This is the stuff I love. Sanderson doesn't _have_ to take a stand against Audible , and yet he does. Of course he is in a position of privilege to be able to do it, but so many other people are too and act very differently.
Audible giving creators only a 25% cut (or 40% if they sign an exclusive deal) is absolutely exploitative. For a DIGITAL product! That's insane.
Props to Sanderson, and props to all the other people with integrity.
> I’ve made enough on this Kickstarter. I don’t need to squeeze people for every penny—but what I do want to do is find a way to provide options for authors.
This is a kind of sentiment I wish was not exceptional. People often talk about how one day they may have enough, and _then_ they'll help others -- but it's rare to see someone (especially with less than a billion dollars) say out loud that they did it, and in the same breath they start helping. (At a certain time, Kaladin wouldn't believe this kind of guy exists!)
I think it's important to realize just how rare a position Brandon Sanderson is in, really. Publishing and the literary scene outside of the major publishers has always been people using the little money they make to try and keep it alive outside of the dominant system that's creeping towards a monopoly in NA. Most stuff just doesn't have the huge marketing capability that Sanderson does and usually fails. Frankly, most authors are barely able to make a living doing it. Sanderson is far from the only person trying to help authors in publishing, but his 0.1% level financial success in publishing likely means he can accept much more risk than even more well known authors.
That said, I do find it kind of ironic that he made a secret deal with Spotify, which has its own pitiful history of payouts to artists. But atleast free accounts get access to the books as well.
If anything, I think you're overselling it. Most authors make at best a very small amount of money from their work and are nowhere near being able to make a living from it. Most books simply don't sell much at all (200-300 for an average author), to the point where even 100% of sticker price wouldn't pay for a person's living expenses.
A generous assumption is hardbacks at $25 a pop. That would put an average author at 5k to 7.5k in a year... under the very improbable assumption of 100% of sticker price going to the author.
Spotify and the music world has a distinctly different problem. Last I read, the vast majority of their revenue is going to their licensing deals. The license-holders then don't pay much to the artists. You can blame Spotify for this if you choose, and many artists like to publicly, but as with many things in music it comes back to the labels.
Important to consider that most books range from barely readable to trash. I think the book distribution of quality is more concentrated among elite authors, whereas music is a lot more linear -- the average musician is a lot closer to elite musicians.
> whereas music is a lot more linear -- the average musician is a lot closer to elite musicians.
Gosh, I don't know. This is quite a claim.
First off is the obvious question: who is a musician? High school band? Play Friday nights at the local pub? Or are we talking "survives exclusively on record sales" / "is a member of a symphony"? That's a lot of selection bias. Almost nobody publishing rubbish is surviving off that income.
Second, "musician" is actually conflating two things: songwriting/composition and performance. Composition is the thing that really bears direct comparison, and I'd venture a guess you've not even heard all the awful songs out there because nobody with any talent is interested in performing them (unlike the ease with which anyone can publish total rubbish).
Finally, if you consider the size of the corpus -- all songs vs all English text -- it's pretty clear which one is easier to curate (covers in music are super common, which is probably not an accident).
Just anecdotally, I saw a video on reddit the other day of an African dictator casually wetting himself. But what was really striking to me was how absolutely awful the state band was.
Not only is it rare for someone to experience success like Sanderson, it's even rarer for an author to so consistently put out high quality work. The man practically writes a 1,000 page novel a year. He's lucked (and hard-worked) into a lot of leverage here.
I worked for a few years at Audible as a dev. Based on my experience, I'd say the culture at the company was good, in that we were not trying to exploit people, neither externally nor internally.
One thing that was pretty clear was that our audiobooks were at the mercy of publishing houses / content owners, and a lot of restrictions came from licensing deals (geographic reastrictions, time-based, formats, etc), so I'm inclined to assume that the low cut for authors may be due to publishers wanting a big cut of the sales.
That said, there was a floor which we were not allowed on, and I believe that was the sales floor, so there could have been a whole other side to this company that I was not exposed to.
I still remember when the kindle first came out, it would read to you. Before publishers threatened to sue. With modern text to speech getting so good, there really is no reason an inference model couldn't run on every device to read to us. I guess book readers were the first to have their jobs replaced by AI, but contracts didn't let it happen.
I don’t know. I’ve been listening to an unabridged audiobook of the Count of Monte Cristo. The single narrator has done a fantastic job of giving a different voice to every single character. Even if a particular character hasn’t appeared for tens of hours, when they do reappear, I remember who they are from their unique voice.
Plus, the narrator does a great job of pronouncing names with a french accent (at least, it sounds legit to me, a non-french speaking person). I wonder how a computer voice would do with speaking English with a distinct French accent. Would it understand when to go more heavily English vs French?
Absolutely. There's a world of difference between a professional voice actor narrating an audiobook, and AI/amateur. Personally I can't listen to anything narrated by anyone other than (good) pro voice actors, it just kills the enjoyment.
On a similar note, Sanderson's own books in "graphic audio" format (multiple voice actors, sound effects, music, etc) are a wonderful piece of art and is my preferred way to consume audiobooks when possible. I don't see that being replaced with AI any time soon.
> I wonder how a computer voice would do with speaking English with a distinct French accent. Would it understand when to go more heavily English vs French?
If you can get a synthesized voice to speak French in a French accent, you can also get it to speak English in a French accent. That part's easy.
> Would it understand when to go more heavily English vs French?
I like Neil Gaiman's quote in there, and I agree if you record someone reading a book you can copyright that, but that copyright has no bearing on the copyright status of the recording of a another person or machine reading the book. If I own the content, I can format shift, that is actually in law in the US. Audio is a format.
I think what actually happened is that they convinced Amazon that there was more money in audiobooks than they thought, and it wasn't worth using it as a feature to sell kindles. Now Amazon knows how much money is in audiobooks and they aren't sharing. Are they surprised?
Copilot and chatgpt are going to replace me, so I say this with all humility, don't protect jobs from AI. They are saving us effort we can spend on other things. This is just industrialization taken another step.
My worry is that you could do something 60% as good for 1% of the cost, at which point a well-narrated audiobook becomes an extreme luxury good. Most people will pay $5-$10 for the "good enough" algorithmic version, and there aren't enough people who care to pay the fixed cost of Michael Kramer doing a version.
Chat gpt can already parrot back some idea to you in the written "voice" of any famous historical figure you care to name, and remembers context from earlier in your session to inform its written inflection as well. Presumably this implies we have "line of sight" to doing something analogous in the audio space, at least in this generation. Certainly if you fed a whole book into chat gpt that it had never read before and asked it to describe the intonation of a character's voice it would have some level of accuracy (e.g. "husky" vs "meek") so I think we would want to do something similar for the AI reading. It could also probably pick up on context in what it's reading and read it with emotion.
