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Crowdfunding, International Shipping, and Brandon Sanderson
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.