Brandon Sanderson did make smart career choices, but they might not be what youĀ think.
(originally posted on a different writing blog in March 2022)
This is NOT another post breaking down āwhat you can learn!ā from Sandersonās massive Kickstarter earlier this month. Well, it kind of is, but itās the opposite of some of the others.
Buckle up, itās unpopular opinion time.
On March 1, 2022, fantasy author Brandon Sanderson announced a Kickstarter: pledge to help him publish four standalone novels heād secretly written during the pandemic. He and his team set a goal of one million dollars, and he estimated they would get two to four million total.
In three days, the Kickstarter had reached twenty million dollars, and it currently (as of March 27, 2022) sits at thirty-three million dollars.
The publishing world wasāand still isāstaggered.
In the last three weeks, Iāve seen a dozen indie authors and marketers try to break down that massive success and what lessons others can take from it for their own careers. Most of them write to various Amazon markets. Some of them made good points. One thing everyone keeps repeating is that Sanderson has made āsmart career choices.ā But every time, Iāve walked away from those articles shaking my head. Most of the articles seem to be missing the biggest and most important point. It's hard to talk about taking lessons from Sandersonās marketing before you talk about lessons from his WRITING career.
The four novels Sanderson will be publishing with the Kickstarter money are already written. He wrote them for his wife (and because he wanted to explore new stories) during the pandemic.
He will be publishing them through his own company: Dragonsteel Books. He created the company to publish special editions of his books, carry his book swag*, and have an alternative option for people to buy his books if Amazon ever stops selling his books again.**
Sanderson has a reputation for being reliable with his book publishing. If he says heās going to publish something, he does it, and he tries to keep fans updated as he goes.
*Book swag / book merch = special items created for fans of books.
**Years ago, Amazon briefly stopped selling his books because of contract disputes. You can read more about it here.
And some facts about Sanderson himself, if youāre not familiar with his work:
His first book to be publishedāElantrisācame out in 2005. It was the sixth novel he wrote, and it was published by Tor. It took eighteen months for someone to read the book and then call him about it.
Before Elantris was published, heād written thirteen novels.
He now has so many novels out that Wikipedia has a separate article for his bibliography.
He was handpicked by Robert Jordanās wife to finish the Wheel of Time book series, and he was on the writing team for the Wheel of Time TV series.
So what were Sandersonās āsmart career choicesā as a writer?
He didnāt write to market. This is going to be the most unpopular opinion of all, but hear me out, please. Sanderson tried it. Back before Elantris was published, after a lot of people told him his books werenāt being accepted because they were too long and didnāt have the popular format and tropes of the time, he tried writing to market. Heās said those were the worst novels of his writing career. So he stopped. He went back to writing what he loved. That love and passion kept him writing books that have resonated with fans for almost twenty years now. If weāre going to talk about why his fanbase loves his BOOKS so much, let's start with how much HE loves what he wrote and how much that love spills over in how he talks about his books.
He constantly pushes himself to improve. He knew from the beginning that he needed critique, and he got it. Since college, heās been in critique groups and had alpha readers, and they keep pushing him to be better too. He himself says that some of his earlier books (yes, the published ones!) arenāt his best. Heās honest that he keeps wanting to do better and looking to improve.
When he made plans about publishing, he didnāt just think about it like a writer. He thought about it like an author. He figured out his writing pace and he tried to be consistent with that. You can talk for hours about how he finishes books and how that āmakes him better than Patrick Rothfuss and George R. R. Martin,ā*** but I donāt see many people talk about how Sanderson learned from them and others and FIGURED OUT what he had to do AHEAD OF TIME so he wasnāt doing that to his fans, intentionally or accidentally.
He also approached his published author career like a reader. He treated his fans like he would have wanted to be treated as a reader. He used social media to connect with them and to keep them posted. He was and still is actively involved in his fandom.
Heās given back to the community. Heās taught at university for years; heās talked at conferences; heās free with his advice on his writing podcast; heās given fans advice for years at cons and book signings and through his website, and he always has a smile for his fans.
***Iām not going to discuss Rothfussās or Martinās choices; I donāt know whatās going on in their lives, and I think thereās a difference between authors having a responsibility to finish a series and authors āowingā fans the way their particular fans claim. This is only about Sanderson and his decisions.
THESE were his smart career choices. THESE are the reasons his books are so popular and why his Kickstarter got to twenty million in three days. Sure, finishing Wheel of Time helped get his name out there to some readers, but the majority of Sandersonās fans donāt talk about Wheel of Time like they talk about his own books. Wheel of Time fans (some of them) talk about being grateful he finished the series, yes. But Sanderson fans talk more about Elantris, Mistborn, and the Stormlight Archive.
If weāre going to break down Sandersonās success, we have to go back further than his marketing. We have to look at his foundation and be honest about why and how he is where he is.
If you write to market, three things sell your books:
your other marketing (but mostly your ads)
and how well you followed the recipe for that market
Whether your plot and characters are objectively well written doesnāt matter as much. (I'm not saying it doesn't matter at all.) Why? Because the recipe is what the ads sell. So if youāre good at following the recipe, readers will keep coming back after their first few from you. Not so much if you like to change recipes a lot or canāt follow one well. You might get other readers, but you won't get that particular market's readers.
Iām not dissing writing to market. If you DO mostly write to market, you wonāt be able to take many lessons from Sandersonās Kickstarter success (or his career in general) because Sandersonās marketing isnāt what keeps his fiction selling. His writing is. His fan interaction is another huge part.
Sanderson is a prolific writer. He can sustain a publishing pace that many people canāt. I canāt, for sure. I would LOVE to be that prolific, but Iām not there, at least not right now. Being consistent doesnāt mean you have to publish every year or write every single day. It means finding what pace works for you and then being consistent with that. If that means publishing once a year, good for you. If it means once every three years, go for it.
Building a fanbase takes time. Sanderson has been publishing for almost twenty years, if you count how long the process took for Elantris. Heās been writing for twenty-five years. No one likes to hear that something they want right now takes time, but itās the truth. Building a consistent fanbase takes time, and it does tend to take more time for indie authors than traditionally published ones.
I've worked with a lot of competitive write-to-market indie authors. I know exactly how unpopular this opinion is. But for all the authors wanting to really understand the writing craft and find the path that helps them build their own consistent career of putting out good stories, this post is for you. If you're asking āWhy is Sanderson so popular that his Kickstarter reached twenty million in three days?ā and wanting to know what you can learn from it . . .
This is why. And this is what you can learn.
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