In 2007 the state of playback was pitiful. Of course the authors guild saw the trend lines, but even in 2022, we know Siri/Alexa don't sound human at all (my pre-teens make fun of them).
It's all possible but I doubt it'll be here in 10 years.
> That said, there was a floor which we were not allowed on, and I believe that was the sales floor
Is it just me or is this nuts? The only time I've seen restricted access is when there are security concerns (national security, special equipment, etc).
I've often wished it were the other way around. Engineering was a floor that sales weren't allowed into without special invite. I've had two good experiences with open floor plans, but the open floor was spacious and dedicated to development. The one bad experience we shared the open floor with sales and they were... loud.
>Audible giving creators only a 25% cut (or 40% if they sign an exclusive deal) is absolutely exploitative.
Also, who are the creators? I mean, does the author of the book have to share that piece of the cake with the narrator as well? that makes the cut even lower.
why would anyone give a % of income to a narrator? That's a service you pay for once and thats it. They don't have to read it again for each customer. They just get hired to read and record it the first time.
This feels contrived. And is in the face of, for example, how Disney tried to not pay a Star Wars writer.
I agree it feels like this could be easy to argue one way or another. I am willing to assert it is often not simple and many of the complications are from pushing simple solutions.
the star wars writer is just a contract worker. He doesn't own star wars etc. But he should still get paid according to the agreement disney inherited.
Contrived because, "primary owner" of a story is somewhat silly. It kind of works for one off books, but even there has issues. Get into performances and collaborations, and it falls hard.
You will quickly get into situations where corporations own things, and then all semblance of personal ownership and control are questionable, at best.
If you release of a cover (ie a performance) of a song someone else wrote you own the copyright on the recording of that performance and are entitled to compensation for use of that recording.
There's not real any intrinsic difference between a recorded performance of a song someone else wrote and recorded narration of a book someone else wrote. The audiobook recording has its own copyright, which can be owned by the narrator. It's usually not though, being recorded for hire with the narrator ceding all rights.
> If you release of a cover (ie a performance) of a song someone else wrote you own the copyright on the recording of that performance and are entitled to compensation for use of that recording.
negative. if you're covering a song in copyright you need a license agreement from the owner if you intend to monotize it. You own a copyright to your version but you can't make money from it.
Not true in the US due to compulsory licensing. [0] There's no permission required to publish or monetise a recording of an existing musical work - you just have to provide notice to the copyright holder and pay a statutory royalty. The mechanical rate for the sale of a recording is the greater of 9.1c for the song or 1.75c per minute of playtime. Streaming royalties are handled by blanket agreements with companies like Spotify.
The narrator is similarly inseparable from the performative work (as, say, an orchestral recording of a symphony), the only difference seems to rest in who has the power and incentive to claim royalties.
None of this explicitly follows from first principles, it's all just negotiation for what, through the vehicle of contract law, will get enforced by social convention and the fist of the government.
>None of this explicitly follows from first principles, it's all just negotiation for what, through the vehicle of contract law, will get enforced by social convention and the fist of the government.
Absolutely. But there are many more people who can voice audiobooks than there are high quality writers, and the writer's work is being the primary author of the work. It doesn't make any sense for the owner to give % of the profit unless the narrator would attract business on their own.
Actually, this is my favourite way to find new authors.
As an example, R.C. Bray narrated The Martian by Andy Weir, and I loved his narration so much I looked for other books that Bray had narrated. One such book was Planetside by Michael Mammay, which was Mammay's first and only book at the time. I have since read all 5 of his books, and he's now one of my favourite authors.
almost always the songwriter sells or licenses the music, or otherwise retains controls of it. but they have complex contracts with other terms involved because the industry is complicated by record label contracts.
What prevents anyone from building a company that gives authors 50% or even 75% cut? From the technical standpoint, an app to download/listen for audio is not a big feat. One may host and serve audio files via any Bandwidth Alliance[1] CDN and keep the bill quite low, it is just audio, in the end. I'd say, a viable prototype is just a couple of months of work for a team of two-three people with day jobs.
> From the technical standpoint, an app to download/listen for audio is not a big feat.
With adequate DRM? It definitely is a big feat.
Just distributing the files, without any type of encryption, is far from trivial. The fact you link to Cloudflare demonstrates you know you can't host the servers yourself =)
Almost anything for ten users is trivial, doing it at scale is hard work.
I wonder about DRM. With Audible taking such a big cut, it would be interesting to see a platform that gives creators an 80-90% cut of DRM-free sales. Does piracy represent such a large threat to sales that making >2x more per sale wouldn't be worth it?
Sanderson is distributing raw audio to all backers, so he clearly doesn't think so.
There are a lot of providers who sell DRM-free audiobooks. Until Spotify bought them Findaway was the biggest "distributor" for a lot of these companies. I don't personally look forward to yet another industry locking away content behind a proprietary, subscription streaming service.
I link to Bandwidth Alliance to emphasize that there is a way to lower a CDN bill. On my previous job we served video via AWS CloudFront and even negotiated a special price for that and S3.
Any CDN with their own object storage will hanlde heavy lifting of audio, it is not a big deal and not that expensive to the point of making a garden variety CDN on Digital Ocean or other cloud provider nonsensical.
I have to research about DRM, but isn't it goes out of the box on Android and iOS?
I would assert that network transfer costs for audiobook sales are a vanishingly insignificant part of the total cost of running an audiobook publishing business. Rounds to zero, I suspect.
This is based on a good knowledge of the size of audiobooks, good knowledge of the price of network transfer, and a reasonable guess on the number of books sold.
Licensing the rights to sell the books people want to listen to probably has way more strings attached. Especially for startups that don't have any leverage.
If the 25% cut is over three times the sales... I don't know that I agree it is bad. :(
I'd feel much more comfortable talking about net profits for everyone involved here. Audible got me hooked, specifically, by not expecting me to pay 40+ for a book.
Of course 25% is bad. The original post talks about how that compares to other digital products (games and apps) which are almost all at 70% for creators. There’s nothing special about audiobooks that can justify Audible’s percentage other than the fact that they have a near-monopoly.
"of course" is a dangerous line of reasoning. Many things believed, in that way, are not given.
Audible has pushed margins to near zero. Not just the cut to the artists, but also theirs. Before audible, if I wanted an audio book, it was easily 50 or so bucks. Nowadays, I usually pick up the audiobook for 7 or so as an add on to the book purchase. If that were to go back, I'd stop buying audiobooks. I'd wager I'm not alone in that. Yes, even $15 may be high enough to make me stop.
