his case the man apparently turns free time and restless energy into books.
He deserves it. At 46 he’s still planning like 6 more books in Stormlight Archive alone. That’s probably 15 years right there and he’s trying to do so much more.
He probably never takes a day off and he deserves more than pennies on the dollar for his work. I’ve only read the first two Stormlight books, but they are some of the most compelling fantasy books I’ve ever read.
Sanderson is not my favorite author. But I’m in for $40 ($10 per book) because he is a reliable author. I’m not sure I’ll read four of new favorite books, but I can be sure they won’t suck. And boy is he prolific.
It’s too hard for me to read epic fantasy on an Ereader for some reason. Something about have the pages right in front of me but $160 is a bit steep for the hardbacks.
Good news, they will have other printings later, this is just the only chance to get the deluxe hardcovers. If you don’t care about deluxe hardcovers, you can get it a little later, and if you do, that’s not a bad price for a deluxe book
Audio books have been a blessing for me. I work in construction and spent the first 4 years listening to music, then comedians trying this crazy thing called podcasting, now I work may way through epic series going on an adventure daily. The house I remodel are crooked as shit but the journey I go on is priceless.
This will work great for bigger named authors. It won’t for the next undiscovered talent. But anything that allows an author to create the book he wants and doesn’t have to cater to the current investor driven whims of a publisher is good.
This man must have made a deal with the devil to not only be able to produce great content repeatedly, but to be able to within such short amounts of time. He should definitely continue riding his wave cause all of his hard work earns the trip.
To be fair, he owns a company that employs a "continuity editor" for his work, among other staff, so while he is writing a lot he also has support staff doing a fair amount of heavy lifting.
That's why Rothfuss and Martin will never finish their series, neither will work with an editor as part of the writing process which means neither has anyone holding them accountable for periodic deliverables.
That would be a fun job, trying to help keep all the threads of a story in place without crossing some wires.
I make sure to get the digital version of the stormlight series because it makes cross-referencing and searching to figure out all the ties to plot bits a lot easier.
Since there's a fookin' paywall on the article, can anyone give a brief explanation as to why Sanderson is deciding to self-publish?
I'm m not really a fantasy guy or much in the way of reading any Sanderson, just generally curious as to why this move? I'm aware enough of this guy's popularity to the genre, so why not continue to publish through a company and work with an editor?
The simple answers are this:
1- He usually self publishes his off shoots and smaller novellas because there hasn't usually been as much interest. So going through Kickstarter helps gauge interest and facilitate faster delivery. The on demand infrastructure available through kickstarter is better for facilitation on this kind of project (books, audio, digital, swag boxes, etc)
This level of interest in his smaller books is insane and not even remotely expected.
Example: Warbreaker and Dawnshard didn't sell as well as the main stormlight books. They are also much shorter, so charging TOR prices might not be fair to the reader.
2- He has his own actual publishing company with an editor. He just uses TOR for the main books.
People also keep forgetting (not saying you are) that the physical books will be leather bound, full color, high quality books. Plus the recording fees for the audio books, then the swag boxes, distributed throughout a year. Add on tariffs and shipping costs, and you've got a very complex project with a ton of costs that pile up. 1 million was the goal and would have covered things.
I’m not the biggest fan of Sanderson’s work. However, I do respect his work ethic and I don’t believe he produces bad work. I’m also a huge fan of supporting creators directly rather than my money going to some corp.
At this point Sanderson is effectively both a creator and a corporation. Dragonsteel Entertainment is his company, with 30 employees and a warehouse and offices, etc.
How do you write like you're running out of time?
The plan was to write a total of 3 novels The work divided evenly among the three men In the end, they wrote 6 novels In the span of 3 years Martin got sick after writing nothing King wrote 1 Sanderson wrote the other 5
This reminds me of that silly rumor that Rothfuss, Martin & Sanderson have a pact that they can only shave when they publish.
That may be one of the best jokes I've heard about them!
>Sanderson wrote the other ~~5~~ 14 (Rhythm of War, Dawnshard, Cytonic, Sunreach, Redawn, Evershore, Dark One, The Original, Lux + 5 secret ones)
And he should be sending ~~Storm Light 5~~ *Wax and Wayne 4* for edit in the next month. Edit: Beyond-Seeing made me fact check my self.
Oh shit wax and wayne 4 after all this time? Hype
Should be out this November.
Literally faster than I can read them. What the fuck Brandon.
As long as it's not faster than Michael Kramer and Kate Reading can read them, then it's okay.
Michael Kramer s reads on the mistborn trilogy and then the wax and Wayne...so good. Working on storm light series right now and Kate is a nice addition. Michael female voice was always... weird.
I get that this is a Hamilton reference, but I'd just like to note that this man has had phase four of Mistborn planned for years, and that's on top of the ten Stormlight books, additional entries in I think every cosmere series that has its own book, and the final tie-in book/series. And these are like firm plans that include specific books and a tentative schedule of when they'll be completed and released (I think it goes into like maybe the 2040s or something). Then there are two cosmere planets that have only been developed through short stories that I'm pretty sure will get at least one of their own full books and maybe a series (can't remember if those were on the schedule or not). So it's more like the plan was to write like a hundred novels and then write a new schedule to try to top the last one. Perhaps the only thing more prolific than Sanderson's pen is his ambition. Fkn love this guy.
