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Brandon Sanderson launched his crowdfunding campaign today centered around selling leatherbound editions of Words of Radiance. This post isn't about that book. I'm going to assume that if you care about the book itself this campaign isn't news to you. This post isn't about his new Secret Project either. This isn't the first time Sanderson has said "Surprise! I wrote another book while you weren't looking!" I doubt it will be the last. Rather, this post is about two epiphenomena of the campaign that I hope will be interesting to the Ricochetti at large.
Eleven Million Dollars
I really hope that Sanderson has some fun negotiations with his publisher and agent. I imagine him sitting across the table like The Bobs from Office Space and asking "What exactly is it you do around here?" The model of the publishing business has been (if you'll allow me a touch of bitterness here) to beg agents to accept your unworthy manuscripts until you find one desperate enough to take on a new client. The agent then flogs your manuscript to every friend he doesn't actually have in the publishing business until he catches an editor magnanimous enough to let his assistant summarize your book for him, at which point he consigns it to midlist hell and then blames you when it never earns out. Only with more rejection involved.
There's more to it than that (Sanderson will be the first to tell you that a good agent --- which is what he's got --- is useful in other ways.) A new author, whatever his skill level, will not command the same price tag. However the march of technology has offered new ways to distribute books which bypass the whole setup. For a new author the argument to sell $2.99 ebooks on Amazon is pretty strong. For someone swinging in Sanderson's weight class, well, eleven million bucks will finance your own print-on-demand business.
I'm not saying that traditional publishers are going the way of the dodo. I am saying that they're Detroit facing the Japanese automakers. Their business model is changing, and they'll have to step up their game if they want to stay competitive.
Handling the Shipping
Brandon Sanderson has a video in the campaign itself explaining the various shipping prices around the world. Broadly speaking because he's printing in America, not China, his shipping costs are much more expensive. As a red-blooded American I cry foul. As a nerdy American I also like charts, so hold up a second as I reproduce his:
Look at the column on the right; the price for shipping anywhere in the US is $25; the price for shipping to Canada & Mexico is $110. Didn't we have some kind of free trade agreement going on? Where's the extra eighty five dollars coming in? I don't ship things normally so these numbers seem strange to me, especially the South America line. The cost of physically moving packages around can't be that much.
More to the point, if I take Sanderson at his word then a large part of the problem is that he's not printing in China. Why is it that all the world has better trade agreements with the evil communist dictatorship?
That's all I've got for you today. I'll leave off with a note that as I was writing this post his campaign has gotten another seven hundred thousand pledged. Or so. Who's counting?
Discussion (16)
CHARTER MEMBER
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I like Brandon Sanderson and his books. He's got a fun YouTube channel, and he seems to take an intense interest in publishing and how his work is perceived. I worked my way thru about ten of his books, but realized there were dozens more to go, all with splintered and fragmented and forking storylines...so I quit. I do like the fact that he's become successful enough to attempt to shove the publishing process around some, hoping for positive change.
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Sort of? I know there's still customs and stuff that has to be dealt with so it's not as free as all that.
Yeah, it's weird. I think it has to do with the routes that companies take to get stuff places. Shipping from CA to Costa Rica UPS routes packages through Miami. Same with some of our freight that goes via ship, it's routed through Miami and I just got an email that they're going to start routing it through Philadelphia.
Not so much trade agreements as the evil commies are the ones who declare things to be worth other than what people will pay so they can make stuff cheaper, for a while. Also I seem to recall reading that they own a lot of shipping containers and other tools of the trade so that's probably another reason.
CONTRIBUTOR
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Granted, however that's $85 in customs for places we have a nominally free trade agreement with. Then you look at the Middle East and that's $110 more than in America. Even if you ignore the cost of throwing the package halfway across the globe I'd imagine getting it in to the nastier countries on the list ought to require a more significant markup than popping over the border into Canada like a busload of Seniors looking for cheaper meds.
Not the point. Start with a shipping container of McGuffins in China and one in the US. It is cheaper to ship from China to Europe than from the USA to Europe. That isn't a question of manufacturing or socialist bookkeeping; it's at the very least three quarters a question of who's charging what tariffs and so forth. The euros are giving the commies a better deal and I want to know why.
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I can understand that. Me, I went the other way. You should see my spreadsheet.
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Well it was, if the Red Sea stays closed it might not be.
Game recognize game?
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