As I've said elsewhere, I'm very interested in knowing what the net cut for artists is, through audible. If the artists could get 70% of a cut, but that causes sales to drop to 10%, suddenly it doesn't sound so good to get a larger cut.
And it would be one thing if the publishing world wasn't known for artificial price inflation. But, that ship sailed a long time ago.
Edit: I big brained and wrote this whole thing while thinking Spotify. I believe my thoughts on the matter stand, though. So I’ll just correct the wording. P.S. I don’t hold this opinion strongly. I’m eager to hear other thoughts on the matter.
I’m not a fan of this perspective because it can sound like people believe it’s the company who is behaving wrongly, and they want a form of charity from it. They want Audible to give up profit because they don’t l feel it’s fair. If Audible isn’t worth 60-75%, don’t use it to distribute your media. Which is probably not a viable option. I think this leads to the real complaint candidates:
“Audible has a monopoly over audiobook creation/distribution by breaking laws, and should be dealt with by the government.”
“Audible has a monopoly without breaking laws but I think there should be laws.”
“I don’t like how capitalism works.”
“Capitalism isn’t working in my favour this time.”
Audible isn’t the right audience for any of these complaints.
If Audible’s service isn’t worth anywhere near that much, they either are acting in a way where government should intervene, or there’s a deliciously ripe opportunity for another business to thrive if they can overcome the inertia of the incumbent.
Don’t get me wrong, I think the creators should take home the bulk, and I bet, on intuition alone, that there’s plenty of money to run a music service at a fraction of the take.
Critcizing and/or boycotting Audible is probably the strategy that's most likely to effect change.
Yes, I do think the government should intervene, but is that realistic? How often does the US file antitrust suits against big tech companies or their subsidiaries? I've seen lawsuits to block mergers/acquisitions, but the last time I remember actually breaking up an existing monopoly as an option on the table was Microsoft over 20 years ago.
I dont see any deliciously ripe business opportunity here. If you want to compete with Audible, you need to attract authors to your platform. Yes, you can try luring them with a more generous share of the profits. But you will run into a brick wall because the sheer size of Audible's user base means that authors have bigger potential earnings there even though Audible takes an extortionate cut. And you won't be able to match Audible's user base until you have a similarly large/diverse selection of authors and works to choose from.
The only way to break the chicken and egg problem is to come with a huge amount of capital that allows you bribe authors/users onto your platform by selling at a loss while you build up volume. Which, of course, is exactly how Audible built its monopoly in the first place. But back then it was an emerging market and the competitors were smaller and less entrenched. Audible feels comfortable taking an extortionate cut now precisely because it knows that no one else has both the capital and the will to compete with them. This is not something that I would bin under "the free market working as it should."
I'm surpised that some people still don't recognize the playbook. This is 20th century tech strategy. Amazon was already doing this with physical books in the 90s - it shouldn't be the least bit surprising that they are doing it again with digital audiobooks.
This strikes me as market absolutism - if you are participating in a market then you have to believe that the market will solve all of your problems or else they aren't valid. People can believe a company is behaving "wrongly" even if it profitable and successful.
But there are almost always other social dynamics at play, true free markets are rare. You can generally "like how capitalism works" and not believe that markets will optimally solve every problem all the time.
Also, "the market" is an abstraction. What actually kills companies? People stop using their product. Criticism/boycotting is a market force. Capitalism requires informed consumers and this is consumers sharing information.
Markets also take time. Even if you believe the market will solve a problem, it will take time for the "bad" company to die and other firms to take it's place.
"Capitalism only works well if there is sufficient competition"
That's the valid complaint here. There's not enough competition for Audible, so they can afford to charge extortionate prices. More competition is good, so that's what Sanderson invests in. Sounds like an awesome move to me.
Perhaps I’m muddied in semantics, but I don’t think the complaint can be “Audible exploits people.” I think it is, “someone needs to exploit the opportunity Audible has presented by charging so much.”
I think "Audible exploits people" is a perfectly valid complaint. But it's important to understand that it's the natural inclination of corporations to exploit people whenever they can, and if you want them to stop, you need to make it harder for them to do so.
There's a lot of ways you can do that. By introducing regulation, competition, empowering people, or even banning corporations. The first two seem to be the most popular in our society.
That's the option I like too, but it's easier said than done. We have these quasi-monopolies popping up around digital intellectual property of nearly every sort: charge a lot. Everybody uses Microsoft Office. There's only a handful of Hollywood studios. Etc. Etc.
It seems that for some combination of legal and technical reasons it's very hard to beat an incumbent in these industries. Maybe it's just that the economies of scale are so good, I don't know. but when you think about it, everything involved is man-made, the very concept of intellectual property itself is a human invention. Patents, copyrights etc. all just stuff we cooked up. If we have defined it to be a self-reinforcing monopoly-generating thing, maybe we should redefine it.
It’s interesting to see a few dynamics here.
1) Sanderson already delivered a huge shot across the bow with the secret novel kickstarter. TOR had to have been livid with the kickstarter - it’s 41 million of revenue from their top line, but more importantly It kick started a whole ton of other authors. The kickstarters started because a loophole in their contract, and Brandon has very successfully exploited it as much as his characters exploit magic systems.
2) Dragonsteel is basically growing to the point that it is a publishing house. Others should keep this in mind - Brandon knows how to scale a business. I think of other creative battles - think comic Bill Waterson who won creative rights to Calvin and Hobbes, only to stop publishing a few years later because of how difficult the format changes he insisted on were. This path is not sustainable for a ton of people.
3) TOR has also got to be livid in that they basically handed the keys to the kingdom w/ Brandon by asking him to finish WoT (technically Harriet, Jordan’s wife did)
4) Now he is trying to do the same thing to Audible.
Having met Sanderson before he started on WoT - Ut’s incredible how far he’s gone… but somehow he keeps going.
This seems to be misreading the situation to me. The Kickstarter's $41M total was boosted dramatically by merchandize. You can calculate the numbers yourself: the four highest cost tiers (the ones that include the monthly swag boxes) amount to $18.1M by themselves (23103 * 500 + 8656 * 480 + 4095 * 380 + 2370 * 360). The next two highest tiers add another $10.4M (11463 * 220 + 49491 * 160). This is nearly 70% of the total value of the campaign, at price points WAY beyond what any publisher would ever dream of charging readers. You can confirm for yourself at [1].
So what Brandon really did was figure out a way to convince his fans to part with big money to be in on this. I'm sure Tor is jealous, in the sense that anyone would be at seeing those numbers, but it's just not realistic to think that they would have ever done anything remotely like this on their own.
