Fantasy author Brandon Sanderson might not be a household name like George RR Martin or JRR Tolkien, despite having a legion of loyal fans.
But that might be about to change. Sanderson, 46, although traditionally published and regularly selling upwards of 2m copies of his sweeping, epic novels, launched a crowdfunding campaign on Tuesday to self-publish four novels he had written during lockdown.
When he woke up on Wednesday, it was to, in effect, one of the biggest book deals in history. And less than three days after launching the project on Kickstarter he broke the platform’s record for the highest earnings in its 13-year existence.
Nebraska-born Sanderson has, at the time of writing, earned $23m (£17.5m) from fans who are paying upfront for copies of the four novels to be released next year, in effect funding their production, printing and distribution – and Sanderson’s pay packet for writing them.
With the Kickstarter running until 1 April, that potentially puts him in the earnings bracket of thriller writer James Patterson, who scored $150m (£113m) in 2009 for a 17-book deal; Barack and Michelle Obama, who got a joint advance of $65m for their memoirs in 2017, and pop singer Britney Spears, who landed a $15m deal for a book on the conservatorship scandal that has dogged her life.
Sanderson rose to prominence in 2007 when he was chosen by the widow of the late author Robert Jordan to complete the Wheel of Time fantasy series, adapted for TV last year by Amazon Prime. Since then, he has published 11 novels through mainstream publishers Macmillan and Random House in the US and Gollancz in the UK, including his bestselling Mistborn and Stormlight Archive series.
Speaking from his home in American Fork, Utah, Sanderson said the last few days had been “insane”.
He said: “I went to bed on Tuesday night after we’d launched the Kickstarter and when I woke up on Wednesday we’d … passed $8m.” The previous record for a crowdfunded project on Kickstarter was seven years ago when the Pebble smartwatch realised $20.3m after its 30-day campaign.
Oriana Leckert, director of Publishing & Comics Outreach, said: “It’s been so inspiring to watch Brandon Sanderson’s massive community rally around this ambitious project with such fervour. He and his team have spent decades building his audience and thrilling them with his myriad intricate fantasy works, positioning him perfectly to smash Kickstarter’s records and soar to this unprecedented level of success. I can’t wait to see what the coming days will bring.”
Sanderson admits to having some expectations of a big hit from the project, describing himself as a creative “who is also very entrepreneurial minded”. He has previously Kickstarted a limited edition of one of his previous novels, which brought in $6m.
But he says he is stunned by the numbers updating every few seconds on the Kickstarter page as more fans join the 87,000 who have already pledged money for his new books.
The new novels, which will be released every three months from January 2023, cost £30 for the ebooks, £45 for the audiobooks and £120 for premium limited-edition hardcovers, which Sanderson said will not be republished even if the four novels get picked up by a mainstream publisher.
He said he initially started to write the first of his new books during the first lockdown as a gift for his wife. Then he realised that his new ideas dovetailed with a long-held ambition to crowdfund a series of novels completely on his own terms.
But he is not turning his back on traditional publishing. “I love my publishers,” he said. “I have no intention of leaving them. But I like to try new things and perhaps one of the main reasons I did this is because of the dominance Amazon has on the book market . I know people have issues with Amazon, but it’s a fact that they offer a great user experience. And they are the biggest game in town.
“I have a team of 30 people and We sat down to work out if we could really publish a front-list title ourselves, just in case a disaster happened with how my books are sold at the moment.”
He also said he was looking at ways to involve traditional, independent bookstores. He said: “My career was partially made by bookstores hand-selling my books, and I don’t want to cut them out of this process in any way.”