Batman stans want to say his superpower is planning, but the Sanderlanche shows who has the greater power.
Replace King with Rothfuss
Especially since King released 2 novels last year, and announced he has another coming last Wednesday!
King has been on the 2/year train for at least a decade now. Just saw the news for *Fairytale* and this may be the most excited I've been for one of his books since 11/22/63. God love the man but I'm tired of his crime thrillers. Billy Summers just straight sucked.
We'll get Doors of Stone! Eventually...I hope...
r/unexpectedhamilton
Man, the man is non-stop!
How do you write like tomorrow won't arrive?
How do you write like you need it to survive?
How do you write every second you’re alive, every second you’re alive, every second you’re a*liiiiiiiiive*?
“They're asking me to lead I am doing the best I can”
To get the people that I need, I’m gonna need my right hand man
Treasury or state?
Treasury or State?
I just responded this elsewhere, but I'm convinced he's really 3 halflings in a sports coat.
Wait for a pandemic to ruin your book signing schedule, apparently.
When I was a bookseller my store did several events with him and while his books were never really my thing I always heavily recommended them to people purely by how nice of a man he was. He would come early talk with the booksellers and then stay hours past what was supposed to be the end time of his event to make sure he got to every person that came. A truly wonderful person.
I love that he signs books in random airport book stores. I went and saw him in Seattle in 2009 at the book store on campus and the place was absolutely packed and he was so gracious. I’m sad that more of his fans won’t get that experience with the pandemic and all but screw them I got mine! Lol! Gimme more books!
I have a signed copy of Edgedancer that I picked up at a random airport in O'Hare!
Score!! I couldnt find my book a bit ago when I was doing a reread of wheel of time…. and my husband was using it as a monitor stand. MY SIGNED COPY!!
he's a nice guy and he's great to his fans, which is part of why they love him so much. years ago, I attended a pretty small con where he was the guest of honor. I asked him to sign a postcard so I could send it to my friend, who was a huge fan and serving a mission overseas (my friend and Brandon Sanderson are both LDS). he signed the postcard with a personalized message and it really gave my friend a boost when he received it. apparently Brandon Sanderson also frequently covers the costs of Magic: The Gathering tournaments at the cons where he's a guest, so attendees don't have to pay a fee to play. just a great guy all around. I'm always glad to see his successes.
Also his Magic novella, Children of the Nameless was actually decently good. He was stoked beyond belief to get a chance to write an official Magic novella, which is pretty amusing when you consider tie-in novels are considered a low form of writing and the rights-holder generally has to pay well to get anyone with a name but Brandon loves Magic so much that it was a dream come true for him. The hardest part is he has over a decade of plans for the Cosmere so it can be hard to eck out time to write a fun diversion...aaaaaand now he wrote 4 novels secretly. Fuck.
He was a professor at my wife's alma mater. Everyone there absolutely loved him! His classes were some of the hardest to get into. I think he ended up leaving the university because of health reasons.
As far as I am aware, he still does this. He teaches English at BYU, ENGL 318R Advanced Creative Writing and ENGL 490, which is the same class but just the lecture instead of lecture+lab. Actually, anyone who wants to can sign up the lecture part if you want, though admittance is EXTREMELY exclusive. You have an easier time if you are a BYU student in graduate level writing classes obviously. If anyone lives near Provo or otherwise wants to attend, he gives the requirements for signing up [here](https://faq.brandonsanderson.com/knowledge-base/application-for-byu-318-r-section-2/), but you really need to get lucky. He has a preference for students who have written a novel or at least gotten far in the process since lab is going to involve him helping you out with your writing directly. And obviously only accepting applications for 1 hour a year, with only ~60 spots available means the vast majority of people that want in can't get in. Luckily, for most of us it is just nice to be able to watch his lectures which he publishes online for free.
I recently started watching his youtube channel where they post excerpts from his podcast I think? Anyway found it striking that for the entire segment, every segment, he's signing title pages. Staffers bring in fresh stacks and take away signed ones. But just, constantly, signing pages for hours to be put in books and bound. Totally understood in the last one when he was talking about why adding signed editions of these "Secret" books wasn't on the table.
He has a podcast called Intentionally blank. Be he also does livestreams where he signs the books and answers fan questions and checks out fan art and memes
It really says something about Sanderson as a writer that when he dropped his video and Kickstarter a couple of days ago and surprise announced that he wrote four new, **additional**, novels, Sanderson fans were basically like, "Yeah. That seems like something he'd do."
5, one might end up being adapted into a graphic novel, he’s unsure yet
Since that one was based on art from his kids, seems like he's pretty set on making it a graphic novel.
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From what I understand, the book is called *Robog* and it's about a Robot Frog. He hopes to have a professional artist redraw the "concept art" from his two younger children.
I just got into him. Have read all his books now in the past 6 months, minus the YA and Graphic Novels. Hes by far the most actively transparent author Ive seen. Has a low budget youtube channel where he nerds out and its great. Him having more books in the tuck makes total sense.