And the same goes for Brandon's company. The value Dragonsteel seems to provide is not in being a replacement for Tor, but rather in these high-value premium products (leatherbounds/merchandise) that sit alongside the main releases. And also audio, but that's not really competing with Tor per se.
> The kickstarters started because a loophole in their contract, and Brandon has very successfully exploited it as much as his characters exploit magic systems
Can you go into more detail on that? I know what you mean about exploiting magic systems, but I don't know anything about Sanderson's contract with Tor or what he did.
I don’t remember the details, someone asked about Right of First Refusal from Tor during the Q&A live stream following the kickstarter announcement and he said something like a polite version of “we can sort of do what we want as long as we keep giving them the big series”
I hope Sanderson can become something akin to a Rick Riordan, where “Rick Riordan presents” has become a huge household name launching new careers in childrens lit.
I havnt purchased a book in 5 or more years now. I still buy dozens a year but they are audiobooks from audible now. I treat it the same way I do Steam for my video games. It is my one stop digital library of goods and if it doesn’t exist there it doesn’t exist and I move on to other options that are.
Him and Kate Reading did an excellent job with the Wheel of Time. He does so many different voices and really amplifies the emotion of a scene. Puts to bed any questions of basic voice to text replacing audiobooks in the near future.
Currently re-listening to WoT audiobooks (part way through The Great Hunt).
He is the best voice actor I've ever heard. He manages to give a distinct voice to the ridiculous number of characters, female, male, young, old, human, non-human. It really is quite insane.
Libro.fm is another good one, I use it exclusively instead of Audible and they give some (undisclosed and probably very small) portion of profits to your local bookstore. Sanderson's books are available there.
>Libro.fm gives a low percentage of retail price for books bought on the credit system. Our retail price is $14.99, same as a credit. Libro.fm won’t let us say the books can only be bought at retail price and not with a credit.
Interesting. There are some books that are retail-only on Libro.fm (https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9781483080703), but I guess they don't think Sanderson is big enough to let him do that. Everyone seems to be acting reasonably here, I think it's fine that Sanderson doesn't think this deal is worth it, but as a user it's obviously nice to be able to use credits and it seems like most publishers are ok with the tradeoff, as I don't think I've ever been unable get an audiobook through Libro (unless it doesn't exist anywhere).
Speculation, but I read Spotify here as Findaway, who were the largest non-Audible audiobook platform (underlying services like Scribd and other stores) before getting bought by Spotify earlier this year. He had to have been talking to them before the acquisition. It is disappointing that the only option outside Audible was (swallowed by) another monopolist, rent-seeking behemoth.
Does gumroad actually have good audio book management? Is it intending to take on position itself as an audible competitor? I'm not very familiar with Gumroad but it strikes me as a glorified shop and not a good media manager.
I have only used Gumroad for ebooks. I'd guess they would at least have some way to play the audio and may be even remember last location for users returning.
That said, I was suggesting Gumroad mainly for providing the files and let users use their own preferred apps. Sanderson's team has mentioned that currently they do not have bandwidth to host audio on their own site.
I already commented it on reddit, but I was very surprised by the fact (mentioned in passing) that 75% of pre-buyers for Sanderson's last book were audiobooks.
For each person reading the book there are 3 people hearing it. Those are wild numbers for me.
It's worth noting that the narrator - Michael Kramer - is exceptional. One of the characters in this particular series is known for his ability with accents, so listening to the audiobook with a good narrator is an extra amount of fun.
I've read most of Sanderson's books in print, but for this one I also bought the audiobook specifically for that kind of narration.
Technically, no. But sometimes it is used for that purpose. Most people you talk to expect “reading” to mean physically reading the book. But if you listened to it, you know the content as well as someone who read it. There’s usually not a reason to clarify because it’s not usually a useful distinction unless you want to discuss the narrator.
Audiobook listeners ;) get really defensive about it but think about it this way: when you teach a child how to read, what kind of image pops in your head? Are they listening to mp3s??
It didn’t used to be, but now it is quite common. I think that, as listening to audiobooks has become more and more popular (as per this thread), folks have tired of saying “listened to the audiobook of” and are switching to just “read”. Pretty standard linguistic evolution following subject frequency.
Im confused by it. I cannot listen to audiobooks without either fully focusing on it or forgetting half of it when Im listening to it while doing something else.
Even with podcasts I have the same issue, but there I dont really need to listen to every second and fully remember all of it.
How do you guys listen to audiobooks? Are you just so much better than me in focusing on multiple things at the same time or are you just listening to audiobooks and not doing anything at the same time?
Commuting, washing dishes, walking or driving to do an errand, that kind of thing. Sometimes I pause if I'm in a particularly complex driving situation or something, but usually I am able to focus and retain a normal amount.
FWIW you described the exact reason I listen to so many audiobooks. I struggle with insomnia, and one thing that helped quite a bit was taking a walk before bed while listening to an audiobook. If I listened to music I could just tune it out and my brain would just continue cycling on whatever track it was on. Audiobooks forced me to actually pay attention and stop thinking about whatever was in my head. Breaking that thought cycle really helped with getting to sleep after.
Some people can do it. I'm with you, I cannot. My mom likes to listen while driving, but if I try to do that I lose the story really fast because I pay too much attention to driving.
I believe all those people multitasking while listening to the book are not actually paying as much attention as you'd think. Like watching low quality tv used to be popular.
Except it's a shame because these books are not low quality. For me it's unimaginable that I could do anything else while reading. It puts my brain and imagination to work at 110%, and I love it.
One of the sibling comments is mentioning replacing radio with listening to an audiobook. Radio!!!! I'm pretty sure the reading experience is wildly different.
I listen to audiobooks in fits and starts - when driving, when cleaning or washing dishes, when brushing teeth. Basically whenever I can do something else essentially on autopilot.
I listen to audiobooks that I’ve already read while working on task that aren’t mentally challenging. Sanderson’s books are actually great for this as they’re all interconnected and that makes for a good reason to “reread” then.
I moved somewhere for work, that doesn't have NPR on the radio dial, and the app just isn't that great. So instead of listening to the radio, I play audiobooks during my commute.
I love reading, but there's too much going on in my life to be able to devote an uninterrupted chunk of time to reading. So audiobooks are a compromise that fills in the gaps that I do have, even if a few minutes long. These add up throughout the day, and I've covered quite a significant amount of fiction and non-fiction in the 15-ish years I've been doing this.
This is probably skewed heavily by the credits system that Audible uses. Combined with the bundle where the Audible and Kindle versions are discounted together, it is often very low friction to get the audio version.
Of course, this is where my question of this view comes in. If you cut out Audible, how certain is Sanderson that the same number of audio books would be purchased? If it cuts over half of the sales, than that more than justifies the lower cut in profit, no?
