It takes a village

"I can no longer live with this secret." Brandon Sanderson sent out a serious-looking email to his newsletter subscribers the other day, linking to a video with an ominous headline: "It's time to come clean."

Fortunately for his fans, the entire thing was a bit of coy misdirection: an announcement that he'd written five novels in the time freed up because of the COVID-19 lockdown, and that he was publishing four of them through Kickstarter. His campaign, Surprise! Four Secret Novels by Brandon Sanderson, has since smashed Kickstarter's records, garnering $27 million dollars since its launch, and prompting more than a little chatter about what it means for the future of publishing and reading.

Watching the news, I feel like there's one big lesson here: the wild success of his Kickstarter is a good demonstration of not only the power of one author's particular branding and fan community, but that publishers can likely play a larger role in helping an author grow that community.

In his Kickstarter video, Sanderson explained that COVID-19 left him with a big chunk of time that would have otherwise been devoted to travel, around 70-100 days out of the year. "Suddenly, I had time again," he said. With that newfound time, he began writing some stories for his own enjoyment and for his wife.

The result is a book that he started writing as a gift for his wife, and he found that experience — writing a book with no expectations or publishing plans or audience — liberating. "The process rejuvenated me," he explained, and after presenting the book to his wife, she encouraged him to publish it for his readers.

That wasn't the only book: he went on to pull a clown-car's worth of manuscripts from out of frame, noting that he'd had plenty of years for stories over the years, but his commitments to his larger series meant that he couldn't devote the time to explore them. With the COVID lockdowns, he had that time, and explained that he wrote four additional novels. "I might have gone a little overboard, because I've written five extra novels in the last two years. I know, don't roll your eyes at me, you deal with isolation and quarantine in your way, I'll deal with it in mine."

He's opted to self-publish four of those books (the fifth, a middle-grade, is one that he's evaluating). Three of those books are in his Cosmere universe, and the fourth is one that stands alone.

Sanderson's kept most of the details about the books secret, noting that he'd like fans to go into them blind, although he will host some previews on his YouTube channel moving forward. Through the Kickstarter, he'll be releasing them in audio, digital, and hard cover editions, each of which will be available at various backer levels. He'll also be offering up bundled packages of all editions, and what he's calling "A Year of Sanderson", a series of 12 boxes that contain not only the books, but additional, themed swag boxes.

Already, he's raked in more than $27 million for his efforts, with more than 117,000 backers pledging their support. It's an unprecedented success.

It helps to know a bit about Sanderson's career: it's one of those rare success stories in the publishing world, and it showcases how years of hard work can pay off, and how one can take advantage of lucky breaks when they present themselves.

Sandersron got his start in 2005 with his debut novel Elantris, the first part of a larger world that he's been steadily building with each successive book: the Cosmere. He followed up Elantris with a trilogy of novels, Mistborn (The Final Empire, The Well of Ascension, and The Hero of Ages) and Warbreaker in 2009.

To the dismay of fans, fantasy author Robert Jordan died in 2007 at the age of 58, and in doing so, he left his sprawling Wheel of Time series unfinished. He had vowed to complete the story, and had been writing down notes up to his death, leaving breadcrumbs for someone to complete his epic.

Sanderson's rise as an author caught the attention of Jordan's widow, Harriet McDougal, who was impressed with his writing, and invited him to complete the series not long after his death. In an interview after the announcement, Sanderson explained why he'd been chosen: "I know how to write fantasy books. I understand how to plot over a long epic book, and my novels have been very well received by both reviewers and fantasy fans. I write epics after the flair of the Wheel of Time, yet my books (I hope) aren't just a copies of what Robert Jordan and others have written."

