Sorry about being late on this one too! I thought the answer was going to be obvious but it turned out to be a tough question to tackle. Or maybe I am just dumb. After all, I did totally fail at writing to market even with a foolproof plan: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-wnGInMrkBF4.html
The secret is simple. Consistent hard work and dedication to perfecting his craft. He’s pretty transparent about his process and how ideas develop, outside of that, it all comes down to an absolutely phenomenal work ethic, which if worked towards, theoretically, anyone can do. Which is probably why his ideas resonate so hard with people. He’s just a guy, trying to write some cool fantasy stuff. His fans are just regular people looking for cool fantasy worlds to enter!
That's what I originally thought too, but hard work and dedication to craft only goes as far as laying an excellent foundation for one-off opportunities. It doesn't fully account for the unique level of his success. His authenticity is really how he connected with his early readers and how he maintains that connection today (and that level of transparency is part of it). His choice of what he writes (which is being incredibly authentic to himself) plays a big part as well. I really can't wait to see how someone like Will Wight handles this. Based on his trajectory, I think he's well on his way to becoming the next Sanderson...or as close as we'll get in self published fantasy.
TL:DR That's not REALLY what happened. Longer form: What happened first was he wrote almost a dozen novels he tried to publish, got rejected and put away silently. He never mentioned that to anyone until he "made it," which was many many years later. He's a very private guy, and I think it's ingenious that he fooled so many people into thinking he was this transparent open person. Brilliant marketing. He's open about his writing process but never about his actual history, which is his right to be honest, but that history will actually shed light to how a lot of things panned out. There's a lot more failures he'll never tell anyone about and he has a right to, but to say that it was simply perfecting his craft is just not understanding the underlying mystery of Sanderson. He started teaching writing when he got a good handle on things, he was still not published yet but was working on it. There's a good 4 year gap between the first recorded and uploaded class to his publishing year. Those years were critical to him internalizing the craft because if you can teach someone how to do something then it helps cement your understanding to a more subconscious level which is actually something he said a few times, the part where there are things he has subconsciously understood, not the teaching part. I was able to put two and two together when watching pretty much every class, interview and live event he hosted. I think that's the beauty of Sanderson's journey: it's not replicable. We all have to make our OWN path in order to get in. Sure, take things that work for you but don't see his exact path as gospel because there are things that happened there that are unique to his experience that others are not privy to. I could get into the whole church community he's in and how that was also extremely foundational to how he moves so professionally while other authors seem to struggle in that area but then this comment would be 10 pages long.
Loved the video! I think something that adds to Brandon’s authenticity is his focus on using research and alpha readers to write characters with deep experiences that he cannot relate to, like mental health challenges and disabilities. Him acknowledging that he needs help make his books that much better
Absolutely! I'm particularly impressed with how he's evolved on his position of how Shallan and DID is depicted in Stormlight. I loved how he really listened to readers with DID and charged his mind from his original intentions because it made for better representation and better writing. And studying how drafts of Dawnshard changed based on the sensitivity readers is fascinating.
Your conclusion was done very well. I was sitting here biting my tongue saying to my self "He finished the biggest fantasy series of all time at the biggest fantasy publisher. That's a big key to his success." But I'm glad I waited because even that is hollow. It was his genuine nature that even led to that deal. I'm a WOT fan and met Brandon through those books now Brandon is my favorite author. You did a great job with this video. You've earned a new sub. Keep up the great work!
Thanks Dylan, I'm so glad it resonated with you. I discovered Brandon's work in much the same way: devoured the last three Wheel of Time books, loved his writing and wanted more of it, then binged my way through Stormlight and Mistborn and then everything else. And yeah, I now have a pretty severe case of Brandofandonitis.
Thank you for including his quote about "Sanderson writing like GRRM is terrible!" I see way too many fans trying to say he could finish WoW for GRMM. But the style match is too large a clash and I hate seeing it said over and over.
I can only conclude that the people who suggest that over and over again must not have read one of the authors 😂 because I don't understand how anyone who has read both Sanderson and GRRM would think that would be a good idea. The two of them are opposites in pretty much every respect!
@@PaperTigerProductions , exactly!!!! It's such a style clash. Yes, Sanderson is fast at writing, but he's never going to finish another person's series again. If GRRM does allow someone else to write in his world, a better person would be like Sanderson was to Jordan. A newish writer who is a major fan and has a similar PoV and writing style.
