3 ms·
It’s interesting to see a few dynamics here. 1) Sanderson already delivered a huge shot across the bow with the secret novel kickstarter. TOR had to have been
by InTheArena 4y ago
It’s interesting to see a few dynamics here.
1) Sanderson already delivered a huge shot across the bow with the secret novel kickstarter. TOR had to have been livid with the kickstarter - it’s 41 million of revenue from their top line, but more importantly It kick started a whole ton of other authors. The kickstarters started because a loophole in their contract, and Brandon has very successfully exploited it as much as his characters exploit magic systems.
2) Dragonsteel is basically growing to the point that it is a publishing house. Others should keep this in mind - Brandon knows how to scale a business. I think of other creative battles - think comic Bill Waterson who won creative rights to Calvin and Hobbes, only to stop publishing a few years later because of how difficult the format changes he insisted on were. This path is not sustainable for a ton of people.
3) TOR has also got to be livid in that they basically handed the keys to the kingdom w/ Brandon by asking him to finish WoT (technically Harriet, Jordan’s wife did)
4) Now he is trying to do the same thing to Audible.
Having met Sanderson before he started on WoT - Ut’s incredible how far he’s gone… but somehow he keeps going.
- SamoyedFurFluff 4y agoI hope Sanderson can become something akin to a Rick Riordan, where “Rick Riordan presents” has become a huge household name launching new careers in childrens lit.
- swsieber 4y agoExcept it's not 41 million from their top line. I expect a lot of that is in ebook, audio book and swag items.
- defen 4y ago> The kickstarters started because a loophole in their contract, and Brandon has very successfully exploited it as much as his characters exploit magic systems Can you go into more detail on that? I know what you mean about exploiting magic systems, but I don't know anything about Sanderson's contract with Tor or what he did.
- legobmw99 4y agoI don’t remember the details, someone asked about Right of First Refusal from Tor during the Q&A live stream following the kickstarter announcement and he said something like a polite version of “we can sort of do what we want as long as we keep giving them the big series”
- eslaught 4y agoThis seems to be misreading the situation to me. The Kickstarter's $41M total was boosted dramatically by merchandize. You can calculate the numbers yourself: the four highest cost tiers (the ones that include the monthly swag boxes) amount to $18.1M by themselves (23103 * 500 + 8656 * 480 + 4095 * 380 + 2370 * 360). The next two highest tiers add another $10.4M (11463 * 220 + 49491 * 160). This is nearly 70% of the total value of the campaign, at price points WAY beyond what any publisher would ever dream of charging readers. You can confirm for yourself at [1]. So what Brandon really did was figure out a way to convince his fans to part with big money to be in on this. I'm sure Tor is jealous, in the sense that anyone would be at seeing those numbers, but it's just not realistic to think that they would have ever done anything remotely like this on their own. And the same goes for Brandon's company. The value Dragonsteel seems to provide is not in being a replacement for Tor, but rather in these high-value premium products (leatherbounds/merchandise) that sit alongside the main releases. And also audio, but that's not really competing with Tor per se. [1]: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dragonsteel/surprise-four-secret-novels-by-brandon-sanderson/description https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dragonsteel/surprise-fo...