Fantasy and science fiction author Brian Sanderson, known for the Mistborn series and The Stormlight Archive, has crowdfunded over $18.25 million on Kickstarter in under two days.
Having hit his goal of $1 million rapidly, he still has another 28 days left to break the Kickstarter record of $20.34 million set by the Pebble Time smartwatch in March 2015. However, the funding does seem to be slowing down as he ‘only’ raised a little more than $3 million on the second day after making $15 million on day one.
This is not the first time that Sanderson’s company, Dragonsteel Entertainment, has raised such an amount on Kickstarter. In 2021, they raised $6.79 million for a leather-bound 10th-anniversary edition of his 2010 book The Way of Kings, which was rated as highly as #7 on the New York Times Bestseller List.
This time around, Sanderson is offering four new, unpublished books titled “Secret Project #1” to “Secret Project #4”, which will be delivered to backers on a quarterly basis over the next year.
The cheapest form of backing this project is a $40 purchase of just the e-books every quarter, while the most expensive is $500 (plus shipping of between $120-$420) that gives you an e-book, an audiobook, and a limited edition hardcover every quarter, as well as monthly “swag boxes” containing goodies related to Sanderson’s previous works.
At the time of publishing, each of the 71,980 backers has spent an average of over $250 each. Sanderson’s fans are clearly very excited about this surprise launch!
The unpublished books apparently started as a gift for Sanderson’s wife, but after the overwhelming success of the 2021 Kickstarter, he decided to launch for the world as well to see whether they could raise $1 million over a month to fund the project.
