From the author: My next book is The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation: it’s a Big Tech disassembly manual that explains how to disenshittify the web and bring back the old good internet. The hardcover comes from Verso on Sept 5, but the audiobook comes from me – because Amazon refuses to sell my audio.
I hate that its Kickstarter though.
Yeah, he sells it really well. “Stick it to the man, down with Amazon”. Sorry, but you’re one of the biggest authors around, you do not need some common schmuck barely making it through their monthly fees to carry your business risk. You can have ~any publisher you want in the world, and trivially have them release that book not on Amazon if you wanted to.
And that’s sadly the same in board gaming Kickstarters. Sure, the tiny mom&pop games that could never happen outside of Kickstarter exist. But the vast majority is big names and publishers using it to offload their business risk onto the consumer so they can have 0% risk 100% reward.
If the “I just want to get back at Amazon”-statement had truth behind it, the book would be sold independently. But not kickstartered. Shoulder the business cost in creating the product, then make the profit selling it.
The Kickstarter wasn’t just selling “the book”, it sold four things (we’ll get back to this) and wasn’t trying to “get back at Amazon”. I believe the Kickstarter was an appropriate option, even without considering his inability to independently bankroll the final scope of the project.
The four things:
A Premium Hardcover of the novels. This is the first time that the initial print version of one of his novels was released as a Premium Hardcover (albeit they did glue the binding), demand was very much not predictable and using KS helped to ensure everyone who wanted the limited print hardcover could get one (over 90k of each were needed).
DRM-free ebook of the novels. This was entirely risk-free for the consumer, they already essentially existed. This was essentially a pre-order, it is really only justified on KS because of #1.
Audiobook of the novel. Similar to #2, however I guess there was some minor consumer risk in that the audio needed to be recorded still, but Brandon does have reliable narrators and though he tried and failed at getting special narrators, that wasn’t part of the pitch.
Swag Boxes. This is the biggest item type to justify KS usage, they needed tools like they get from KS to be able to properly manage the monthly subscription box fulfillment. This did have some consumer risk, because it isn’t what they normally do, Sanderson couldn’t bank roll it himself (even after the $40M Kickstarter, he’s only got a 6M$ net worth) and it was largely an unknown in the book publishing space.
Back to the Amazon bit, it wasn’t a selling point to the KS, Amazon isn’t mentioned at all. He did decide to support competition in the Audiobook space as part of his fulfillment. In fact, all 4 of the novels are available on Amazon as print and ebooks, published through deals with his traditional publishers.
The way in which he decided to sell these novels (bundled content types and subscriptions) wasn’t something his traditional publishers were agreeable to and the KS was used as a proof of concept for that.
The KS raised $41M dollars, it’s the largest KS campaign ever by double. There’s a 0% chance the project would have been any where near remotely successful (and enjoyed by fans) if he’d tried to deliver it in a more traditional way. He didn’t have support of his publishers for that, he couldn’t afford it himself and the only other option would be a business loan, which we don’t know if he could have received a large enough one. Regardless of funding, the demand smashed expectations, less people would have got what they wanted in a traditional purchase method.
Yeah, there are bad board game companies on KS, take your complaints up with them. Which reminds me, I need to see when my physical edition pledge of Z from 2013 is due…
I mean, he’s aware of his popularity and privilege. He’s made a few comments clarifying that it wasn’t to “stick it to Amazon.” He does have a problem with Amazon’s business model when it comes to authors as well as the traditional publishing industry’s barriers to new authors and he understands that these are people’s only real option. He used that clout he has in the industry and his fiscal security to try help open up other avenues for publishing. And yeah, the guy is rich, but not publishing house rich. Printing thousands of books, then distributing them likely takes more liquid cash than he has available. He had a good idea of what it would cost and that’s what was asked for on Kickstarter. If he hadn’t made that, all the people would have kept their money. If more money was needed, he is rich and could probably cover it. I don’t see any risk here that anyone shouldered except for him risking his goodwill with fans.
I try to be skeptical of people. Particularly successful people who have made a lot of money. But from everything I’ve seen, the man lives his values and seems to be a pretty good guy. For his Kickstarter books, when he was talking to Audible about the audiobook versions, they offered him a very good deal. Then he pushed them to tell what a typical author would get. When he heard how bad a deal that was, he refused.
The man really cares about books and their place in this world. He has been successful and made a lot of money and social power in the industry from decades of writing. Now he’s using that to try and make the industry a better place for all writers while also still getting his books to his fans.
And my understanding is that his employees at Dragonsteel have profit sharing as part of their working there, on top of their paychecks. So any money he makes is also distributed throughout the staff. He also seems pretty liberal for a member of the LDS church and has spoken about his views evolving over the years as he’s realized the reality around him. He seems like a pretty genuinely good guy doing his best to change the industry for the good of all writers.
It’s a trend that’s popping up in quite a few places - it also happens in 3d printing. Some of the biggest companies out there still do kickstarters for their more risky products under the guise of “trying to figure out demand”
Creality you’re like the name in entry level 3d printers and people have been clamouring for you to release a new product for years. I’m pretty damn sure you can afford to take a risk on a concept that people have been wanting for years.
If you actually read the post, you’ll see that there’s no “business risk”—the entire audiobook is already recorded. He’s just using Kickstarter as a platform to sell pre-orders.