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  1. Two years ago, when Brandon first announced the secret projects, people were surprised to hear the audiobooks wouldn't be available on Audible. Brandon had spoken out before about how he was worried about their business practices and what that would mean for authors with a lot less success than him, and for the secret projects––where the rights would initially be in his hands rather than going through Tor first, as Dragonsteel would be publishing the books themselves––he took a big risk, knowing most of his readership was through audio, and decided to promote other alternatives for audiobooks besides the Amazon-owned company. Now, after many conversations with the company, he's reached a historic deal, not aimed at himself, but to benefit indie authors in particular, who are the most affected by Audible's policies regarding royalties and exclusivity. Many people have heard about this basic context. You remember Brandon explaining the new other options that weren't Audible. But today, I want to do more than just paraphrase this newest blogpost. So I want to explain the entire context behind the relationship between Amazon, and by extension Audible, and the publishing industry. I'm going to give a big shoutout to the Print Run podcast for a lot of this extra information that isn't pulled from Brandon's blog. If you're interested in the industry, go listen to them! Part 1: Amazon's Origins For those of you who don't know, Amazon started its online retail empire through books. The reason wasn't because of some artistic sensibility, but because books are "easy to ship and hard to break." In particular because with the amount of books and editions of each of those that exist, it is impossible to find them all at a physical bookstore. But it is possible with the internet. Which was the perfect opportunity for the business. The other thing about books is that they say something about us. The kinds of books you buy tells you a lot about a person, which for a business like this, is consumer data. Which helped them expand beyond the book realm. Part 2: The ebook revolution In these early days, Amazon started innovating a lot on distribution. The traditional process is pretty messed up, and Amazon made this a lot easier both for print books, but most importantly for ebooks. The Kindle changed the game. Dan likes to cite a statistic about how in sometime like 2012, the sales of books if I'm not mistaken, in that year alone, were higher than in the rest of history. And Amazon decided to price ebooks at 9.99 USD, and everyone agreed to it. But publishers eventually realized that their books couldn't cost that little. So they suggested switching to a model where they chose whatever price they thought was appropriate, and give Amazon a cut of that. Part 3: The lawsuits In 2010, we get the first large lawsuit with one of the Big 6 at the time, Macmillan. You all probably know that Tor is Brandon's publisher, but Tor is just an imprint of Macmillan. And Brandon has mentioned this incident before. To put leverage on Amazon, Macmillan said they'd window their ebooks. One thing you should know about the publishing industry is that most sales for a book come in the first few months of it being out, or even before. The bestseller list is built on preorders and hype, because you can rack up those numbers with months of marketing and word of mouth which will all count for week 1, rather than doing all that work in a single week. What Macmillan was going to do was not release the ebooks until about 6 months later, where a good chunk of those people would have already read the book in hardcover, which costs significantly more. But Amazon wasn't threatened by this. They pulled the buy buttons on Macmillan books, which means you literally couldn't buy anything from any of Macmillan's imprints on Amazon. I am not kidding, this is literally the nuke of book sales. So Macmillan panicked. Eventually, Amazon got enough backlash from the general public that they put it back, but they'd successfully scared the publishers. So in 2012, the Big 6 at the time––HarperCollins, Penguin, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, Hachette and Random House––came together to try to put pressure on Amazon to adopt the model Macmillan had suggested in 2010. Amazon filed a collusion suit against them, which prompted the Big 6 to settle. The compromise was that Amazon could discount books as much as they wanted, but they wouldn't get back their 9.99 ceiling. However, since Amazon has so much business elsewhere, this allowed them to use books as loss leaders. 