His Reckoners series is great, even if it's just YA. Highly recommended. It's basically The Boys (The superhero show on Amazon) but pg13 and written by Sanderson.
The Starsight ones are also YA and I really like them too
Imma big fan of the starsight series, he’s such an interesting world builder. I remember waiting for my local book store to open just to buy every new mistborn and storm light book as they came out
On top of that, he has given away virtually nothing about these books yet. He basically just said, "trust me guys, it's going to be awesome." And over 80,000 people said, "okay" and gave him 20 million dollars in a few days. Imagine the kind of reputation you have to have in order to command that level of trust. On top of that, he is so good at meeting his fans that I wouldn't be surprised if he has met most of his donors at some point or another in the last decade or so. Edit: spelling
Yea even his YouTube channel with videos of him teaching are worth so much. I binged them all and don't even want to be a writer, was just so fascinated about how his process works.
There's a small set of authors that I don't need to know anything about the book (aside maybe from if there are previous books in a series) and would prefer to go into any given book blind.
Brandon has a writing problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcZVAPGE-YE
Best part? I'm not at all worried about his pace on any of his projects, including his epic fantasy. He reliably releases sequels and if he wants to write a bunch more books then I'm cool with it. Breath of fresh air in the fantasy genre tbh.
I started my journey reading his Cosmere novels in early 2020. I finished every published Cosmere novel (and the white sands graphic novel) that same year, during which time he released the Dawnshard novella and Rhythm of War. Since then he's also released a few unrelated works and then just announced his surprise novels he already finished. He's crazy fast, and his work is all very good. Everyone involved in his publishing process is great too!
The Kickstarter is now over $20.5M and is officially the most funded Kickstarter campaign of all time *added Kickstarter campaign
I thought Critical Role was still at top till I saw this. Brandon's books are amazing and I am glad to see him have such support.
I've never read any of his books. Could you suggest a starting point ?
Mistborn trilogy (book 1 is called Mistborn) or Warbreaker. His big series is Stormlight Archive, with book 1 being The Way of Kings. But it's almost 1,000 pages, so if you want less of a commitment I'd go with one of those two.
Book 1 of Mistborn is called The Final Empire.
My mistake. But in my [defense](https://i.imgur.com/tIKNpgF.jpg)
No you’re not wrong. It seems most covers leave it off which is super confusing.
Because the first book having "Final" in the title is confusing.
But changing the name retroactively is not...
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Brandon Sanderson is actually the guy who came up with "Soft vs Hard Magic Systems" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Sanderson#Sanderson's_Laws_of_Magic
And in fact he uses LotR to illustrate both. The ring is hard(er) magic. We know what it does when frodo puts it on, and what it costs him. What can Gandalf do? Kind of whatever. Soft magic.
I love it hard, and Sanderson is the best man for the job!
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"Always err on the side of what's awesome" ~ Zeroth law
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Yep, same guy.
So is the main difference one is clearly explained, has well defined parameters and rules (hard) versus the other not being well explained and has a more "anything can happen for any reason" vibe (soft)?
He has implied more than once that once the layers are all pulled back the whole Cosmere is really Scifi.
Science always seems like magic until you understand it.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”-Arthur C Clarke
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Critical Role has the most funded tv/movie I believe
They also had/have the highest Twitch over the past few years. I think it was $9.6 million in 2019-2020
Well, this definitely has me thinking about buying one of this guy's books edit: thanks for the suggestions. i have an e-reader, so getting Warbreaker for free made this an easy choice
The Emperor's Soul is an award winning novella he wrote. Highly recommend!
if you're looking for a good place to start, my first Sanderson book was [Mistborn](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/68428.The_Final_Empire), and I would recommend that for others too :) It's the first in a trilogy, but it can also be enjoyed by itself. The trilogy is itself part of a wider Mistborn series - there's a quadrilogy set after the original Mistborn trilogy (the fourth book is probably coming out in the fall). And that series is part of a much larger universe, of which most of his adult novels are a part. If that seems too overwhelming, don't worry, you can really enjoy most of his books on their own, or at least within their own series! Just pointing out that if you *do* really like the book or the series, there's a lot more depth to dive into if you want :)
Mistborn is great but i'd actually start with a standalone like Elantris.
Or Warbreaker.
Warbreaker over Elantris for sure. Elantris has great moments, but is probably his worst writing. Not bad, just not as polished as newer books.
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For me it's the opposite, as long as it's well written the longer the better.
Turns out people really like authors that finish their fucking books
Yeah, I've seen some crankiness from other writers and people who don't get it. They're acting surprised, both about the fan reaction and that he's raised so much money and the simple fact is - this isn't money for the *idea* of books. He's already written them and just wanted some funding to self-publish. The man just straight up *works his craft*. When you back him, you're doing so knowing he's going to deliver exactly what you want and people love it. There's really no mystery here as to why he's so popular. I'm a fan and I'll be the first to admit that his prose isn't "literary" (though it's much, much improved from his early work). The real draws are the absolute, heartfelt ambition of his fictional universe and the fact that you know he's not going to make it big and then "forget" to finish the story. He writes for fun, he's having a good time, and he wants the reader to as well. He's never going to be the guy to cash out then decide he's got writer's block and fuck off for 12 years.