With these books specifically, he already made money from his core fan base via a Kickstarter campaign. So the sales through Audible would have already been lower than a regular release.
Well, yeah. But that isn't helping his stance here. Doesn't necessarily hurt, but is a distraction.
He is claiming that audible gives a raw cut of profit, particularly to the smaller artists. But is there evidence that they give a smaller net payout to the same audience?
My wife and I listen to books together. We have tried, and failed, several times to buy two books and read them together. One inevitably gets ahead and has to wait for the other which ends up killing the whole experience. We haven’t bought a book in years now but have spent a large amount of time, close to if not in excess of our television time, listening to audiobooks together.
I use to have a big library of fantasy and sci do books that I was really proud of and was the primary one dragging my feet about trying audiobooks because I thought they would be an inferior product. I was wrong and I love them more than reading now. My only gripe is the classic space skip in a chapter usually delineated by like 3 stars are pretty jarring in audiobook format with the author just moving on to the next section without mentioning it.
That scene change seems like a missed opportunity to use a quiet bell/gong or other small audio cue.
I feel your pain there though, I bought a new ereader this year and a goodly number of the books I've read since have had issues with scene skips not using any kind of indicator mid chapter.
Reacting to "Audible monopoly", and while it may technically be so, it needn't-
Most of what I read and listen to is provided by my tax-supported public library. If I find something I think will make a welcome gift, I buy it from bookshop dot org or a local bookstore (Minneapolis is rich with them). If I had the discretionary income I'd give more money to the Library foundation, continue lobbying for strengthening the public library system, and continue checking out books; it's a model that lowers the barrier to accessing art, information, and wisdom.
Do Audible published audiobooks end up in public libraries? I'm assuming the exclusivity implies never leaving their platform but I'm not knowledgable enough about this space
Libraries have to pay a premiums for them, so it depends on the budget of your library. (Some may only buy if someone puts in a request for purchase & some may not have the budget to buy at all.)
I've listened to 10+ Sanderson books and all of them have have been through my local library (via Libby app). The only downside is that some have decently long wait times so you have to plan in advance.
The library owns a certain number of licenses to the audiobook, and only allows as many simultaneous check out as they have licenses. If none are currently available, you wait until one is returned. Just like a physical book.
> Looks like I’ll be getting his books from Speechify from now on.
Some competition for Audible would be nice, but Speechify don't even have an Android or Web app. So on top of not owning the mp3 files they also lock you into the apple ecosystem.
Sanderson's books appeal to a certain reader who is extremely invested in world building and "hard" magic systems. I would say his plots and characters usually play second fiddle to those things, and he infamously has his writing tics. I think the majority of his books would be vastly improved with a better editor, frankly (especially the last Stormlight one, jesus). But I'm generally in the minority in that respect. He has extremely devoted fans. I would set your expectations for the books at about Avengers movie quality, which for some people sounds amazing and that's exactly what they are looking for. Personally, I enjoyed the core Malazan books far more as fantasy with very intense world building sensibilities and a more mature edge. But I don't go to Sanderson looking for fantasy with literary sensibilities.
It will eventually be continued, just like Warbreaker. And it's not like it is forgotten, there are at least two characters from Sel in Lost Metal(his latest mistborn book).
One of his books that actually did have great characters and plot was Skyward, the first book in a series of 4 (#4 is not yet released). It focuses heavily on personal relationships with a small cast of characters, and the plot is tightly centred on the main character. But it was like Sanderson threw all that out the window with book #2 (Starsight) and #3 (Cytonic) in favour of world-building and a weird plot that expanded in scope extremely rapidly, and I heavily disliked those books because of it. #1 was a 9/10 for me, but I rate #2 as 3.5/10 and #3 as 5/10. But that's me; my siblings who also read the books all seemed to love them.
Yeah. For big fantasy series I much preferred the Malazan books. Sanderson is fine, but if somebody really likes those books I know I can mostly ignore their other recommendations because our tastes just differ too much.
That’s not to say hard magic systems can’t be done well, I think Robert Jackson Bennett does a superb job in the Foundaryside books.
Mistborn is definitely a great intro to the cosmere books. I'd almost definitely start there, see if you like it, and then get into the rest because it can be pretty overwhelming with how much there is.
All seriousness aside, Mistborn (Era 1) is fantastic, especially as an introduction into Sanderson's world. Part of the reason it's great is because he was able to write all three books at once -- book 1 went to print as book 2 was in editing stages and as he was wrapping up the first draft of book 3. That means he was able to keep it tight and put proper foreshadowing and have everything kind of work out really well. You can see in his other books that it hasn't worked out quite as well. They're all good books, but Mistborn stands out to me as fantastic because of that.
But back to my serious joke, read more! Sanderson's a great author, but he's far from the only good one, and there are some truly brilliant folks out there that just aren't as good at marketing themselves as Sanderson is, and they deserve recognition and more for their good work too!
- Django Wexler's THE SHADOW CAMPAIGNS - flintlock fantasy with demons! First book is titled "The Thousand Names"
- Robert Jackson Bennett's THE DIVINE CITIES trilogy, of which the first book is THE CITY OF STAIRS. For what it's worth, everything Robert Jackson Bennett writes is fantastic. He's one of the authors I consider to be at Sanderson's level (or better!) without much of the acclaim.
- Will Wight's CRADLE series, starting with UNSOULED. Like a lot of long-running series, first book is standard fantasy fare, but starting with the second book it turns into its own incredible world. If you like Dragon Ball Z and Chinese wuxia genre, this is fantastic.
- Max Gladstone's CRAFT SEQUENCE - Imagine legal contracts as magic. A secondary world urban fantasy, wildly imaginative, mostly involving mysterious events and the characters that investigate them. First book is THREE PARTS DEAD.
- Sebastien de Castiel's THE GREATCOATS series was described as the "Scott Lynchiest book since LIES OF LOCKE LAMORA." I don't really but _that_, but I did thoroughly enjoy the series, and have read everything else de Castiel has published on the strength of these books. Really good!
- Scott Lynch THE GENTLEMEN BASTARDS, of course, has to be on the list, with the first book being THE LIES OF LOCKE LAMORA. The series is unfinished, sadly, but the way the stories are structured, you don't really miss it. LIES is one of my favorite books ever
- Dan Wells' I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER follows a sociopathic kid named John Cleaver who... well, he's not a serial killer but he kinda wants to be. And it turns out he can hunt demons. Horror stories, but very well done. The series is complete. There's also a movie version of the first book!
- Josiah Bancroft's THE BOOKS OF BABEL are my favorite reads of 2022. It follows a schoolteacher who loses his wife on a tourist trip to the legendary Tower of Babel. Wildly imaginative, engaging characters, and a crazy trip! Series is complete and the first book is SENLIN ASCENDS.
