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Brandon Sanderson's Towers of Cash


SpaceChampion
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36 minutes ago, Zorral said:

  It's still a massive production effort that he's got to effectively oversee, and no one person can do that, which means hiring people, right? 

I read some people saying he had 30 people working for him even before this kickstarter.  Presumably that's a part-time, as needed basis.

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16 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

I read some people saying he had 30 people working for him even before this kickstarter.  Presumably that's a part-time, as needed basis.

Does anyone know, for sure?  If so, that's a business, at least if he files W-2s.  Thus he's also qualified for Covid Relief SB loans, and other Small Business loans.  But if he does it by donors, then they become investors -- for the agreed upon remuneration, if profitable, which have all been spelled out, and they can sue i-- maybe -- if they don't get it. But Sanderson, from what see everywhere, unlike Other Authors, has a proven track record many times over of delivering what he says he'll deliver, right?

But I don't know, you know! 

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27 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Does anyone know, for sure? 

His fan wiki makes the claim of 30 employees, and names a few of them. But a PPP loan record from 2020 cites 14 employees.

Regardless, it's genuinely a business that employees people to create, market, produce, and sell books and memorabilia.

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That's how Sir Walter Scott operated too.  For a while.  He also published others.  Whether publishing works not his own, I don't know had anything to do with his biz going bust, losing everything, and working himself to death like a plow horse to pay off the debts (which he didn't legally have to do, but his honor insisted), and provide something for his family when he was gone.

It seems Sanderson won't have Scott's outcome though, because unlike Scott he's likely has a much better head for business.

BTW, a whole lot of platforms for games etc. are supported entirely by fan payment, so I don't really see this as any different.

See: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/08/gigwork-russia/

Quote

 ...  For more than a decade, American and European tech companies have made a business of facilitating online labor — from gig work to content creation and online marketplaces to payment processors. Now, tens of thousands of Russian video game streamers on Twitch, gig workers on Upwork, adult-content creators on OnlyFans and computer programmers working on contract have all lost their livelihoods, at least temporarily. ....

.... Many of the platforms that allow fans to pay creators and influencers for their content use payment systems such as Mastercard and Visa, which began blocking Russian accounts in the days after Russia invaded. So did the London-based cross-border payments company Wise and the New York City-based financial services provider Payoneer. On Saturday, PayPal suspended services in Russia, citing both sanctions and solidarity with Ukraine. “PayPal supports the Ukrainian people and stands with the international community in condemning Russia’s violent military aggression in Ukraine,” president and CEO Dan Schulman wrote in a message posted on the company’s blog. ....

 

Edited by Zorral
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Since there are mostly Sanderson fans here, Will Wight is also having a smaller kickstarter here:

If you like Sanderson, you'd probably like these books too.  I backed this one to get the leatherbound ones.

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Kathryn Rusch  weighs in, of course.  She's been an advocate of self-publishing ever since the internet.

https://kriswrites.com/2022/03/09/business-musings-brandons-kickstarter/?

She quotes from the NY Times -- "Books require editors, designers and lawyers. Someone has to register the ISBN number and file for copyright. Someone else has to proofread the manuscript, then proofread it again. Printing thousands of copies of physical books, then storing and distributing them, is expensive and onerous."

What I, at least, find hilarious in the NYT is "Someone has to register the ISBN number and file for copyright." I've done these things professionally.  It is NOT HARD AT ALL, nor is it time consuming at all.  It is only a PITA for a big publishing company that has to do it for hundreds of titles, and then pay people to do it -- as little as they can get away with, of course, as well as have them doing myriads of other jobs.

What is even more hilarious, NYT, is, "Someone else has to proofread the manuscript, then proofread it again."  Dear Reader, you don't think the publishing company does that, do you? For genre fiction anyway?  Or even, often great big Histories? The author does this!  And or writer's friends if s/he/they have qualified friends and / or family members, or they pay somebody themselves. The publisher does not do that usually, because lo, many decades ago, the proof and copy editing departments were letgo as being nothing but revenue losses, not revenue makers (same for copyright and ISBN personnel).

You'd think the hysteric who typed that, never had a book published, wouldn't you.

Now, this, this is true: "Printing thousands of copies of physical books, then storing and distributing them, is expensive and onerous."  But a small operation that deals only with a single writer's works, a writer that brings in enough revenue to actually pay professionals to do this -- not so much, you know?

The one trick essential to make this work, is to be, to start with, a writer who has that much working / start-up capital, to do it, whether from revenue earned by previous works or -- and -- a large enough base of readers willing to pay the writer directly instead of the publisher.

Few, very few, hopeful writers have this, whether privately, from inheritance, investment, spouse, previous/other job, or from previous sales through a publisher. This is particularly so for new writers. 

 

 

Edited by Zorral
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Saw several on here saying they'd get the books if not for the international cost.  Thought I'd share this from an email I got today:

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Thank you! Thank you all, so much! You have shown us so much support, and while we keep saying it, we can’t truly express in words our appreciation for this community. 