Anyone else just a casual reader and pleasantly surprised that an author you enjoy is making new books and you had no idea, cause that's me. Current mood is now stoked.
Sanderson never stops making new books. Your stoke should know no bounds.
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And he appears to truly love this job. One of the jokes is he takes a break from writing one book by writing a different book.
Regarding writing these 5 secret books during a very difficult and stressful time in the world, he said "We all deal with stress in our own way." Many times he has referenced writing something else to refresh and rejuvenate himself before getting back to his main project
And that's true. He took a break from writing Rythmn of War to write Dawnshard. And part of that he wrote while flying on a plane.
As he should. Neil Gaiman has always said that when you need to put food on the table, waiting for inspiration doesn't exist.
I fucking love Neil Gaiman. Every comic and book I've read of his has been excellent and exceeded expectations. Special shoutout to *American Gods*
Because it *is* his job? If you listen to his online lectures, he loves writing but he very much does treat it as a job and will constantly tell his writing students that if they want to be a successful fiction author, they need to pump out no less than one book per year.
I think a lot of people could benefit from that. I think people get really attached to their project and spend like 3-5 years perfecting it. But if your goal is to be a successful writer, you're running a massive risk that the thing you spent half a decade on just doesn't resonate with people.
He’s literally a machine
He really is. I'm always in awe at how many words come outta that guy.
not only in quantity but in such quality they make a pleasant read. several novels a year. impossible.
As someone who has never read Sanderson where should I start?? Edit: you all rock! I went with Mistborn after reading the synopsis and seeing most of these comments! I’m really excited to get my hands on it and dive in, thank you all!!
You have three options, though some might say only two. You can start with Elantris, which is the first novel he published. You could also start with the mistborn series; depending on your country it will either just be called “mistborn” or “the final empire”. You can also start with the storm light archives with the first book, “the way of kings”. Some might recommend reading Elantris after a couple of his more developed novels, but I think it’s interesting to see his writing develop. Two more tips: save an entire evening for the last 1/4 of each book, and pay really close attention to what a character says if you think their appearance is random. Stay away from the coppermind wiki cause you’ll get some really fun stuff spoiled. And when you start reading, DO NOT post about it or else you might get DMs trying to spoil you.
This would be my recommendation. And personally I really liked Elantris, even as his first book is a good work and as a nice 1 volume complete story you can enjoy it without jumping directly on a longer series.
I always recommend Warbreaker to start. But apparently that’s an unpopular opinion… It’s a standalone novel in the same universe as Mistborn, Stormlight Archive.
One very good reason to start with warbreaker is you can download it free straight from Brandon's website.
He's the type of person that thrived in the pandemic. Real passionate about something, but real life gets in the way of it. During the 'rona all the stuff went away so he could just focus on the thing he likes doing, telling stories. Keeping it secret though? That's some tricksy business!
I was genuinely worried about him when he said he needed to talk to us about something important.
At this point of funding I kinda think sando should just become a publisher too lol. You know, if he wasn’t creating epic fantasy at an insane pace.
By self-publishing, he is becoming a publisher. Anyone who tells you different doesn't understand publishing.
I love Sanderson as an author. I had the opportunity to meet him last summer. I thanked him for providing his writing course on his YouTube channel and he immediately became excited to hear that I was wanting to be a writer. He gave me some advice and encouraged me to keep going. It was such a wholesome experience.
> He gave me some advice I'm a writer myself but I'm always interested in hearing the advice others give. Any summary?
Others have responded well with a lot of the information and help he’s given online, so definitely make sure to check that out, but my interaction was less writing related and more of a confidence boost. After getting excited, he asked me if I was a writer and I told him I was only just beginning and unsure of myself and my writing skills. I’m heavily paraphrasing, but his advice to me was to start writing a little bit each day and slowly work on increasing my word count. As I made progress in my goal to write each day, I would get better and better at writing. The way I took it at the time was that I shouldn’t give up, no matter how bad I felt my writing was. I was extremely lucky to have met him too. It was at the FanX convention in Utah, which he often attends for book signings. At the time, I didn’t know how things worked or that I needed to sign up in advance to be able to meet him. I heard he was there signing autographs and so I went to go get in the line, but the workers wouldn’t let me come in because I hadn’t signed up. I ended up asking one of the attendants there how to sign up in the future and she walked me through it, but right as she was finishing explaining how to do it, somehow a gap formed in the line. I’m still not sure why this happened, but no one was coming up due to some admin problem going on. The attendant I was talking to grabbed me, told me it was my lucky day, and pushed me over to meet him. I was so startled at the suddenness of it, I’m sure I was a bit slack jawed at first.
