Brandon Sanderson’s Mega-Kickstarter
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Brandon Sanderson’s Mega-Kickstarter
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Re: Brandon Sanderson’s Mega-Kickstarter
#2Was a time George R. R. Martin could've pulled off something as splashy. Doubt he could do it now.
I wonder if this will be the inflection point in Sanderson's career, I can already hear the "everything sucks" critics sharpening their knives over the amount of money raised. He could drop something with the impact and longevity of "Lord of the Rings" and there's still gonna be people bitching about that much money for 4 books.
Another nail in the coffin of the traditional "publishing industry" too. Expecting to see "edited and produced by" credits in books soon, and to pay attention to the names of those as much as the authors.
Re: Brandon Sanderson’s Mega-Kickstarter
#3Was a time George R. R. Martin could've pulled off something as splashy. Doubt he could do it now. I wonder if this will be the inflection point in Sanderson's career, I can already hear the "everything sucks" critics sharpening their knives over the amount of money raised. He could drop something with the impact and longevity of "Lord of the Rings" and there's still gonna be people bitching about that much money for…
This isn't really a nail in the publishing industry's coffin. The number of authors who can do this and even do okay let alone insane amounts of money is miniscule. If you don't already have a huge name, making people even aware a book exists is HARD. Some writers have managed indie only by being found by someone with a big enough audience to catapult them into making very very real money, but it isn't the norm.
The only thing this really means is Brandon could skip dealing with Tor/whoever else he publishes with after his current contracts are up, if he's willing to forgo being in bookstores. I would suspect he keeps Stormlight with Tor simply so you can find every book the same way, but any future books are much more up in the air.
Re: Brandon Sanderson’s Mega-Kickstarter
#4It's impressive from a business perspective that he's turned marketing from a cost centre to a revenue source in its own right.
Re: Brandon Sanderson’s Mega-Kickstarter
#5This is such a funny takeaway, basically it's "As long as you're extremely popular already, it basically doesn't matter what you do on your kickstarter, your fans will buy it anyway" - which is both true, and totally useless advice.
Re: Brandon Sanderson’s Mega-Kickstarter
#6Was a time George R. R. Martin could've pulled off something as splashy. Doubt he could do it now. I wonder if this will be the inflection point in Sanderson's career, I can already hear the "everything sucks" critics sharpening their knives over the amount of money raised. He could drop something with the impact and longevity of "Lord of the Rings" and there's still gonna be people bitching about that much money for…
Publishers definitely still have a role in the world to play. I've looked at self-published stuff that has embarrassing and, frankly, appalling typos in them (like, did you even look at the red underlines in Microsoft Word before publishing this?). The good ones go beyond just editing, though: they are "curators" and establish a brand or reputation for quality. "Penguin Classics", for example, is usually a few bucks more than other brands that might publish the same novel, but particularly for translated works, you're paying for Penguin's commitment to a quality translation.
On the other end, there's the Publisher role as providing the niche catered experience, like these guys I discovered recently:
I'm enjoying some of their anthologies so far, particular the dedication to tracking down the unedited versions of obscure works by famous fantasy authors.
Re: Brandon Sanderson’s Mega-Kickstarter
#7It's impressive from a business perspective that he's turned marketing from a cost centre to a revenue source in its own right.
This isn't marketing. It is distribution.
Re: Brandon Sanderson’s Mega-Kickstarter
#8I feel like I'm missing something here. Isn't the idea of kickstarter to help fund new projects that wouldn't get support from traditional funding channels? But in this case the stories are already written and Brandon already has a publisher willing to print and distribute those stories? Why would you use kickstarter in place of a preorder system?
Re: Brandon Sanderson’s Mega-Kickstarter
#9I've never heard of this author. Anyone have any good recommendations on where to start? Specific book titles would be appreciated (its hard to find the starting point in a given series sometimes for example)
Re: Brandon Sanderson’s Mega-Kickstarter
#10I've never heard of this author. Anyone have any good recommendations on where to start? Specific book titles would be appreciated (its hard to find the starting point in a given series sometimes for example)
The Stormlight Archive series contains some of the best worldbuilding, character development and story telling I have ever read.
Brandon is also super nice (got to meet him in a few conferences) and down to earth for an author of his magnitude.