Brandon Sanderson has disrupted the literary publishing industry with his latest foray into self publishing.
The bestselling sci-fi/author has set a record for the highest-funded project to come from a crowdfunding platform.
The “Year of Sanderson” campaign – offering supporters four new novels in multiple formats as well as monthly or quarterly “swag” boxes – generated more than $20.8 million from 84,600 backers in just three days on Kickstarter.
With 23 more days to go, the total has climbed to over $25 million – surpassing Sanderson’s initial $1 million goal exponentially.
The previous Kickstarter record-holder was the Pebble Time smartwatch that raised $20.3 million in funds back in 2015.
Fans of Sanderson brought into his innovative self-publishing business model without knowing much about the plot of the four novels – with the working titles of “Secret Project 1 through 4″ – he said were written during the pandemic, and the types of products they would receive.
Intrigue and mystery seem on brand for the 46-year-old Lincoln, Nebraska, native, who was first published in 2005.
“Who would have thought that a group of quirky stories could rival — then topple — technological innovations and beloved game projects,” Sanderson wrote in a Kickstarter update. “I’m floored. And you did this all without even knowing what you were getting, save that I promised you it was awesome.”
Best known for creating the Cosmere fictional universe, in which most of his novels are set, Sanderson helped finish the final three novels in Robert Jordan’s “The Wheel of Time” book series, which was recently turned into an Amazon series produced by Rosemund Pike.
The scribe, who founded the Utah-based Dragonsteel Entertainment in 2012, had over 20 million books in print, according to published reports.
Since the mid-aughts, his works has been published by Macmillan Publishers imprint Tor and Penguin Random House’s Delacorte Press.
Sanderson has a books scheduled for release with each of them later this year.
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