With that in mind, we felt as a team that we wanted to do something (or somethings) special to give back. You have already made us the Most Funded Kickstarter campaign in history. Rather than creating stretch goals, we would love to offer “Thank You” gifts instead. Brandon announced the first last week, which we linked to in our previous update. During tonight’s livestream, Brandon presented two more. 

Dragonsteel will now cover all customs and duties on international shipments. What this means is that the shipping prices paid in this campaign will be your final shipping cost—you will not receive an additional bill from FedEx upon delivery. Your packages will be shipped directly to you with a significantly reduced chance of being returned to us.

 Note: While we would love to be able to offer local distribution or customized shipping schedules, it is unfortunately not possible for this campaign. But we hear your suggestions and are continuing to explore additional international shipping options, both in our store and for future campaigns. In the meantime, we hope this gift will help those affected by the worldwide increase in shipping costs.

 

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Yeah, it used to be terrific to get books from the US a decade ago, but now it comes with a hefty cost in general here in Sweden. The worst is that the shipping cost gets included in the tally for customs and duties, so a book that cost's $40 becomes a book that costs $95+. Their paying the customs and duties is a big deal, all considered -- it's not a cheap thing.

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1 hour ago, Lord of Oop North said:

Yeah, shipping for books is just absurd.

Even here in Canada, unless it is amazon, it is often $30-$40 to ship a book from USA to Canada.

Why would it be so expensive?

I frequently look at Biblio.com, a website where bookstores around the world have both used and new books for sale, and where each bookstore gets to set their own shipping fees. Shipping fees from Canada to the USA vary, but I think $15 US (which I think would be $19 Canadian at current exchange rates) is about the highest I normally see, and it's usually lower than that. Russell Books in Victoria, British Columbia, one of the Canadian stores that comes up most frequently for me when I search on Biblio, has a shipping fee to the USA of $5.99, which would be $7.58 Canadian. Why would it be so much more expensive going in the other direction?

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1 hour ago, Lord of Oop North said:

Yeah, shipping for books is just absurd.

Even here in Canada, unless it is amazon, it is often $30-$40 to ship a book from USA to Canada.

That's why I usually go with Book Depository, since shipping is free. I don't know if it's free for all books or if I was just lucky but I don't remember ever paying for shipping.

My main problem with this 35$ shipping is that a 40$ book + 35$ shipping gets over the limit for customs (I think the limit is around 50€ or something). Once it's over that limit, I need to pay a 30-35€ fee to DHL or whoever for customs handling (or lose a lot of time on it myself) and taxes (usually 20%) and customs (10%, I think), so it goes up to around 60-65$ on top of initial 75$. So, I'd have around 100$ extra cost on top of 40$ for the book itself. I do enjoy Sanderson's work but not that much.

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7 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

Sounds like customs and duty is so much it would eat up all profits.  Hard to see how that's feasible.

It will eat into profits, but I'm pretty sure they've calculated that even on international sales some profit will remain.

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6 hours ago, Ormond said:

Why would it be so expensive?

I frequently look at Biblio.com, a website where bookstores around the world have both used and new books for sale, and where each bookstore gets to set their own shipping fees. Shipping fees from Canada to the USA vary, but I think $15 US (which I think would be $19 Canadian at current exchange rates) is about the highest I normally see, and it's usually lower than that. Russell Books in Victoria, British Columbia, one of the Canadian stores that comes up most frequently for me when I search on Biblio, has a shipping fee to the USA of $5.99, which would be $7.58 Canadian. Why would it be so much more expensive going in the other direction?

To be honest, I have no idea. Sometimes it is all over the map.

For example, I just looked at AbeBooks - a softcover copy of Hero of Ages by Sanderson, and shipping to Canada (from Maryland) = $37.34 USD for 1st book, + $13.55 USD per additional book. Then I look at a copy of Well of Ascension (in Texas) and it is $7.99 USD.

Biblio looks more reasonable. I see softcover of same book for $5-$20.99 USD to Canada, depending on the listing and where it is located.

eBay is the worst for shipping costs, in my experience. I think because lot of vendors use the global shipping program, which is obscene for pricing to Canada.

 

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6 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

This is me doing me but quantity… is never going to beat quality when it comes to fantasy prose.  Sanderson, to me, is like a university cafeteria it ain’t great… but there’s lots of it.

At my university, you could get one thing of the "main course" but you could keep coming back to the chili/soup, salad bar, ice cream, etc.  There's a reason I gained a lot of weight in those four years...

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Interesting analogy. I agree with it. If only I'd walked into my dormitory food service with a professional dietician, that person would have been able to selectively prune all the food that'd been prepped. My resulting food tray would be absolutely delicious and healthy. Instead I gained that infamous Freshman Fifteen - approximately the weight of my Oathkeeper hardback, by the way!

And yep, @Rhom, my dorm service was the same; we had limits on the hot food line and milk cartons, but I could march my ass up and make a full Belgian waffle decked with toppings alongside every meal I ate - which I generally did 3 times a day.

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