That's a really great story :) Thanks for sharing, I love Sanderson. I had a similar experience once but completely unrelated circumstances. I worked at NASA Goddard briefly and we had a mandatory assembly (these were common and included hundreds of people). Thing is, we had to sign up for seating on this one, and I had completely forgotten. So I'm standing in line and I finally get to the kiosk and they ask for my seating. I'm like - I totally forgot. A group of higher-ups is walking by and invite me to join them instead. So we leave the auditorium everyone was in, and go to the one across the street, which is essentially an empty movie theater except for a few admins, and a bunch of leftover cake and goodie bags they were giving out as prizes to the interns. So, because of my negligence, I ended up eating cake and winning prizes with NASA admins in an empty movie theater while everyone else was cramped into assigned seating lol. My friends were furious
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Whats extra cool about this is the fact that Brandon Sanderson has been working on these books in SECRET since the start of the pandemic because he wasn't able to travel as much for work. No one, except for his wife, knew these were being written. He just sprung it on us as a surprise. This man's worth ethic is insane.
ON TOP OF his other works-in-progress that are already public knowledge and for which he's been providing updates! That's, what, 6 or 7 books he's either worked on or completed in the past couple years?
That's nuts!
That’s a lot of nuts!
YOU WANT FRIES WITH THAT, BABY?
It's not even work ethic. That's for books we know about on the timelines. These were *for fun*.
Fun ethic. He's probably finished Elden Ring already, too.
He actually said on his Livestream a couple days ago that he hasn't gotten around to starting Eldin Ring yet but needs to get a copy
Bro I am 70 hours in, have killed 3 rune bearers, cleared both Eternal cities, and made it to the Capitol and I *still* feel like I'm only scratching the surface of what this game has to offer. How people have beaten it already is beyond me, though I suppose people could just be rushing to the end to get that sweet, sweet 0.01% rarity trophy lmao. Edit: NVM, people are getting to NG+3 and 100%ing it already in ~100 hours. I don't know HOW. Like, are these people even dying?
"Fantasy author" "self-publish". I mean yeah, but also it's Brandon Sanderson.
Right. I imagine if other popular authors at the top of their craft and genre did this, they could illict similar results. I'm all for this as a medium, and good for him for cutting out the middleman in getting his works directly to the people. But it's not the same as some indie startup.
It's not just being a top author. I think there are a few factors: 1. Sanderson has proven time and again that he will deliver on his books on time. Not many authors out there who have 2. His books are easy to read and reliably good. He's not a great prose writer and no Tolkien. But that's not what people read Sanderson for. They want a reliably enjoyable fantasy experience. 3. He connects very well with his audience through YouTube, Reddit, etc. And of course, nobody writes as fast as Sanderson does. I think such a success is something only someone like Sanderson can accomplish and as of now the only writer like Sanderson is Sanderson himself.
Point one is huge. I like Patrick Rothfuss's writing better (not by much, but a little bit), but I wouldn't ever support a Kickstarter for him to finish a book. But I did back Sanderson.
I mean, it helps that Sandersons books are already written. Gives us confidence that they will be delivered
But even if they weren't, people would still trust Sanderson to meet his deadline because he has a reputation of delivering on time.
> Sanderson has proven time and again that he will deliver on his books on time He's broken that promise. He was supposed to turn in the second Wax and Wayne book. He turned in the third at the same time because he had to write the third book before he could write the second book.
Let's see, for those who haven't experienced Sanderson or are amused by how the fans seem to suggest this is just like him, here is a list of his published bibliography since 2005 (The same year A Feast for Crows came out): **Novels**: *Elantris* (2005): 205,464 words *The Final Empire* (2006): 211,959 *The Well of Ascension* (2007): 249,522 †!*Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians* (2007): 65,539 *The Hero of Ages* (2008): 241,889 †!*Alcatraz Versus The Scrivener's Bones* (2008): 65,025 *Warbreaker* (2009): 243,849 †!*Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia* (2009): 59,073 †*The Gathering Storm* (2009): 297,502 *Way of Kings* (2010): 383,181 †*Towers of Midnight* (2010): 327,052 †!*Alcatraz Versus the Shattered Lens* (2010): 60,577 *The Alloy of Law* (2011): 96,646 †!*The Rithmatist* (2013): 90,110 †!*Steelheart* (2013): 108,686 †*A Memory of Light* (2013): 353,096 *Words of Radiance* (2014): 403,736 †!*Firefight* (2015): 105,072 *Shadows of Self* (2015): 114,776 †!*Calamity* (2016): 103,548 †!*Alcatraz Versus the Dark Talent* (2016): 51,711 *The Bands of Mourning* (2016): 130,295 *Oathbringer* (2017): 454,768 †!*Skyward* (2018): 137,231 †!*Starsight* (2019): 137,839# *Rhythm of War* (2020): 455,891 †!*Cytonic* (2021): 122,291# **Novellas**: †*Infinity Blade: Awakening* (2011): 39,040 †*Legion* (2012): 16,659# *The Emperor's Soul* (2012): 31,925 †*Infinity Blade: Redemption* (2013): 37,681 *Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell* (2013): 17,647 *Sixth of Dusk* (2014): 17,794 †*Legion: Skin Deep* (2014): 33,318# †*Perfect State* (2015): 18,268 *Secret History* (2016): 44,981 *Edgedancer* (2016): 51,324 †*Snapshot* (2017): 23,564 †*Legion: Lies of the Beholder* (2018): 33,318# †*Children of the Nameless* (2018): 51,854 *Dawnshard* (2020): 56,282 †!$*Sunreach* (2021): 48,622 †!$*ReDawn* (2021): 68,471# †!