I think he's the Tarantino of this industry. He's well informed about the genre he writes in. He's quirky but relatable,. Not everyone is capable to connect with millions of readers but he can, since he was a book worm and a dreamer way before he decided to write. So he gives what readers want, what he would've wanted if he was the one buying.
There's a great interview he did with Daniel Greene in March 2022 where he talks about how he's been able to benefit from fantasy becoming mainstream and how books are still a very small part of the overall entertainment market. I'm waiting on the edge of my seat for the moment that Sanderson decides he's not going to wait for a Hollywood studio to give Mistborn the greenlight and just...produces it as an indie film himself.
1. Output. Nobody can match his work ethic. 2. Ahead of trends. Connected universe books just as MCU was taking off. Every company wanted to convert their IP into giant connected universes and he was already doing it. 3. Long books = Audiobook sales. Audiobooks as a market were/are having a lot of growth during this time. What books encourage people to try audiobooks? Extremely long ones! :P That's how it was for me. Also, the one book a month model encourages the sale of longer books. 4. Personal Brand. thing like putting his lectures online or just conducting his public persona in a positive way certainly help.
Hello, new fan of the channel. I wanted to add something that I think you kinda hit on. Brandon is just endlessly available online. When you are fan of something you want to learn more about. You take house sorting quizes, read wikis and join fangroups. You also try to learn about the process behind it all. If you get into anything Brandon there is an insane amount of stuff just here on youtube. You could watch his lecture series or podcast. You could see interviews with booktubers or other authors. Even in the sidebar here I can see the video he did with Shadiversity. It this point I might have consumed more of Brandon then Brandon's books. He's made it so there's an infinite supply. There's a lot of authors I love and then when I try to find more about them I found one grainy interview or just an article about them. Not Brando tho.
You're so right! Brandon makes a lot of effort to be accessible to his fans-it's a huge criteria he uses in all of his decision making...like why he decided to start his own convention when he got too big to do bookstore signings and why he started investing into his RU-vid channel and doing more livestreams. I think there's a marketing adage about how many times you have to have an encounter with a brand before you'll become inclined to purchase and it's like 7 or 10 or something like that. You hear about Brandon Sanderson so much that eventually, you go hrmm...I guess I'll check out his free books, there's no risk to me, if I don't like it, I don't like it and that's fine...and even then he provides so much value with his RU-vid lectures that you'll STILL follow him as an author regardless of whether you read his books or not.
Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it. Re: book reviews, I'll give some thought as to what I might have to add to the conversation if I did something like that. 😊
One thing you are overlooking is Sanderson's actual productivity which is a major factor to his success. He might not write many words per hour (compared to some authors), but he's consistently writing 6-8 hours almost every day. He's been putting out a Stormlight book on average every 3 years and several other books (both in and outside of the Cosmere) between those releases. While some say his prose isn't as good as Rothfuss, GRRM or Jordan but in the end I could care less. The fact is that he's giving his fans the stories that we want and enjoy on a very regular basis. If Sanderson had only written two Mistborn or Stormlight books up to now like Rothfuss, he'd be no where near as popular as he is now.
So the productivity/output thing is an interesting question to unpack. On the surface it seems intuitive that more hours of butt in chair writing should equal more books finished, but it does not always work out to be the case. What I think Sanderson's true advantage is, not necessarily that he spends more time writing, but he's really learned how to revise his books by using a number of tools and frameworks to diagnose issues and then he's also learned to let go of his books. He talked about this in quite a bit during the Cytonic launch and I'll have to remember to do a video on it!
@@PaperTigerProductions Sure he has a defined and streamlined process that gives him an advantage between his alpha/beta readers, in house editorial staff etc. However you can't dismiss the fact the man has published over 5 million words in the last 10 years. If he wasn't constantly writing those books would never have happened.
@@javiert9766 it's not so much his process to be honest. Any number of self pub authors have similar processes in place, though they might not go to Sanderson levels of formalizing it (he really takes it beyond anything I've seen and heard of). And any number of web serial and romance authors have written far more than 5 million words in the same time frame. What's remarkable is the relative quality of Sanderson's words at the pace he publishes them at. Because alpha and beta feedback only give you so much to work with; you can KNOW something is wrong with the book (and even why it's not working) but still have no idea how to go about fixing it. For the record, I don't think Sanderson always succeeds either, both Rhythm of War and Cytonic had big problems for me. But by and large, he DOES nail it which is why I'm so hyped for Stormlight 5 and Defiant!