7% of Amazon's sales were books in 2016, but 43% of all online retail went through them. Books were extremely insignificant for them, unlike the situation publishers were in. And of course, this accustoms people to go to Amazon first when they want to buy a book because they're more convenient and cheaper. During this time, Amazon also started using this rhetoric of publishers as elitist and gatekeeping, that didn't want the good of the customers and authors, who if they self published on Kindle Direct Publishing would receive a higher royalty rate, particularly on ebooks, even if their books wouldn't be in physical stores as often, because physical stores don't like stocking Amazon published books. In 2014, we get a second lawsuit, this time with Hachette. At the time, this was the biggest of the Big 6, with authors that are both incredibly prolific and popular, such as James Patterson. Who, I am not kidding, had books coming out about every week. Hachette wanted better pricing now that their contract was up and it was time for renegotiation, but Amazon wouldn't budge, and Hachette wouldn't either. Even being the fourth largest trade publisher in the world, it was 12 times smaller than Amazon at the time. Just like last time, Amazon pulled the buy buttons, but they went further than that. They delayed shipping, pulled the preorder buttons, ceased their discounts, letting consumers feel the weight of the full price they weren't accustomed to, and filled Hachette recommendation pages with similar, cheaper books. This caused a huge culture war. Amazon brought back their gatekeeper argument, saying the reason paperbacks took about a year to come out is because publishers wanted to get you with the bigger hardcover purchase, and that if Hachette gave all their online retail share and gave it to authors, they would stand down. Of course, Hachette couldn’t do this. In a way, Amazon lost this fight, but this is when everyone started getting involved. Particularly authors and agents. One of the most famous agents to get involved was Andrew Wiley. He is probably the most well known literary agent, the one people will think of when they think of the classic agent. He is also very notorious for being extremely anti-publisher, saying that "if a book has sold out its advance, he failed as an agent because he didn’t get enough money for his authors." One would think he’d jump on the Amazon bandwagon of criticizing the publishers. But he didn’t. He spoke out on behalf of them. He went pro-publisher. This is because Amazon’s model dries up the money authors would be getting very fast. Publishers have less money to spend on advances or new deals, and become even more risk-averse, which is bad for authors. The fact that someone so notoriously anti-publisher would side with them against Amazon says a lot in my opinion. Part 4: The Penguin Random House merger. This brings us to the Penguin and Random House merger in 2013. Companies didn’t want to wait to have to fight the same fight Macmillan and Hachette had to deal with, and since they’d gotten caught colluding before, the solution was to make that collusion legal with a merger. This made Penguin Random House the biggest publisher in the world, and let me tell you it’s staggering how many imprints they own. You forget half of them until you start looking at their company timeline on their website. What happens here is that because publishing’s response to Amazon is to band together, you get these two giants punching at each other with everyone else crushed in the middle because competition has been driven down, there are less places to submit a book to, less houses to drive up prices in auctions, and a lot of other side effects. You probably heard about the recent merger attempt between PRH and Simon & Schuster. Authors like Stephen King spoke out against that one because of these exact reasons, and Brandon’s Kickstarter that prompted this article also got caught in it because PRH and S&S were trying to use it as an example of how authors could go independent, making it even more necessary for a merger like this to keep business going. This original merger was just the first iteration of what happened in 2022 and early 2023. In 2017, Amazon made a change to their buying page, where instead of automatically buying a new copy from Amazon’s warehouses, you could be buying from third party vendors who would usually be reselling. This means that you can’t trace that money back and that it won’t go to the authors. It also increased the chance of fake books or fraudulent copies. Part 5: Audible in 2022 We’ve been talking about a lot of these policies in terms of ebooks, but they apply for audio too. In the old days, audiobooks were incredibly expensive, because they came in cassettes or CDs, and the process of getting them made was much more complicated. Just listen to any Wheel of Time fan who listened in audio from when the books first came out talk about it, or to Michael Kramer and Kate Reading in their many interviews. With Audible, Amazon made audiobooks viable again, and much cheaper, just like they did for ebooks. In his 2022 State of the Sanderson post, Brandon explained why he wasn't putting the Secret Projects on Audible. He focused specifically on its impact on indie creators. And worse, these are the rates for Amazon exclusive authors. That means they can't have their book available on any other platform, like Libro.fm for example, which is also very popular. The rates for non-exclusive authors drops to 25%. The other problem is that most audio companies turn around and put their books on Audible as well. Brandon cites Apple, Recorded Books, his own publisher Macmillan (who owns Tor), etc. And because of that, most of everyone else pays the same rates Audible does. To even try to compete with them. He urged readers to go to those other providers and try to change the tide. Part 6: The new deal On the 5th of March 2024, on the heels of another secret project announcement in conjunction with the Words of Radiance leatherbound, Brandon announced he'd had conversations with Audible about changing their practices. Like I hope you've been able to realize by now, getting