Fantasy author Brandon Sanderson has – much to his own surprise – raised tens of millions of dollars from his devoted fans to self-publish his books in 2023.
Known for his fantastical, epic books, Brandon Sanderson has already published over 20 novels and novellas through traditional publishing houses such as Pan Macmillan, Random House, and Gollancz. While many of his books have gone on to sell millions of copies and hit NYT Bestseller lists, he’s remained relatively unknown to the wider reading world until now.
While he aimed to raise $1 million dollars in 30 days for his self-publishing project, within half an hour, Brandon Sanderson blazed past the goal, with his devoted fans raising a total of $34 million dollars, at the time of writing, within a week. The Kickstarter campaign has broken the record for the platform’s fastest raising effort. Before this, the last crowdfunding record on Kickstarter was in 2015, when the Pebble Technology Corporation raised $20 million for their smartwatch offering.
Speaking to the rocketing success of the campaign, Sanderson said to The Guardian: “I went to bed on Tuesday night after we’d launched the Kickstarter and when I woke up on Wednesday we’d … passed $8m.”
Everyone, I’m supposed to WRITE fantasy worlds—not live in them.
Not long ago we hit 20 MILLION on this Kickstarter, and as of this posting we’ve crossed an incredible threshold. We just became the number one Kickstarter of all time.
Wow.
Your Humble(d) Storyteller,
Brandon pic.twitter.com/nU4Vyb2Bj3
— Brandon Sanderson (@BrandSanderson) March 4, 2022
The fans, who are paying upfront for copies of the four novels to be released in 2023, are essentially funding the entire production, distribution, marketing, and author payment processes that are traditionally covered by publishing houses.
NOT BRANDON SANDERSON WRITING FIVE EXTRA SECRET NOVELS DURING THE PANDEMIC AS A COPING MECHANISM WHAT THE FUCK pic.twitter.com/EHhhWGybwH
— Lexi 🌻 (@ChiliLaozu) March 1, 2022
Speaking on his own relationships with publishing houses, Sanderson said that he’s not necessarily looking to turn away from the traditional model. “I love my publishers. 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.”