SUCH a brilliant video, I'm in complete awe of your intellect at being able to tackle such a huge topic and turn it into an easily understandable 30 minute video ❤
A good portion of Sanderson's success(Not all) was an inherited fanbase: Jordan. There is a very strong likelihood, had Sanderson not been chosen to finish the Wheel of Time, he'd be much less known today
WoT was a double-edged sword though. Yes, it fast-tracked his name recognition but if he had failed to deliver...well, it could have ruined his own career. He didn't inherit all of Jordan's fans either; quite a lot of them couldn't get past his prose, hated the mistakes he made with Mat and REALLY hated how he wrote battle sequences. High risk, high reward-and he only got the opportunity in the first place because of his authenticity. In many respects, who he is and how he approaches communication with readers made it the perfect opportunity for him. Readers were eager to know more to the point of being rabid for updates and that played very well with Sanderson's transparent approach.
I really adored this. In terms of being authentic I feel like you have that figured out! I think Brandon himself preaches what you said about being yourself. That advice has helped me a lot as I decide what stories to write and resist the advice to write to market. I also thought what you said about his plots and market appeal was really on point. Just enjoyed your take and excited to watch more of your videos.
Thank you so much Holli! I find it so much easier to be authentic here because we're all just trying to figure out this publishing thing together 😂 things change so much so often that I feel like there's always more to learn
You are missing the thing that almost everyone misses about success--the role of chance. There's a reason why it's so hard to tell whether a business will succeed or fail. There are too many variables to quantify that success can ultimately be treated as having a significant element of chance. Brandon wrote 13 (Or was it 10?) books before he was published after almost 10 years. Write that many books and keep at it that long and sooner or later by the laws of probability your small chance of success becomes larger. The other things you mention (accessibility, business ability, etc.) are reasons he continues to be successful, but they were only important after he had finally played the odds long enough to get the opportunity to succeed. You want to be like Brandon? Keep writing until your opportunity comes, and do your best to gain the tools to take advantage of that opportunity when it comes. Being yourself is not enough if you don't have the patience to wait for your opportunity (which it should be said may never come). And that opportunity isn't enough if you don't understand how to use it.
I 100% agree that chance is a hugely important factor to how big Sanderson is. And yeah, publishing is basically gambling. In respect of commercial success though, once you move to primarily focusing on digital formats and being smart about not over-capitalizing your investment in any given title, I'd argue there are enough readers out there that chance does not play as large a role as your ability to market your books and to adapt to customer/reader feedback. Certainly there are enough authors following the 20Booksto50k model to prove the odds are better than they used to be when we were stuck with print-centric distribution!
One of the things that certainly helps with Brandon is his dedication to consistency. There's very little reconning and all the systems and worlds in Cosmere function together so that the background story is both believable as well as consistent. This lets the fan community seriously theorize about his books and come to conclusions that are correct and Brandon doesn't change the plans just because something that comes next was figured out beforehand, in fact he encourages it and builds on it. I love Edding's Belgariad universe, but boy oh boy is he inconsistent and retconny. He also stated once in an interview that expecting consistency is stupid, who cares.
YES! The depth of world building in the Cosmere is amazing. I remember back when the WoT fandom was obsessing over who killed Asmodean and RJ changing it to be the other suspect because the fandom had put together the clues and guessed (if I recall the story correctly, there were two suspects and the fandom at large had guessed the one he intended, then someone posted a very thorough theory identifying the other possibility and then he left behind a note with that theory printed out and a sticky note taped to it with the scrawl "basically this"). The Belgariad was one of the earliest fantasy works I read. I loved it as a kid and even went as far as reading the Riven Codex (no, I do not recommend this). After I got through the Mallorean, the Elenium, the Tamuli and then the Redemption of Athalus, I realized not only did he recycle all his characters and plots, but there was never any more depth to the magic system besides "make it happen with your mind". Somewhere on the internet is an article from Eddings explaining the commercial reasons why (answer: it's profitable) but the day I had that realization was the day I stopped reading Eddings.
I like your analytical approach to this crazy business. I think your conclusion here, "be yourself", is sound. Now if I could just figure out who I am. I'm roughly Sanderson's age, so you'd think I'd know, but I've been chasing the market and conjuring high concept ideas for so long now, I've entirely lost the plot. I have no idea what to write. But, again, I think you nailed it in this video that most successful authors write books that are very much extensions of themselves.
