Brandon Sanderson’s Self-Publishing & Small Press Releases

I woke up this morning to find an interesting post on the Fantasy-Faction Forums. It was by a gentleman who was going to be self-publishing a number of titles and printing a few more through a small press. Now, this isn’t unusual – I wake up to find these kinds of threads on Fantasy-Faction all the time. I tend to check out the books and either purchase them, if I find them interesting, or leave them to others, if the premise doesn’t suit my tastes.

This morning was slightly different though, because today it was Brandon Sanderson, New York Times bestselling author, who stopped by to tell us about his small press and self-published projects. WHAT!? You may ask. But Brandon Sanderson is one of the biggest names in fantasy literature…why on Earth would he self-publish!? And what is it he is publishing?

Well, who better to explain than Mr Sanderson himself, check this out:

Brandon Sanderson here. I have been known to write some fantasy stories now and then. I have some self published and small press books coming out this year, and I thought people might not get a chance to hear about them.

The first is self published. I’m taking two of my novellas and printing them together in a print volume, which I’ll be taking to some cons this summer to sell. I should have some up on my website for sale eventually. The stories are Defending Elysium and Firstborn, both of which are free to read on-line. (Defending Elysium is on my website. Firstborn on Tor.com–though I have a link to it in the other link just below.)

http://brandonsanderson.com/library/catalog/Recent-Short-Stories_Full-Short-Stories

Also of interest, I have a book coming out from Subterranean Press in July or August:

http://www.subterraneanpress.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=sanderson01&Category_Code=B&Product_Count=114

Called Legion, it is the story of a man with a very interesting brain. He is a genius, and can master any topic of study in a very short time–however, the knowledge he gains manifests as a person only he can see, who acts as an adviser on that topic. Someone invents a camera that can take pictures of the past, and our hero–along with his band of genius delusions–must recover it after it is stolen.

Finally, as if that weren’t enough, Tachyon is publishing another of my books sometime around November:

http://www.tachyonpublications.com/book/Emperors_Soul.html?Session_ID=new

This story, The Emperor’s Soul, is a fantasy story about Shai, a master forger. The emperor barely survives assassination, and is left a vegetable. His servants can heal his brain, but he just stares in front of himself blankly, as if his soul is gone. Shai is hired (well, brought off of death row) and told she has three months to create a forgery of the emperor’s soul and imprint it onto his body with her magic, so that everyone can continue to act like the emperor is alive.

Both the Subterranean book and the Tachyon book are novellas.

The obvious question is probably, “Why isn’t your New York publisher doing these?” Well, to be honest, these books aren’t right for Tor. They’re just too short, in my opinion, for a traditional bookstore release. (Though I originally did do one of them with Tor.com.) I wanted to release nice collector’s edition print versions and cheap ebooks at the same time. It’s not something that is profitable for a large publisher, and so is better suited to doing myself. (EDIT–Note, with Legion and The Emperor’s Soul, I’m working with very talented small presses for the print editions and am self publishing the ebooks. I don’t want to take credit for what Subpress and Tachyon are doing, as they’ve been fantastic to work with. I love the Tachyon cover.)

I’m not sure if this means I officially get to join the indy writers, or if I’m already too far entrenched in my place to ever be considered indy. However, considering the company, it seems like a great place to be. I’m a firm believer that both indy publishing and big-six publishing will have a place in the future of books, and that both serve very useful roles. Seems like this is one of the best times in the history of publishing to be a writer, with more opportunity for more people and more voices.

Best,

Brandon

p.s. I don’t know if anyone out there is paying any attention, and this thread might just vanish away. But in case it doesn’t, I’ll keep an eye on it for a while and answer any questions that come my way. Feel free to ask.

You can visit Brandon’s thread here.

So, it appears that self-publishing and small presses have offered Brandon something that traditional publishing was not able to. As an artist, Brandon Sanderson is able to follow his creative urge and break the mould, of what sells and makes corporation sized profits, working towards his own desires. Like a painter who has galleries waiting on him to produce masterpieces to sell in abundance, and yet also loves drawing superheroes for comic books in his spare time, Brandon is able to keep writing those stunning epics such as Stormlight, Mistborn and Wheel Of Time for his publishers, whilst also testing his abilities and working on smaller projects that he really enjoys and believes in.

As Brandon alludes to, novels are a publisher’s speciality – any publisher will tell you that novellas and short stories don’t sell nearly as well as novels. Therefore, as businesses, we cannot blame them for putting emphasis on publishing this medium. However, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a big market for shorter fiction and even longer fiction with plots that don’t suit that publisher’s brand. It simply means that for the massive corporations, there isn’t enough money to be made. You have to remember that publishing houses hire hundreds of people and to cover the overheads the books they publish have to sell thousands upon thousands of copies.

Now, by self-publishing, Brandon significantly reduces the overheads of producing a piece of work. It will be him, a cover artist, and a hired editor and then he will probably outsource the typesetting and the printing. For an already established author such as Brandon Sanderson, this is pretty much perfect. He already has a huge fan-base, who are no doubt excited to check out these projects, and he is able to work freely, without any pressure from publishers to write something that appeals to “the market”. Brandon has no doubt earned well from his other writing pursuits, and like most artists, money will only be a small part of the equation. For Brandon, I am sure, getting his work out there and sharing something he believes in will be a big part of the reward.

So, what will the books be like? Should you order them? Sadly, I’ve not had the pleasure of reading any of them yet. However, Brandon’s voice echoed in my mind as I read that forum post just a few hours ago. It was an echo from when I interviewed Brandon in 2011. He was telling me about how he thrived on having creative freedom with his writing projects. He said that “[when I] only gave care to what I thought made a fantastic book, I did a good job.” and he also added a bit later on: “I need complete creative freedom; otherwise my books have no life to them.” Now, those quotes are slightly out of context, so you should probably read the interview to get the full meaning of what Brandon was saying, but surely self-publishing and having an even greater control of his own projects can only lead to greater pieces of work, right?

Editor’s Note: We would like to once again thank Mr. Sanderson for taking the time to stop by our forums and support the small press and self-publishing portion of our community. All of us at Fantasy-Faction greatly appreciate it!

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