Jordan had intended to finish the story in one final volume, and Sanderson ended up splitting that story into three volumes: The Gathering Storm, Towers of Midnight, and A Memory of Light. It was a huge risk, despite the pluses in Sanderson's column: if he didn't deliver a project that satisfied fans, he'd likely become a pariah within the fantasy community. That didn't happen: all three books topped The New York Times bestseller list, delivering a final ending for fans of the long-running series. But is also helped bring Sanderson to the legions of fans that Jordan had amassed over the course of his career, and it's helped to catapult Sanderson into the forefront of the fantasy publishing world.

Following his work on Jordan's series, Sanderson turned his attention to a long-simmering project that he'd initially completed in 2003: a novel called The Way of Kings, the first installment in a massive fantasy series, The Stormlight Archive. He's since published three additional installments: Words of Radiance (2014), Oathbringer (2017), and Rhythm of War (2020) — with six additional books planned before the series concludes.

Along the way, he's been a fairly accessible presence for his fans: he's spent weeks on the road each year touring to support those books: it's clear from his State of Sanderson annual updates that he takes the time to appreciate those fans who show up for events. He's also extremely transparent about what he's up to, providing updates for fans on his site and on YouTube. That engagement is regular and accessible, two things that I think really go a long way in keeping fans interested and in the know.

On top of that, he's helped support that fan community: he's open and encouraging to fan art and fan fiction, and fan forums for those fans to connect with one another and discuss his books. His team has a presence in the 90k subreddit in his name. That effort and attention counts a great deal.

With the success of the Kickstarter thus far (it has 21 days to go) it's become one of those projects that crowdfunding advocates will point to as proof-positive that self-publishing and crowdfunding is the future of the industry, and that the traditional publishing world is fundamentally broken.

I don't think that's entirely the case: none of this would be possible without the support of his publisher since that first novel, and their willingness to trust his effort in taking over one of the genre's biggest series. And, of course, Sanderson's built out a massive universe and worked to support that.

There's another element to this that's a bit deceptive: the idea that Sanderson's turning his back on his publisher (something he's denied) and is simply raking in millions himself. Despite the ease to which one can sign up and launch a project on Kickstarter (or any other crowdfunding platform for that matter), they're incredibly difficult operations to oversee and manage, and despite the money that he's pulled in, I don't imagine that this is actually the goldmine that it appears to be: that money that he's earned now has to go into turning those stories into a product and get them in the hands of over 100,000 backers.

In 2013, I ran a Kickstarter for an anthology, War Stories: New Military Science Fiction. The experience of crowdfunding was an eye-opening one: we had to take our money and print up the books, buy shipping materials and then send them out. I can't remember exactly how we ended up, but if we didn't lose money on it, it barely broke even.

Writing on his blog, John Scalzi noted there aren't many authors who can successfully run this type of project, and highlighted why Sanderson has been so successful thus far. He can not only draw on those years of work building up his fan base, but he's already launched a successful Kickstarter (a leatherbound edition of The Way of Kings, which earned him more than $6.7 million from more than 30,000 backers), which has already tested his organization.

Once the campaign closes, Sanderson has a significant list of tasks ahead of him. Off the top of whatever he earns, up to 10 percent of that will vanish with Kickstarter and the payment processor's cut. After that, he has to get those manuscripts into readable shape — editing, copy-editing, audio recorded, cover art commissioned, books printed (in the midst some supply chain issues in the printing world), and so forth. He and his team have to then ship those books to tens of thousands of backers, keep all of those backer levels straight, and do so with minimal errors — a 1 percent error rate will impact 1,130 backers, which is in and of itself no small number.

This is why publishers exist: they handle the entire ecosystem of management that goes into turning a manuscript into a viable product, and they're pretty good at it! Working on Cosplay: A History, Simon & Schuster has worked as a force multiplier for my efforts. I'm not great with graphic design, the editing and copy-editing process was invaluable and improved the book immeasurably, then there's the type-setting, ISBN stuff, getting the book before booksellers and reviewers, and so forth: getting a book together is a job in and of itself. Publishers provide the logistical infrastructure to make that process pretty painless for authors: put a manuscript in and out the other end comes a book.

