A few weeks ago, Brandon Sanderson posted a video that was almost perfect clickbait. If you don’t want anything spoiled, watch the video before reading on.
Spoiler alert
It turns out it’s not a confessional, but an announcement of a bold plan. For anyone unfamiliar with Sanderson: he’s a prolific high fantasy writer. He writes big honking doorstops of books. And in lockdown he ‘accidentally’ wrote an extra five books. Five.
(Why do the rest of us bother?)
Not only is he releasing these in 2023, but he’s doing it via a Kickstarter campaign. And the books are being released with the options to go in blind: just a book that arrives once a quarter, accompanied only by the knowledge that it’s a Sanderson novel. Or you can get some juicy previews already.
This isn’t unheard of in indie publishing, but Sanderson is a trad publishing heavyweight, so the video was seen a couple million times within 24 hours. This kind of experiment is new ground: a statement that one of the most successful authors in the world is pursuing his own publishing routes, embracing the hybrid lifestyle, and retaining his IP.