Amazon to budge on anything is HUGE. Even authors with more clout than Brandon gave up pretty quickly. With that in mind, this is what Brandon says constitutes the new deal. Higher royalty rates for both exclusive and non exclusive authors The system will pay more predictably on credit spent, paid monthly rather than quarterly. They will provide a spreadsheet explaining how the money received will be split. Brandon does clarify this is far from perfect. The percentage gap between exclusive and non exclusive authors is still about the same. This change doesn't bring royalties up to the 70% he wanted in the first place yet, authors still won't have control over pricing, and they will always sell for the price of a credit, which won't be raised with inflation. He talks about how his agent, Joshua, spent months arguing for a 2% increase when Brandon was a new publisher to illustrate how important a small increase can be, even if this is bigger than 2%. And I hope this article has illustrated that as well. How difficult even getting them to move this much has been. Brandon explains that the Secret Projects will now be on Audible, and closes, thanking everyone for their support and the pressure they put on these issues. Part 7: Reflecting about how all this affects the publishing industry The publishing industry has always had this dilemma of art vs. business and where to fall on that scale. Treat it too much like a pure art and you get mentalities like the starving writer who does it despite not being able to sustain themselves. Treat it too much like a business and you lose out on the artistic value of works that won't sell as much in the moment. Works that sometimes become classics or will be praised critically but not be incredibly popular. My personal favorite example is Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. It's not accessible to a lot of people because of the layers and the prose, and how much mental energy it takes. But it is an absolute masterpiece, and I don't know if in today's market it would be published because of those commercial considerations. Sad as it is to say, the publishers left the door open for Amazon to fill the space because they failed to think for more than a second about the initial pricing of ebooks. And the way it's going, it only leads to more and more of a blockbuster model with publishers being risk-averse to new things because they are getting squeezed, it just makes the market harder for debut authors with new ideas and innovations, with more diverse voices. This year's Lee and Low Diversity Survey found that publishing is still 72% white, 71% cis women, 68% heterosexual, 83% able-bodied, and 58% living in the northeastern United States. And none of these numbers will change, like they barely did from the last time this survey was conducted, if we don't make an active effort to change them. That's why it is so important that Brandon stands up for these small authors, particularly those who publish independently. Traditional publishing isn't without its problems, but indie authors get affected the most by Amazon's policies that force them to be exclusive or take a huge loss to run ads as the only way to be discovered. Amazon says it's good for consumers by having low prices, but in the long run it isn't good because it will be creating this white noise where nobody stands out and removing quality and variety from people's options because publishing becomes more risk-averse. Not only will those potential classics, or books that are very niche, or that are being revolutionary, ahead of their time, be lost, but the quality on more commercial books will go down. We're already seeing this with controversies like the Iron Flame printing controversy. I hope that all these reflections about how it can affect our culture from multiple people will make an impact, and we'll start to see change. But we can't stay and do nothing. Even if you're not personally involved in the industry, there are still ways to affect it. Stay informed, use your local library and buy books in indie stores, preorder books, read more diversely, talk about the issues online, support indie authors. The list goes on and on. There is hope with a deal like the one Brandon has made. But we have to keep working for a better place, and better conditions for the artists we admire so much so they can keep bringing us amazing art. Part 8: Conclusion This article was originally just meant to go over the generalities of this deal and add information from the stream. But when I got my hands on it after a couple of days of discussion, I realized that it was a chance to talk about something I care about very deeply as a literature student and aspiring author, which lots of people may not know about. One thing I appreciate about the original stand Brandon took is that it showed people how bad the situation is, in a way that they wouldn't have even been aware of before. I hope that this article was a chance for you all to learn more about this beyond the endless paraphrasing of the same original article. And as pessimistic as I feel this sounded for a lot of it, what we need to take out of this is to make it known. Keep putting pressure on Audible to be better. Congratulate them for moving forward, but don't just let it rest here. Feel free to ask any questions and to start more of a discussion in the comments, I would love to know what you think.