- Fonda Lee's THE GREEN BONE SAGA is a secondary world fantasy following Godfather-style mafia families on an Asian-inspired island. Jade gives them super powers, which they use to enforce control over the island. Very political and violent. Trilogy is complete and the first book is JADE CITY!
- For a standalone novel, check out M.L. Wang's SWORD OF KAIGEN, which is another secondary world fantasy following a Japanese-inspired honorable patriarchal society that more or less refuses to modernize with the rest of the world, but this island is the first line of defense against invaders. And, of course, there are invaders. Really good, character-driven story.
- Michael Livingston's THE SHARDS OF HEAVEN is an alternate history fantasy following the children of Cleopatra, a few Roman soldiers, and Augustus Caesar as they hunt down magical artifacts known as the Shards of Heaven. Very well done, historically accurate (as much as it can be). Criminally underrated, IMO.
- Evan Winters' RAGE OF DRAGONS is an African-inspired fantasy, with a character who grinds for power in a way that reminds of old-school video games. It's NOT a LitRPG -- it's straight up fantasy -- but the mechanic there makes me think of it. It's also a straightforward revenge fantasy ("you killed my father, prepare to die"), but it's told very well and both of the books so far are fantastic. Third book coming soon!
- C.L. Clark's THE UNBROKEN is also an African-inspired fantasy, focusing on an imperial regiment that occupies a city in order to stabilize it, and one of the soldiers falls in love with the princess. It's sapphic, but I really enjoyed it.
- Charlie Jane Anders' ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY is where urban fantasy meets science fiction. A witch and a wizard become friends in San Francisco and their lives intertwine over the years until they come face to face in a final confrontation. One of my favorite books. Anything by Charlie Jane Anders is gold, for what it's worth. Instant buys for me.
- Mary Robinette Kowal is better known for her LADY ASTRONAUT series, which I thought were good (Sanderson-level), but I really enjoyed her most recent book THE SPARE MAN which is a murder mystery... on a cruise ship! in SPACE! A SPACE CRUISE SHIP! I wound up devouring the entire book in a single night, from about 10pm-4am.
- Lindsay Buroker's DEATH BEFORE DRAGONS series is an urban fantasy set in Seattle. I wouldn't say Buroker is better than Sanderson, but she publishes more often -- typically 6 books per year -- and they're all really enjoyable reads. Not going to win any awards or anything, but if you want reliably enjoyable and cheap reads, she's your girl. DEATH BEFORE DRAGONS is her best, so far, but I've read all 60+ books in her catalog and I would recommend any of them to anyone who tires of the huge, epic fantasy worlds and wants something simpler. If Sanderson's Cosmere is STAR WARS, then Buroker's books are episodes of FRIENDS.
- Daniel Green's LAWFUL TIMES series is surprisingly good. The first book, BREACH OF PEACE, is a novella, and it's dark and has horror-vibes. The second book is even better, though. I'm really looking forward to book three!
Hope that helps. If you have more specific types of fantasy or sci-fi that you like, let me know and I can recommend some more :)
I enjoyed KKC when I first read them, but I haven't re-read them. I think Rothfuss is a talented writer, but given that the third book is MIA for going on 10 years, I'm not inclined to recommend it to anyone, unless you're OK with a fairly good but un-and-likely-to-never-be-finished series.
I'd put almost all of my other recommendations above KKC.
That said, it's a pretty popular series and comes widely recommended, so YMMV. I personally would skip it and read something else.
Word of warning: Gentlemen Bastards is equally unfinished -- but I have faith that Scott Lynch will eventually publish the next book before Rothfuss did. Plus I consider the first book (and to a lesser extent, the second and third books) to be fun enough on their own that I'm not aching for a fourth book in the way that KKC leaves a story unfinished. In short, I'd still recommend reading Gentlemen Bastards :)
> I'm not inclined to recommend it to anyone, unless you're OK with a fairly good but un-and-likely-to-never-be-finished series.
I think this is enough justification for me. There's so many completed or "likely to be completed" series I _haven't_ read so I don't mind skipping this one unless there's some indication that it'll be completed :)
> Gentlemen Bastards is equally unfinished -- but I have faith that Scott Lynch will eventually publish the next book before Rothfuss did. Plus I consider the first book (and to a lesser extent, the second and third books) to be fun enough on their own that I'm not aching for a fourth book in the way that KKC leaves a story unfinished. In short, I'd still recommend reading Gentlemen Bastards :)
I'm not the grandparent. But my opinion: Kingkiller Chronicles has a lot of fans (though fewer and fewer as time goes on), and I thought Name of the Wind was fine as a beginning to a potentially good story. But Wise Man's Fear was quite terrible. Your mileage may vary. People who like Rothfuss seem to like him for his prose, not plot. Another thing to consider is that Patrick Rothfuss is a giant asshole towards his fans. It has also been nearly 12 years since he published anything. He's basically made a career out of not publishing book three.
Thanks for the input! That's a good point you've made. Maybe I can just ignore the series until we have some indication that it'll actually be finished.
Also, if you liked CRADLE, I recommend MOTHER OF LEARNING by nobody103, Iron Prince by Bryce O'Connor (first book is out, second book comes out in 2023), and Arcane Ascension series by Andrew Rowe. All three of those are fantastic and in the vein of progression fantasy like Cradle!
Initial concept for mistborn was to show epic fantasy world live through different stages of technological progress. Initially he planned to do three trilogies, one pure epic fantasy, one set in early computer age and one in space age, but since release date gap between epic fantasy and computer age was too large, he decided to write another series, which is set in industrial revolution. And I'd expect him to write cyberpunk series between computer age and cosmoopera.
Sanderson fan chiming in to promote The Emperor's Soul over Mistborn as a primer.
From another comment: "It's a short novella, so you can finish it in a 2-3 hour reading session. And it will give you a taste of his writing style as well as a metaphysical primer to his Cosmere universe."
His completion of WoT was fine, and my favorite part was original to him, but it was pretty clear he’s the squarest man alive and has never been in the same room as the concept of sex. And one or two of the added characters were clearly there just to have extremely plot-convenient special magic talents. But that did lead to some very efficient KPI-meeting books. So if you’re a systematizing turbonerd, go wild.
Can’t say families with large numbers of children are typically better at writing romance just because they’re having Christianity-approved sex after marriage for the purpose of procreation.
His Tuon/Mat writing was pretty cheesy. Less weird about women than RJ obviously, but in the opposite direction, so it didn’t quite fit.