A publisher isn't a magical thing: it's an organization, and from the sounds of things, Sanderson understands the logistical undertaking that's required to set something like this up.

This also isn't something that Sanderson has started up on a whim: he has an entire operation and structure in place to support him. In his latest edition of his Book Club newsletter, Ron Charles interviewed Sanderson, who noted that his company, Dragonsteel Entertainment includes 30 employees, so many that he has Human Resources director. The New York Times also has a feature about the news, and notes that the company employs a marketing director, concept artist, and continuity editor, and has a warehouse in Pleasant Grove, Utah. “I am an artist who was raised by an accountant and a businessman,” Sanderson explained to the Times. “For a lot of authors, this would be a bad idea because there’s a lot of management.”

So, I don't think that this is an entirely viable thing for any author to do at scale: delivering a premium, printed edition of their book to tens of thousands of backers around the world. (Certainly, there are self-published authors who do this regularly on Amazon and other digital platforms, but there's a world of difference in this sort of fulfillment.)

Given Sanderson's stature in the literary world, why not bring the books to Tor and have them handle all of that? Putting together a company and project like this isn't a small undertaking. Certainly, I'm sure that Tor (or any other publisher would jump at the chance to publish a handful of Sanderson novels.)

I think there's a couple of reasons, and Sanderson lays out one of them in his interviews: the publishing industry has a bunch of limitations. First, I don't think anyone would be able to publish four new Sanderson novels, all of which look pretty long in a year. I spoke with a self-published author last year who said that they'd gotten some interest from a major publisher, but that they had some stipulations: they wouldn't be able to write at the pace they (and their fans) were accustomed: they'd have to shift to a one-book-a-year pace.

There are a bunch of reasons for that: resources are a big one. A publisher is putting out lots of books at a time, and four books by Sanderson would suck all of the resources that a publicity department might have at any given time, taking attention away from all four, and from the other authors on their account. The same goes for editing (editors are juggling multiple projects at once), copyediting, sales, and so forth.

But there's another, critical one, which Sanderson noted to Ron Charles in his newsletter: "Ours is the only industry I can think of that doesn’t try to upsell when you have such a dedicated fan base."

That's very true: publishing is an industry that's designed to produce a single product, and I think that's a big, systemic issue, given that an author's content can be a jumping-off point for any number of other things.

I had a weird experience with this a year or so ago in a newsroom. At some point, one publisher (I think it was Orbit) had put together a neat bit of marketing material: a puzzle of the cover of an upcoming book. It struck me as the type of thing that a publisher should be doing with their materials: finding things to sell to that small pool of dedicated fans. Look at a movie studio: there are entire departments dedicated to licensing out images for their products, ranging from the everyday shirt or puzzle or something, to the weird, like... take your pick.

Books have a much smaller footprint than something like a movie or TV show or video game, but you still have authors with sizable audiences, with some segment of which would likely go in to buy things. There are cases where publishers make the effort for some of the highest-profile authors out there: George R.R. Martin and J.R.R. Tolkien both have calendars and whatnot for their literary works (not to mention their adaptations), and some authors, like Brian Staveley, have taken it upon themselves to print up merchandise like shirts. (He did this on his own, and now has Legion M doing it, which optioned his series for adaptation.) There are some options out there: Void Merch has a collection called Metal AF that features author names as metal bands. Mary Robinette Kowal has some merch for her Lady Astronauts series.

That observation wasn't well-received in that workroom: the editors I reported to were condescending, explained how publishing worked (something I'm already pretty familiar with?), and listed off a bunch of reasons for why that wasn't done — art had to be licensed, people had to conceive of various products and execute them, etc. — all problems that aren't insurmountable with the right team, organization, and mindset. I've since chalked this up to organizational stagnation and a general unwillingness within the industry view books as anything other than a special, sanctified thing that needs to be treated as something other than a product. I don't think that's universally the case, but the experience left a bad taste in my mouth.