That's the source of frustration for me as well. You'd think I'd have a clue about who I am as an author in my 30s. Nope, not a single notion. My only consolation is, Sanderson wrote 5 novels before he really found his voice in Elantris. So maybe I just need to be okay with not knowing what my voice as an author is in this first series...once it's done I'll have completed the requisite first five books and then maybe I'll have a clue 😅
So Genie was right! Just Beeee yourself? It’s really great advice, honestly. You have to be true to yourself. Your books are your books. That is what will draw the right people in. Rather than shoe-horning yourself into something you don’t enjoy doing.
😂 I feel like I should at least *try* and write a horrible trash version of a hot genre/niche at some point. Just one time, for the learning experience and horrified giggles, before that spew worthy manuscript is destroyed forever.
@@PaperTigerProductions never destroy… always trunk. Srsly…. But heck why not! Take another play from Sanderson’s book though. I could have a very LONG conversation analyzing his intentional process. He uses each book to improve a weakness (his Secret Novels are a great example of that.) I think Vin-> Lift-> Spensa are a great example. (Although in my mind Vin was a home run, and he’s been trying to figure out what he did right…) use that. Right the Commercial novel that also improves you. (Thrice was that for me and allowed me to then improve my writing when I came back to my epic.)
I wish you luck on the revision. I'm mired down in that myself, but I find it oddly fulfilling. I think it's an impossible standard comparing myself to someone like B.S. And writing something "to the market" is where voices go to die. It might be cliché, but I think we need to "be true to our voices," under standing that these voices resonate as deep as myth, and being true to them will take us on a path of revelation. And yeah, I think it applies to someone just trying to write an Urban Fantasy or any genre.
100% - Cassandra Clare gets a lot of flak but there's a reason I still read her stuff: I enjoy her voice. Re: impossible standards - it is possible to compare yourself to Sanderson as long as you don't fall into the trap of comparing results, because that can be misleading (and also super depressing). Focus on looking at the process and setting appropriate benchmarks, and the results should follow. If this is something you're interested in, I have a more detailed video on this topic as well.
Be your self. But that means being the best you can be. Taking the steps needed to improve yourself physically, mentally, in what ever aspects you want to improve. Do not be ashamed of yourself of your own beliefs. Embrace who you are and refine it into something special. That is what I think of when I think of be yourself.
@@PaperTigerProductions exactly. When you hear someone say things like, oh just be yourself and you'll get the girl of your dreams, or anything like that. It doesn't mean stay stagnant and don't worry about improving, but instead don't change who you are, but do improve yourself in the aspects that you would like to improve in. refine yourself into your essence by improving in the aspects of you that you find yourself lacking in. In life we see the end result. On social media we see the highlights of a person's actions. We do not see the effort and the work it took them to get there. We see people showing off their vacations but rarely do we see their normal everyday life. the struggles they go through, the tedium as they improve. Its all there but we only see the finished product.
Bromances are great, but I can't stand romance. I have a whole rant about it in this video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-wnGInMrkBF4.html
It's "Fire and Blood", his 700 page "who says these are my thinly disguised world building notes?" tome that I unironically had on my TBR list because I was interested to see just how much of his fictional history he had worked out in order to write the politics in A Song of Ice and Fire and also because of the House of Dragons adaptation. I actually finished it a few weeks ago and it's...well, it's better than the Rivan Codex, and I read that once upon a time too, when I was super into The Belgariad and The Mallorean.
I mean I think the sad fact is, there really isn't any secret to his success. As you went over in this video, there are authors just as good if not better than him. I think he just got lucky. I don't say this to take away from his obvious hard work, but lots of authors work very hard and never sell a single book.
I think somebody once called luck a situation where opportunity meets preparation (can't recall who and not sure if I've misquoted them). WoT is undoubtedly the reason he became so big, but he was well on his way to success even before then. Both Elantris and Mistborn found an audience and sold very well, and he had several other series on the go at the time. I often wonder how much longer it would have taken him to get to the point where Tor was willing to take a chance on Stormlight without the evidence of WoT behind him.
Wait two years for George RR Martin to die then apply to finish ASOIAF. There ya go. Congratulations. You've become Sanderson the Second coming. Now get to work writing 5 books while writing books... all while writing books. Then you'll have achieved Sanderson Singularity.
🤣 I think GRRM has been on record he's not gonna let anyone finish it. But I also remember reading him saying otherwise as well. I'm waiting for the day direct mental interfaces become commonplace. I fully expect Sanderson to master it and then just brain dump his rough drafts in 1/10th of the time it used to take and his output will become exponential.