(And the Thom rescuing Moiraine plot wasn’t good, undercooked and too short. My guess was it was an early beta RJ wrote, but he just kept it when RJ would’ve rewritten it.)
He was completing WoT, which had a truly bizarre concept of sexual relationships. As far as I’m concerned, he did an amazing job completing a series that had largely fallen apart.
WoT has a “boomer feminist” view of relationships, which is when you rebel against the prevailing boomer relationship view (seen in those newspaper comics where every joke is how much you hate your wife) but still are only capable of viewing women as sex objects for men and so your attempt at healthier writing instead turns into femdom.
It’s wrong but it’s not that unusual. Whedon basically does it and he used to be popular.
I find it pretty amazing their company has 60 employees. Also worth the read to learn about Audible pricing. I didn't know. I'm pretty addicted to audio books, but now will have to seek out other alternatives when I can.
60 employees didn’t seem that wild when you consider they took on the role of publisher for his secret projects kickstarter. 186k backers of which a decent portion are getting 4 physical books over the next year.
AFAIK, most of them are actually warehouse employees at entry-level wages that ship his books/swag from his online store and other endeavors, and also handle the kickstarter fulfillment process, versus white-collar jobs like editors and artists and so on. It's still impressive to have 60 employees, though, especially as an author (Robert Jordan only had four, to my knowledge).
I did lead me down a James-Patterson worm-hole though, on how there's so many James Patterson books out there (mostly that he DOES NOT write at this point).
I bought a $200 version of Way of Kings [1]. It is actually two books. It is nicest book I own, and I have some pretty nice books. I only did $60 for the kickstarter campaign. That gets you all the books and audio books.
Brandon does stuff for his fans. Sure he is probably quite wealthy at this point, but he is just writing books for /us/ still. He actually finishes stories and is a good guy. I freely support him with $. I know many fans feel the same way. He writes books for everyone and has some really fun stories. Reading his blog post about Audible just affirms my long support for him.
As a customer I'd like to see a Netflix/Spotify-like audiobook service, where I pay a subscription and can listen whatever they have in catalogue, whenever.
Sadly, it wouldn't probably be great for small authors either, just the same as Spotify isn't great for unknown musicians. OTOH, like Netflix, they could fund authors to write books or at least produce the audiobooks for them. Of course the service would want exclusivity, but perhaps it might work out.
If you are in the US try your public library. Pretty much every one has one of two eLibrary applications with audiobooks included.
They may not have everything, but there’s been plenty for me. It has drastically cut my use of audible to the point that I’ve been canceled for two years.
Apparently publishers have seriously been turning the screws on libraries wrt to license fees for ebooks and audiobooks, so the current golden age of getting them from the library may be ending.
Of course they would do that. It's one of the last places where you don't have to pay to exist, and where you can be educated and entertained without paying those companies.
It's not quite what you're asking for, but Audible records a lot of Audible Originals which are all freely accessible to members without having to use any credits. Unfortunately most Audible Originals aren't very good.
I think Audible also offers an unlimited subscription for romance novels, although it's been a few years since I checked.
Audible is somewhat like this. They have some "included" stuff that is all-you-can-eat with your subscription. Just like Netflix, the big titles aren't there, but if you search within the included content you'll find good stuff to consume.
I've always noticed that Audible has been a bit of a scam (despite that I use it, because there are few other usable market alternatives). I love Graphic Audio but there's too little choice in comparsion.
So I'm glad that Sanderson's going to take on Audible - especially to help out the little guys, since he's now a force on his own as an author to be reckoned with.
That said, I still remember when Sanderson was a small author. I was beaming about a book he had written on Reddit; yet he personally wrote back to me, when he could have just been quiet. That spoke volumes.
All this while Sanderson's personality remains just as humble, despite how big he's become. So I wish for Brandon all the best, and hope that his noble campaign to take on Audible and bring down the Goliath succeeds, for the betterment of all authors.
>I've always noticed that Audible has been a bit of a scam
You and I have had very different experiences. Someone has been dying to juice the subscriber stats and every year or two, Audible throws me a sweetheart deal too good to refuse.
This year, they offered me three free months to rejoin. Took my three books and canceled, not paying anything. A month or two later, they offered me a $20 credit + three months at a reduced rate of $5(? Maybe it was $10). Fully intend to cancel subscription when that completes end of January. Netting me ~7 books for maybe a one month of out of pocket subscription.
A while back I realized I bought a series I didn't really like after the first book, but forgot about. Audible exchanged each book for a credit no questions asked (even the first one that I did listen to!) That plus the constant credit deals and audiobooks for $5 or less... I don't see how they do it.
I had to look up GraphicAudio, but FWIW Downpour.com seems to have a pretty good collection of books published by them (including Sanderson titles). I've been using them for years because (almost) all of their stuff is DRM free.
Downpour is my vendor of choice for most books, but GraphicAudio also sells the titles DRM-free directly, with the option of lossless format. (And in Sanderson's case it doesn't look like Downpour has all of their titles.)
>Is it because of the cost to them to produce the audio?
The rates being talked about in the article is just for distribution, doesn't include creating the audiobook. Audible is a publisher as well, but those probably have different deals.
Based on what cstross and others say about book sales in general, I suspect that even at such low rates Audible loses money on the median book, and only bother with most of the audiobooks so they can advertise how many audiobooks they have.
They produce some at least, but even when they're just a shopfront they almost certainly pay another fraction of the sales to whoever did make it.
Big thing though is how few copies the median book actually sells. From what I can tell, the actual sales for a median book across all media are only the low thousands. Audible's mean (not median) gross revenue per book is ($200e6/y)/(200k titles) = $1k/title/year.
I tried looking up Audible's financial info, but the only financial report I saw was from 2007, which said their revenue and expenses for years ending 2006 and 2007 were about equal to each other, and at about half what people say are their current revenue levels: https://last10k.com/sec-filings/1077926
My gut response is because their prices are lower. They offer half the cut, and are usually selling well below half the cost elsewhere. More, most of their sales are almost certainly credit system based, which super complicates how much they sold for. (That and bundled with ebook purchases.)
If anyone has data in how much they pay out and how elastic the demand is to increased prices, I'd be interested. As it is, this feels misguided, though.
I'm curious how comparable some of that data is. Specifically, Audible may pay half what a bookstore does per sale, but are they also charging less than half of what the same bookstore charges. Such that you really need to compare revenue generated for the artists, not just margin per sale.
That said, I am in favor of trying market forces to see what sort of change one can make. I... question anything out of the publishing world, though. If Audible is a good company doing bad things, most publishing houses are likely to be at best described in the same way. And, spotify is a hilariously cursed example to use as a "for the artists" system.
