New Brandon Sanderson Kickstarter makes million dollar campaigns look tiny

[darjr]

Scalzi has a few words.

Interesting and cudos

Very Quick Thoughts on Brandon Sanderson’s Mega Kickstarter

Context: Brandon Sanderson, who has been a #1 New York Times bestseller as co-writer of the Wheel of Time series and his own Stormlight Archives novels, announced a Kickstarter in which he offered …

whatever.scalzi.com

 

[darjr]

Also I thought Brandon Sanderson was George R. R. Martin old not John Scalzi old.

 

[Retreater]

He seemed a cool guy when I met him 15-ish years ago and got him to sign a copy of Mistborn at an ALA conference. He had just gotten the gig to finish Wheel of Time. Best of luck to him.

 

[Zaukrie]

Great article by Scalzi. I agree, Gaiman is the only one I'm sure could also pull this off.

Maybe the writers behind The Expanse?

I wonder, though, if Marvel or Disney could pull something similar with the MCU and Star Wars? Exclusive books and merch.....not thru KS, but similar things.

Also, wow, kudos to Sanderson and team. Insanely great numbers.

 

[Stalker0]

If there is any author I would bet my money on its Sanderson. Man is a machine, just completes project after project, and all of quality. While I’m not a fan of every series he does he has so many now you’ll always find something to like.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Also I thought Brandon Sanderson was George R. R. Martin old not John Scalzi old.

Actually, Sanderson is 6 years younger than Scalzi. I'm not sure if you'd count that as being within the same age-range, as Sanderson is in his mid 40's and Scalzi is in his early 50's, though.

 

[darjr]

Actually, Sanderson is 6 years younger than Scalzi. I'm not sure if you'd count that as being within the same age-range, as Sanderson is in his mid 40's and Scalzi is in his early 50's, though.

Well it only gets worse.

I didn’t need this either.

I think I’m going to pledge anway.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Almost ten thousand people have pledged $500 apiece for the top tier, where the majority of that money goes toward the almost totally unspecified swag boxes, not the novels.

I'm not saying the product won't live up to expectations. But it speaks volumes (to me anyway) that tens of thousands of people are willing to blind-buy hundreds of dollars of swag from him with next to no information about what they're buying. Obviously very, very few people on earth could pull that off, and he's apparently one of them.

I think that this says a lot about Sanderson and how much trust he has built up with his fanbase over the past 15ish years. He has proved many times to be more than capable of delivering high quality novels (and novellas) regularly, having done similar things to this (writing secret books) in the past, just not to this scale.

The fact that he's able to get so many people go in blind to this Kickstarter, and still have it be one of the most successful Kickstarters of all time by the second day, is truly telling of how big his fanbase is and how much they trust him.

I don't know any other author that could come out and reveal "I've written 5 EXTRA books in TWO YEARS, I'm not telling you almost anything about them, not even the names, support them on my new Kickstarter to get them next year" and not only get away with it, but be able to have such a successful Kickstarter.

 

[BookTenTiger]

This is a great time for me to try and get funding for my new series of fantasy novels under my pen name "Brandon S. Anderson."

 

[aco175]

Truthfully, I never really heard of him and had to Google him to see what I have heard of. I did see the Kick counter spinning like the national debt and about to hit 18million with 65k subscribers.