This seems to be misreading the situation to me. The Kickstarter's $41M total was boosted dramatically by merchandize. You can calculate the numbers yourself: t

This 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...