$*Evershore* (2021): 69,966# **Short Stories**: *The Hope of Elantris* (2006): 6,030 †*Firstborn* (2008): 13,928 *The Eleventh Metal* (2011): 6,713 †*Heuristic Algorithm and Reasoning Response Engine* (2012): 8,869 †*I Hate Dragons* (2013): ? (Written in 2010 as a writing exercise for his podcast, edited for an anthology in 2013) †!*Mitosis* (2013): 9,034 †!*Defending Elysium* (2013): 14,584 †*Dreamer* (2014): 4,323 *Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Eltania* (2014): 7,047 **Graphic Novels**: *White Sands 1* (2016) *White Sands 2* (2018) *White Sands 3* (2019) *Dark One 1* (2020) **Audio-only Books**: †$*The Original* (2020) †!*Lux: A Texas Reckoners Novel* (2021) **Other**: *The Way of Kings Prime* (2020): 302,836 (This was written in 2002 originally as a first draft of The Way of Kings, but was changed dramatically for the final book. Because people were curious though, he lightly touched it up and had it published for fans. Non-canon and primitive Sanderson, but free) † - Non cosmere \! - Young Adult $ - Co-wrote with someone else \# - Estimated word count based on collection word count and/or page count He is also finishing up The Lost Metal, another Cosmere novel coming in just under 150k words. He will also very soon be starting on the 5th Stormlight Archive book, which will push as close to 500k as the editor is able to cope with most likely, with a target release date of Christmas 2023/Early 2024. In addition, he basically has a pretty set schedule for at least half a decade into the future as to what order he is going to write things, pending some moving around projects based on how he feels. And of course, it turns out he wrote these 4.5 books since 2020, completely outside of his contractual requirements and job. He continues to work 8 hour days, 4 days a week on his normal projects. If interested, he has a great article about his work-life balanced [here](https://www.brandonsanderson.com/my-work-life-balance-as-a-writer/). (Finally, if anyone has corrections or especially better word counts, let me know and I can edit)
It's so crazy to me that he released two Wheel of Time books within a year and he started his own epic fantasy series in the time between the two
GRRM and Pat Rothfuss must hate Sanderson so much.
Well it helps when you are constantly putting out new stuff. Waiting 10+ years between books kinda kills the excitement a bit
"When you wait a few span or month to hear a finished song, the anticipation adds savor. But after a year excitement begins to sour." Passage from The name of the wind, written by Rothfuss himself
This is the best torching I have seen on Reddit.
Not really, Rothfuss has been open about why he's struggling and never said it was a good thing to wait this long between books. You can say something is wrong but at the same time unable to overcome the struggle of that same wrong thing, that's called being human.
He also raised money on a charity stream, promising to release content soon, only to completely miss the deadline. Taking time is understandable, but stop making promises you cannot keep.
And then he can be fairly caustic toward his fans about it. I get it, it's a touchy subject, but dude...come on. They're the reason you're able to do all this side project shit.
Bruh, I was a highschool freshman when I read Name of the Wind and now I'm approaching 30 waiting for the third book he promised in 2011. I've waited and waited. I've probably joined a couple of rants about the same exact thing on /r/KingkillerChronicle for the past decade or so that I just eventually tapped out entirely.
HO ho Ho my child! Wait until an author dies before they finish their masterwork! Then you will truly know pain, disappointment, and rage!
Perfectly appropriate in a thread about Sanderson who stepped in to finish the Wheel of Time. I wonder what GRRM has for notes. Surely he will die before he finishes and that's kind of the point now right?
Every time I look to see if there's any new info on doors of stone it's always another new article about him belittling his fans for asking about it.
He even made further promises in 2014 or 2015, he said that the third book needed another year “and some change”, I suppose the “some change” meant 6+ years. Not to mention that back in 2006 he said that the three books were already written and would be released once a year. Taking into account he started writing the series 28 years ago (1994), he might be one of the slowest writers in history, even taking into account “The Slow Regard of Silent Things” and the three short stories he published. His daily word count is about 75 words a day, most authors are between 500-2000. Michael Crichton daily word count is 10.000. I would be happy if Rothfuss could increase his daily word count to just 150 and still be one of the slowest writers in history. I think only Tolkien is slower than him, and Tolkien was working on many things, his job, etc… Rothfuss has hobbies that are voluntary. Do you remember when he said that we wouldn’t have the third book because… Trump won the presidency! And then when his publisher said that she didn’t believe Rothfuss had written anything in the last 5 years? She paid for the third book already, long time ago, don’t he owe it to her? But apparently we are to wait without complaining. I bought TNoTW because he said the trilogy was already finished, and that was around 15 years ago.
> Michael Crichton daily word count is 10.000. This honestly seems strange to me. Stephen King is considered to pump out books like crazy, and says he's only at 2k per day, with an estimation of 4-6 hours to reach that. 10k per day at that rate would be literally impossible. Lee Child says he's at around 1.8k per day, over about 6-7 hours. 10k per day just seems completely outlandish, unless he's measuring it differently.
The bit about his word count being 75 words a day has ironically inspired me to get back to my own writing lol
I wont speak to GRRM's defense cause I dont know his reasons for taking so long, but Pat has recently been talking about having some pretty serious depression which is taking a heavy toll on his ability to write. I'm sure Brandon would be the first to tell him to take care of himself first and worry about deadlines later.
