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I don't know if he's a FAIR comparison point... Sanderson is practically a robot; I don't know when the man finds time to sleep given his prodigious output AND

I don't know if he's a FAIR comparison point... Sanderson is practically a robot; I don't know when the man finds time to sleep given his prodigious output AND personal engagements. Stephenson has written apparently 16 novels in 35 years. [1] Sanderson, on the other hand, has written around 30 novels in 14 years, depending on how you want to count novellas and kids' books. [2] Sanderson is also much more active in keeping up PR about himself and what he's doing -- I think that fan interaction, both online and offline, is as much a part of his popularity as his actual writing. He's fantastic in the respect and I'm sure it reflects in his sales numbers... and probably helps with all of his discussions in getting his stuff into TV/films/games, and a lot of that stuff is (as far as I know from what he's allowed to discuss) in progress. So I'd actually expect to see Sanderson making much more than Stephenson and it definitely makes sense to me that Sanderson would have an assistant or two given all of his engagements and franchises. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Stephenson#Bibliography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Stephenson#Bibliography [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Sanderson_bibliography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Sanderson_bibliography

Wowfunhappy 7y ago
That's a very good point about number of published works, that likely makes a huge difference! While Sanderson has several film projects in the works, none of them seem far enough along to have paid off yet financially. Although I guess it depends on how the contracts were written.
- sdrothrock 7y ago
  MikeAsh commented with an article he found saying Stephenson had sold 3 million books to date by 2013 [1], but I found another one saying Sanderson had sold 7 million to date by 2015 [2]. The really interesting part is that the article MikeAsh linked also lists Sanderson (as of 2013) with 2.5 million sales of his solo books, meaning that he sold at least another 4.5 million books in various languages in two years, basically eclipsing Stephenson's lifetime number. Given the difference in their output and the times that the various books were available for sale, this really cements the difference between them sales-wise for me. My gut feeling here is that a lot of this is due to not only his writing and stories, but also to his constant enthusiastic fan engagement. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20259853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20259853 [2] http://awfulagent.com/brandon-sanderson-sells-over-7-million-copies http://awfulagent.com/brandon-sanderson-sells-over-7-million...

Wowfunhappy 7y ago

That's a very good point about number of published works, that likely makes a huge difference! While Sanderson has several film projects in the works, none of them seem far enough along to have paid off yet financially. Although I guess it depends on how the contracts were written.

sdrothrock 7y ago
MikeAsh commented with an article he found saying Stephenson had sold 3 million books to date by 2013 [1], but I found another one saying Sanderson had sold 7 million to date by 2015 [2]. The really interesting part is that the article MikeAsh linked also lists Sanderson (as of 2013) with 2.5 million sales of his solo books, meaning that he sold at least another 4.5 million books in various languages in two years, basically eclipsing Stephenson's lifetime number. Given the difference in their output and the times that the various books were available for sale, this really cements the difference between them sales-wise for me. My gut feeling here is that a lot of this is due to not only his writing and stories, but also to his constant enthusiastic fan engagement. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20259853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20259853 [2] http://awfulagent.com/brandon-sanderson-sells-over-7-million-copies http://awfulagent.com/brandon-sanderson-sells-over-7-million...