Author Brandon Sanderson had one more surprise for fans up his sleeve

Sometimes creative pursuits become such a resounding success that they shock even their creators. Last month, fantasy author Brandon Sanderson announced that he was doing a Kickstarter to fund the release of four books he had written in secret during the pandemic. At the time the Kickstarter went live, he and his team at Dragonsteel Books hoped it might raise three or four million dollars, based on how successful the campaign was for The Way of Kings leather-bound edition in 2020. To the surprise of Sanderson, his team, and the world at large, the effort became the highest funded Kickstarter campaign of all time. And it didn’t eke out the record; Sanderson’s Secret Project Kickstarter doubled the previous record, which was held by the Pebble Smartwatch at $20.3 million.

With Sanderson’s Kickstarter at an end, let’s round up the details about how things stand at the finish line, as well as discuss what he’s announced about the four Secret Project books and touch on that final surprise he sprung the day before the Kickstarter finished. We will be tagging SPOILERS where relevant, so if you’re trying to keep the mystery alive and go into the Secret Project books knowing nothing about them, we’ll make it really clear when we’re going to discuss them.

Let’s talk numbers for Brandon Sanderson’s Kickstarter

Brandon Sanderson’s Kickstarter ran from March 1 to March 31. 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.

At 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.

At 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.

Of course, Sanderson being Sanderson, he couldn’t help slipping in more surprises at the end. SPOILER warning for The Stormlight Archive ahead,because we’re going to be discussing the upcoming fifth book of that series.

Brandon Sanderson had one more surprise for fans

The day before the Kickstarter ended, Brandon Sanderson uploaded yet another cryptic video to his YouTube channel. Considering that Sanderson’s Kickstarter announcement video was a big practical joke that made it sound like he might be taking a break from writing, only to then turn things around in the most Sanderson way possible and announce multiple new books, I don’t think I’m alone in saying we all suspected something fishy was afoot with this new video.

It starts out in a similarly contemplative fashion, with Sanderson wondering aloud whether he could ever truly surprise fans again while drone shots of him looking thoughtfully into the distance appear onscreen. Of course, it’s all a setup for him to say that he’ll always try to pull these surprises on fans. This time around, the surprise is that he’s released an early look at the prologue to the fifth Stormlight Archive book, which he’s currently writing. Sanderson reiterates that this is only a first draft, but it’s still pretty exciting. Stormlight 5 is notable because it is the end of the author’s first sequence of books in that series. Climactic events are afoot!

We won’t discuss the details of the prologue — you can go to the author’s YouTube channel and listen to him narrate it yourself if you want. The only thing we will point out here is that the prologue is told from the point of view of Gavilar Kholin, and that should be enough to get fans of the series excited. If you’ve been reading The Stormlight Archive so far, you know that the prologue of each book recounts the night of Gavilar’s assassination at the hands of Szeth-son-son-Vallano, each time from a different point of view. This marks the first time we’ve ever seen those fateful events through Gavilar’s eyes, or been privy to the thoughts and plans of the king in his final hours. Way to stoke the fires of our excitement, Sanderson!

Since we’re talking about The Stormlight Archive and Sanderson’s books at large, we’re also going to discuss what little we know about the Secret Project books. So if you’re trying to avoid knowing anything about these books before they show up in your mailbox, consider this your SPOILER WARNING.