Fun fact, it's exactly the same as the m4a format, but with a different file extension. (Which macOS uses to add some UI sugar on top; but the data is the same.)
pro-tip, you can convert your audible aax files to m4b with ffmpeg! you need to determine your key which is like a 6 character key, and fairly easy to figure out how to find.
Sanderson’s the way of kings introduced me to audiobooks and
I have never looked back. These days I just buy the audible narration without the membership
I'm very confused by Spotify's audio books though. Can't buy or even see the price through the app, which can't be good for getting people started on it. I then went on the website version, and the Sanderson novels I can find are £29.90 (as are most of the others I looked at). I don't listen to audio books, is the market price really 4-5x the hardback?
I am glad Sanderson can make this deal with Spotify. I wonder if this same structure will be extended to the many other services that license audiobooks from (what used to be) Findaway (until they bought it). While it's good to have an opposing weight to Audible, it will amount to very little if this is all just a play that accrues power to a second oligopolist in the industry.
Assuming your question isn't snark, you could try reading The Emperor's Soul. It's a short novella, so you can finish it in a 2-3 hour reading session. And it will give you a taste of his writing style as well as a metaphysical primer to his Cosmere universe.
Scam or not is determined by whether or not you deliver what was promised, not by how much you raise. I'm not sure why you bring it up at all.
A project that raises $100 can be a scam if it doesn't deliver. A project that raises $42 million can not be a scam, if it does deliver.
If Sanderson provides products that many people value at a collective $42 million+, why should I not be fine with those people giving him that much money? It's their money, they can spend it how they like.
The point is that he doesn't need the money. He's one of the most successful authors in the world and the delivery is just writing four books. I just don't understand why he made a Kickstarter to begin with. The previous record holder (Pebble) made sense because of R&D and hardware.
The scam part is everyone always putting new Kickstarters under extreme scrutiny regarding the money they're trying to raise and if they really need it. Meanwhile this project has no upfront costs, nothing, that defends asking people to pledge money to it.
The bulk of the kickstarter campaign was selling actual objects. These objects need to be produced, they have lead times, they have scaling issues both ways (there are economies of scale, but scaling up also involved a bunch of hiring — one can’t just snap one’s fingers). And Brandon Sanderson apparently wanted to sell however many people wanted to buy at a a preset price.
So what exactly is wrong with using kickstarter for this? It’s essentially a platform for placing orders for things that won’t be delivered for a while, which is exactly what happened here.
(Note that Brandon Sanderson and Dragonsteel have spent or committed a lot of the money already despite having delivered nothing yet. Those employees aren’t working for just equity without money or benefits!)
They have to get the books recorded and printed without overproducing and losing money while also not getting a worse deal with a smaller print + miss out on sales. Same thing for merchandise. All of it needs to be warehoused until it's ready for delivery. Plus probably other things I'm unaware of.
A major publisher already has all this infrastructure to take a gamble on new books while paying with current sales. Dragonsteel is still very small.
Kickstarter should be for financing things you can't get out on the market without the investment. You're basically saying "I need X money for Y to happen" and instead of a regular investor you rely on the hopes of future customers. Like a pre-order but without the obligation to deliver because of the moonshot.
In Sanderson's case it's just a pre-order where you milk your fans for some extra bucks. He doesn't need this money to make these four books happen.
The other advantage of a pre-order is you know roughly how many copies to print. If you're publishing your own book you may not be able to predict that, and if you estimate wrong you're out a bunch of your own money.
Large publishers have some expertise in guessing that, and probably still plan to eat some costs for the times when they get it wrong. But on a smaller scale, "Oops I have piles of extra copies of every single book I printed" would be a big problem for someone self publishing a couple of books.
If your fans trust you to follow through on a kickstarter, there's not really a downside.
According to you. If you don't like it, your gripe is with KS, not Sanderson. And it's pretty common for things to launch their v2, v3 etc on KS even if strictly not needed. It's a hype channel, not an investment channel.
> In Sanderson's case it's just a pre-order where you milk your fans for some extra bucks.
Why so loaded language? It's not milking, it's fan service. People specifically want these extra things. Hence the success of the KS.....
It's not about whether I like it or not. It's about people being hypocritical and giving him a pass while criticizing others for doing the same thing. For some reason Sanderson is untouchable.
It's not hypocritical at all to support some kickstarters and not others, irrespective of how much money they raise. Sanderson has an established history of delivering books, and people trust him to deliver the promised books. Some random guy without an established reputation is going to encounter much more skepticism.
Again, the ebooks were a minor part of the total. If you write a book, sell $5 million of physical copies and associated swag, I guarantee you either need to outsource the whole operation to a competent publisher or you need money to make it happen.
Brandon Sanderson appears to be running most of this operation in house, and he would have pulled it off entirely on schedule if it weren’t for a massive storm introducing a (short!) delay.
There is a lot of overhead for books like he is selling. They’re premium. He could maybe order a lot, but he’d be tying up a lot of his own money with no idea of actual demand. Maybe he under purchased? In which case what is available gets out on eBay at high markup because the books are hard to get. Or he over orders and loses his ass.
By doing the Kickstarter he got a great idea of what the demand was, and then had the money to make it happen without putting his money at risk as well. He delivered superbly with his first Kickstarter. He’ll do the same with this one.
He didn't expect to rake in that much and iirc kickstarter doesn't let you pass on economy of scale to your backers (hence stretch goals in a lot of campaigns).
Like with his Audible comments, this also served as another way for him to use his clout to help other authors. I think he has said that he was trying to pull in people who don't normally back projects so they'd be more comfortable doing it with other authors. They even highlighted some other projects and redirected some of them money to them (https://youtu.be/TVdZ018gsRw)
They did the Kickstarter to crowdfund money to publish the books under his own company Dragonsteel instead of likely using Macmillan/Tor. They didn’t set out to collect so much money, the initial goal was to raise $1M.
Fwiw, Sanderson took some of that money and backed every single publishing Kickstarter that wasn’t against the TOS or NSFW.
From most people's perspectives it's just a preorder (Sanderson is so consistent in output there's essentially zero doubt he'll deliver), so nothing to get outraged about.
Some people complain that he doesn't 'need' the kickstarter -- which is true, sure -- but he's not hurting or tricking anyone, so why would anyone be incensed?
I’m waiting for You-Know-Who’s novel to come out so Paul Graham can flip the remote activate switch (I still don’t know what that feels like) and I can spam Twitter with hate for a book I’ve never read.
Admit it, you’re curious too if we can beat that guy.
Audible giving creators only a 25% cut (or 40% if they sign an exclusive deal) is absolutely exploitative. For a DIGITAL product! That's insane.
Props to Sanderson, and props to all the other people with integrity.