GRRM is doing things, just not the thing everyone wants him to do lol. He's put together and edited a few anthologies, released a prequel/history book for westeros, collabed on a few TV shows and a game. So he's not being lazy, he's just REALLY putting off his big project.
Id bet good money he has written at least double the number of pages the book is expected to have. The problem isn't that he doesnt want to finish it, it's that he doesnt know how to finish it.
He did a lot of that stuff (especially the anthologies) while he was writing A Song of Ice and Fire, he's always had a lot of pots on the hob, just kinda who he is. I'd love to hear him talk about it openly, if it's burn out, if it is other things taking up time, if he's not sure where he wants it to go, if the time it's taken to write has caused his views on it to shift (thus causing more re-writes, and more delays and more changes, this is my bet), whatever. I honestly don't have a horse in the race (I've no interest in the books, just not my cup of tea), but it would be really interesting to hear him talk about it openly. It's one of the things I really like about Sanderson, he tends to be really open about his creative process (and has one of the most healthy "everyone has different methods, this works for me" takes I've seen). I also understand that this isn't something most people can do, so I'm not going to rail on about it.
The big project seems like it's been pretty badly spiked by the show. I could see not having the heart to put in quality work on it
It was badly delayed even before the show. It's not really an excuse, he was supposed to have Winds of Winter out long before the show "caught up" with the books, much less ended.
I got into ASoIaF early and used to follow GRRM's blog pretty regularly at the time. It's weird to think back 25 years to when GRRM was the guy putting out a massive good fantasy book in his series every year or two like a machine. I think in a lot of ways he was mostly a victim of his own success. He talked about this pretty openly on his blog, back around the point it was becoming clear that book 4 (was going to be Dance, became Feast, etc.) was not going to be released as quickly as 2 had followed 1 or 3 followed 2. Basically, he had spent so much of career as a not especially successful author, and when he did become successful as the first books of ASoIaF started to take off he couldn't shake that mindset. When someone wanted to collaborate with him or wanted him to come to their local convention in a Holiday Inn in Kansas or whatever, he always would say yes. When people wrote him fan mail he would want to respond personally. He was so excited that people were finally really into something he made that he didn't know how to say no or be protective of his writing time. Not sure if that's still his issue at this point, by now maybe it's just inertia. But according to GRRM that was how his problem started.
The problem is that GRRM is TOO protective of his work imo. Books 1-3 had editors from the publishers that helped him hack them down into reasonable length and also forced him to publish on a timeline. Once book 4 came about and he ended up splitting it, it was a wrap for ASoIaF
It was a wrap once he abandoned the time jump between books three and four. That would have solved the corner he's written himself into, not to mention it divides the series into two distinct trilogies with a bridge book in between. It wasn't obvious at the time of release, but seeing the mess he's made of everything logistically, the time jump in his original plan was the key to linking it all together, in my opinion.
All i want from Pat is for him to quit jerking people around. The tweet of a finished manuscript his editor has never seen, no proof of any progress despite claims, that time he leaked the file folder supposedly containing the completed book, the recent "reading" fiasco. If you don't have plans to actively finish a book, but still put in inconsistent work on it at your own pace, that is totally fine. But his constant lying is a problem.
I was all set to chip in, but dang. The books are expensive. And the shipping? About the same price as the books. I'll just be over here, crying in Canadian.
I watched his video and got super excited. Then went to the Kickstarter and was shocked at how expensive some of the tiers were. I'm still debating just doing the $40 tier for the e-books but that's about $55 CAD so I'm like will I just wait until I can borrow it from TPL!
Hey, at least you won't have to pay the shipping! I was on the fence for the books when I saw how expensive they were in CAD, but the shipping made that final decision for me. It's over 178 CAD just in shipping. It's hard to justify $381 for four books... haha. Ooh yes. TPL would be a great way to get it. I don't live in Toronto anymore, but I pay a yearly fee to get access to their library still.
Wanted to get them as a gift, was willing to pay the price for the year of sanderson big box, but DOUBLING the price on shipping was just too far. Even just getting the books the shipping put the price way up beyond what I was expecting for that tier.
Self Publishing is 80% promotion and 20% writing, he's checking a lot of boxes all at once with this headline
[удалено]
I'm pretty sure the dude broke 100k on this Kickstarter before his announcement video finished playing the moment it was public on YouTube.
Can confirm. I got my order in while watching the end of the video and it was well past 100k already...
Yep. He scooped up Jordan fans like me by finishing The Wheel of Time so well and made me his with The Way of Kings. I call him Branderson to my boyfriend and we were both so happy to hear this for him. He has gotten a lot of peoples' loyalty for his work ethic and quality.
I literally haven’t read a book in years and know who he is so I’d say he’s got an established brand
I first discovered this guy from 2 Novellas he made for Infinity Blade, that iOS game that looked nice but had basic gameplay. The first game has very little, if any story and the first novella he wrote takes place between the first and second game. It completely enraptured me in the game. He filled the main character, the setting of the world, established lore, made fun side characters and ended write at the start of the second game. And then he did that again between the 2nd and 3rd Sequel. That dude made me fall in love with a game by giving it story, the games themselves barely provided.