Some of that does come down to resources, the size of one's audience, marketing budget, and so forth: it is a lot of work. I spoke with Staveley on the phone about this, and he noted that he made a negligible amount of money off of the shirts when he did them (and noted that he's got a bunch left over), and under Legion M, likely doesn't sell more than a couple of thousand a year. "The people who want to buy this stuff are likely in the dozens," he pointed out: this isn't the sort of thing that will provide a good or reliable revenue stream, especially when you factor in the work that you put into it.

Why do it? "They're good little community builders," Staveley explained. The important thing here isn't the revenue that you're getting from those individual items: the margins are fairly low. What's valuable here is that it's something that puts something in the hands of a fan that allows them to spread the word of their favorite thing. A shirt isn't just a shirt: it's a beacon.

In a lot of ways, I think authors should have the option to operate like a band on tour does: provide some shirts, a mug, or other things that fans can buy that allows them to demonstrate their fanaticism, and I think that this is an area where publishers don't — or aren't — able to adequately support their authors, because of institutional interest, resources / time, lack of strategic planning, or the perceived return on investment.

Those are issues that are solvable, I think. I've had nothing but good experiences with my own publicity folks working on Cosplay, but I'm also a new author that is operating alongside a whole bunch of other authors with their own books coming out this summer. But from the journalist side of things, I see some authors who get very little support: an ARC, a handful of emails from a publicist, and that's about it, and I'm not entirely surprised when I don't see much from that author again. I can tell when a marketing team is really behind a book: they get lots of attention, thrown out into the world, which sometimes works, and which sometimes doesn't.

Let's put aside debut authors for a moment (because debuts can be hit-or-miss), once an author does get some traction, even a big readership like Staveley or N.K. Jemisin, or Kim Stanley Robinson, or Becky Chambers, there really isn't much in the way of things that publishers are offering to fans beyond the books themselves, and I have to think that providing an author support not just on putting out that book but also helping to grow and reinforce their fanbase is something that should and could be done. It seems as though Sanderson has similar feelings. He explained that he's brought these issues to his publishers in New York, and that "it’s just baffling to me that we aren’t providing the things that people want.”

Clearly, for an author of Sanderson's size, there's a market for things like that: more than 15,000 people have pledged $500 to get not only the books, but boxes of merchandize throughout the year helps show that there are people who'll do this. Scalzi pointed out that there are authors out there who have the fanbases to support this at various scales, they just don't have the interest or time to do it on their own. (Again, figuring in the backend logistics that goes into this.)

The key lesson here isn't that there's the ability to earn millions of dollars from one's audience if it's of sufficient size: Sanderson has the infrastructure and footprint to carry it out like this. I think the key point to this is that publishers have the organizational capacity to do something like this, and that they should think about the release of a book as something beyond one product, but one product and some supplemental products that are designed to help an author out in the long-term: years, rather than the months leading up to the book's release date.

I also don't think that the takeaway here is that you need to operate at the scale that Sanderson's at: as with all things, starting small feels like the smart thing to do: commission a logo, get some stickers, book plates, or a profile on a print-on-demand shirt site. Give stuff away to everyone who'll take it, track what works and what doesn't, and improve the next time. (I've got a couple of things that I've done within the 501st: I have trading cards for three of my costumes, and I give away challenge coins frequently when I go to events or meet new people.)

Looking at Sanderson's career and this particular project, that's what I see: a significant effort and investment in his career as an author. He's built that community over the years, and I imagine in 2023, we'll see that fan community grow even larger as those books go out, those 117,000+ people begin to tell their friends about him, and wear whatever swag they're sent to conventions, bookstores, and gatherings. Sanderson's project is designed to reinforce and expand that community that he's grown, and the key factor in every author I've seen succeed is a vocal community that supports them with every new release. It's just one part of the puzzle, but I think it's just as important as the books that they're all fans of. If publishers want to help put their thumb on the scale by helping to grow that community, they need to consider devoting more time and resources to do so. Ultimately, I think that'll help everyone in the long run.