The Business: Sanderson Shocks OldPub With Display Of Irrelevancy

Brandon Sanderson is one of the remaining OldPub authors that (a) actually has a real audience and (b) mostly makes work meant to be read and enjoyed (when SJWs in the office don't fuck with him). This is how he dealt with Corona-chan's World Tour.

That's right, five full novels. (Also, kudos to his team for this slick video presentation.)

Which lead to his Kickstarter campaign. As of this post, he's already hit nearly $25 MILLION DOLLARS. I'll post the video below.

You'll find the campaign page here. He's got premium pricing in his Rewards to reflect his status in the business, but if you're already a fan then this is nothing you haven't already been paying; it's just Kickstart getting a cut instead of some zombie OldPub publisher that ought to be put down for everyone's good.

But that's not the whole story here. That comes from the reactions, and man are the loser OldPub authors mad. Like their counterparts at Marvel and D.C., the losers in OldPub are now seeing the writing on the wall--that the folks propping up OldPub like Atlas holding up the world are shrugging off that burden--and what that will mean for OldPub's collapse, and with it their sinecures- and yes, these losers like Cat Rambo and Jeffe Kennedy are just sinecure holders.

Now that Sanderson sees what he can do without editorial interference by fat blue-haired landwhale cat ladies in New York offices, without sensitity readers, without Globohomo faggotry constantly pushing him to bend the knee, it won't be long before his team runs the numbers and decides that it is better for business--nevermind any morality concerns--to cut OldPub out as soon as possible and just go direct to the audience from here on out.

In short, to turn his audience into his patrons and--as Brian Niemeier has predicted--embraces Neo-Patronage wholeheartedly. Sanderson isn't stupid; he already sees that he's got a winning move as the YouTube video shows and the campaign proved with brick-to-face certainty. I fully expect him, and others like him that--like him--are not with Baen Books, will abandon OldPub and join us here in the NewPub sphere.

And yes, I wholeheartedly welcome him into the NewPub world. He'll join others who moved into the "I have a team!" tier like Cole & Anspach, and thereby show we one-man bands how to successfully scale up so we can focus on writing the books while remaining wholly independent. This is the future, and it's a better one than what OldPub wants, and there is not a damned thing OldPub can do to stop it from coming now.

I note that Brian has a nice take on this at his blog, which you can find here. His opinion complements mine.