Using the popular crowdfunding site Kickstarter, he offered readers a series of rewards and incentives to back his latest project, but never in his wildest dreams could he imagine just how successful his campaign would be. Let’s talk numbers for Brandon Sanderson’s Kickstarterīrandon Sanderson’s Kickstarter ran from March 1 to March 31.When Brandon Sanderson asked his legions of dedicated fans to help him fund a collection of four secret new novels, he set himself the bold and ambitious target of $1 million. It set a ton of other impressive benchmarks for Kickstarter beyond earning the record for most funding overall, included raising $1 million in just 35 minutes (which was the original funding goal), being the fastest Kickstarter to pass the $4 and $10 million marks, and raising the most money ever for the platform in 24 hours ($15.4 million). The thing took off with the speed of a rocket ship, and even when it slowed down, it never stopped moving at a solid clip.Īt the time the Kickstarter ended, it had raised over $41.7 million and was backed by 185,341 people. The backer number is fascinating, because it actually represents only a very slim portion of Sanderson’s actual readership, which is in the millions. Part of that is because the tiers for the Kickstarter are set at such high dollar amounts - if you want the Secret Project books, the lowest you could go is $40 for the ebooks, but if you want actual physical copies you’re looking at $160.

The books are scheduled to come out in 2023 in January, April, July and October. And things only get more expensive when you add in the “Year of Sanderson” monthly merch boxes that are available for fans to receive in the off-months. The highest tier, which includes all formats of the books and all the merch boxes, clocks in at $500.

Over 23,000 people chose that option, which works out to around $11.5 million a significant portion of the Kickstarter, but only a portion.Īt the end of the day, all these numbers add up to one fact: this Kickstarter was the most successful in history, and it was to fund fantasy books.

Sanderson built an infrastructure for communicating with fans that is nigh unheard of for an author, and it paid off big. He and the Dragonsteel team have announced plenty of ways they’re reinvesting some of these excess funds back into the Kickstarter for example, they’re doing things like adding extra colors to the interior of some of the books.

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