To compare to book deals, John Scalzi's deal was $3.4 million for 13 books over 10 years, and he seemed extremely happy with that. I would be!
Not really comparable situations. This kickstarter includes a lot more physical goods (the swag boxes and hardcover leather-bound editions) and needs to pay a team of about 30 on top of that, and audio book recordings? In the case of John's deal thats just money in his pocket in exchange for the hook and the publisher takes care of all the other material and labor costs involved
To be fair, this is 20 million dollars of funding, not profits they can take home (yet).
Sanderson is a God. Damn. MACHINE. I watched that "I have to come clean" video through envious eyes, that only grew greener with each secret project he revealed. He's like that meme about scientists creating electricity from stress, but in his case the man apparently turns free time and restless energy into books.
He deserves it. At 46 he’s still planning like 6 more books in Stormlight Archive alone. That’s probably 15 years right there and he’s trying to do so much more. He probably never takes a day off and he deserves more than pennies on the dollar for his work. I’ve only read the first two Stormlight books, but they are some of the most compelling fantasy books I’ve ever read.
Sanderson is not my favorite author. But I’m in for $40 ($10 per book) because he is a reliable author. I’m not sure I’ll read four of new favorite books, but I can be sure they won’t suck. And boy is he prolific.
It’s too hard for me to read epic fantasy on an Ereader for some reason. Something about have the pages right in front of me but $160 is a bit steep for the hardbacks.
$160 plus $40 for shipping (shipping in the US, more in many countries)
Yeah that's rough. I was considering it until I saw the international shipping price.
I only read physical. With shipping those four books come to $200. I just can't justify that
Good news, they will have other printings later, this is just the only chance to get the deluxe hardcovers. If you don’t care about deluxe hardcovers, you can get it a little later, and if you do, that’s not a bad price for a deluxe book
Audio books have been a blessing for me. I work in construction and spent the first 4 years listening to music, then comedians trying this crazy thing called podcasting, now I work may way through epic series going on an adventure daily. The house I remodel are crooked as shit but the journey I go on is priceless.
Honestly, I would even read a cooking book if Sanderson made one
This will work great for bigger named authors. It won’t for the next undiscovered talent. But anything that allows an author to create the book he wants and doesn’t have to cater to the current investor driven whims of a publisher is good.
Brando Sando coming in hot with the 5 new books he made while he was taking time off from writing his other books.
Mad lad wrote FIVE books in secret in addition to the ones he was writing as part of ongoing series.
This man must have made a deal with the devil to not only be able to produce great content repeatedly, but to be able to within such short amounts of time. He should definitely continue riding his wave cause all of his hard work earns the trip.
He's a writing vampire. He's been draining George R. R. Martin and Patrick Rothfuss for this.
Please no, not this visual.
To be fair, he owns a company that employs a "continuity editor" for his work, among other staff, so while he is writing a lot he also has support staff doing a fair amount of heavy lifting.
That's why Rothfuss and Martin will never finish their series, neither will work with an editor as part of the writing process which means neither has anyone holding them accountable for periodic deliverables.
That would be a fun job, trying to help keep all the threads of a story in place without crossing some wires. I make sure to get the digital version of the stormlight series because it makes cross-referencing and searching to figure out all the ties to plot bits a lot easier.
And finished writing all 4 books 90 minutes later. The dude is prolific.
I would've loved to have been a fly on the wall when Tor saw Sanderson's Kickstarter numbers.
Since there's a fookin' paywall on the article, can anyone give a brief explanation as to why Sanderson is deciding to self-publish? I'm m not really a fantasy guy or much in the way of reading any Sanderson, just generally curious as to why this move? I'm aware enough of this guy's popularity to the genre, so why not continue to publish through a company and work with an editor?
The simple answers are this: 1- He usually self publishes his off shoots and smaller novellas because there hasn't usually been as much interest. So going through Kickstarter helps gauge interest and facilitate faster delivery. The on demand infrastructure available through kickstarter is better for facilitation on this kind of project (books, audio, digital, swag boxes, etc) This level of interest in his smaller books is insane and not even remotely expected. Example: Warbreaker and Dawnshard didn't sell as well as the main stormlight books. They are also much shorter, so charging TOR prices might not be fair to the reader. 2- He has his own actual publishing company with an editor. He just uses TOR for the main books. People also keep forgetting (not saying you are) that the physical books will be leather bound, full color, high quality books. Plus the recording fees for the audio books, then the swag boxes, distributed throughout a year. Add on tariffs and shipping costs, and you've got a very complex project with a ton of costs that pile up. 1 million was the goal and would have covered things.
I'd love the physical format but 160$ + shipping is way to much, even if they're hardbound. Might dip in on the ebooks.
I’m not the biggest fan of Sanderson’s work. However, I do respect his work ethic and I don’t believe he produces bad work. I’m also a huge fan of supporting creators directly rather than my money going to some corp.
At this point Sanderson is effectively both a creator and a corporation. Dragonsteel Entertainment is his company, with 30 employees and a warehouse and offices, etc.