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  2. Yep, he's done it again! Today Brandon Sanderson announced he's written another book in secret and is releasing it with the Words of Radiance leatherbound BackerKit. For those keeping count, this makes eight secret books recently - Tress, Frugal Wizard, Yumi, and Sunlit Man released as part of the Year of Sanderson, Super Awesome Danger announced with those but still in production, Long Chills and Case Dough in the December Sanderson Fan box, and The Most Boring Book Ever illustrated by Kazu Kibuishi. We don't know much about it so far: just that it's in the far future of the cosmere and has "high connectivity". Also, that unlike in the pictures and video we have of the mockup, it won't be purple anymore. Sorry, purple lovers. We'll be getting more information about the book - a title and reading - on the 21st of this month. The book will be shipping sometime in 2025. The Words of Radiance Kickstarter...er, BackerKit...campaign, in addition to the leatherbound and new secret project, includes Dragonsteel Prime (soon we won't have to almost completely restrict discussion of that, so that's cool!) and a lot of cool swag. Those spren plushies? Adorable. We'll see you all in a few weeks with a podcast on this book! Until then, journey before destination.
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  3. We're back with more WoBs, and this time it's the last of the Dragonsteel 2023 Words of Brandon. Today we have a grab bag of a bunch of random stuff, like kandra babies, stabbing Hoid with atium, Harmony lying, and the IDENTITY FIELD returns. This episode we have Ian (WeiryWriter), Evgeni (Argent), and Grace (thegatorgirl). Our thumbnail today is a piece we commissioned from Ashley Coad (https://www.ashleycoadart.com/). By supporting our Patreon, you can vote on what art we commission every month! Here's this awesome piece: https://www.patreon.com/posts/december-2023-98742446 Dragonwoodshop's frame for the Year of Sanderson postcards: https://dragonwoodshop.com/products/postcard-display-3-slot Our Arcanum collection of the WoBs we discussed: https://wob.coppermind.net/collections/1239/ Chapters: 00:00 Introductions 4:37 Other forms of Investiture to Awaken stuff 11:06 Can people other than yoki-hijo negotiate with spirits? 16:28 How much knowledge does a new Vessel get? 26:20 Why did the Heralds think they needed to leave their Blades? 28:46 Vin's earring 30:47 Enhanced Leeching on a normal person 38:47 Why do only the Heralds have magical maladies? 44:36 Dawnshards and Splintered Shards 50:39 Kandra and human babies hybrids?? 51:52 The Shroud and tin 56:03 Editorial changes from arcanist comments 59:38 Was Harmony lying at the end of Lost Metal? 1:03:51 Holding Vessels in Hemalurgic spikes 1:07:35 Shallan alter's shapeshifting 1:09:28 Shades attacking non-Threnodites 1:12:19 Canticle's subastral 1:14:53 Was Yolen technologically advanced? 1:18:16 Spiking atium into Hoid's chest 1:21:00 Aux and Nomad's bond is kind of flipped, can this happen to Adolin and Maya? 1:28:14 Who's That Cosmere Character If you like our content, support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/17thshard For discussion, theories, games, and news, come to https://www.17thshard.com Come talk with us and the community on the 17th Shard Discord: https://discord.gg/17thshard Want to learn more about the cosmere and more? The Coppermind Wiki is where it's at: https://coppermind.net Read all Words of Brandon on Arcanum: https://wob.coppermind.net Subscribe to Shardcast: http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:102123174/sounds.rss Send your Who's That Cosmere Characters to [email protected]
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  4. Hello hello! The last couple of months saw an uptick in the membership of our Patreon page, in both free and paying members, so if you are one of those - welcome, welcome! (And of you are not, could we interest you?) Either way, hopefully you are enjoying your time here, on the 17th Shard, and hopefully the new year is treating you well. To increase the odds that everything is going peachy, we've got a Yumi and the Nightmare Painter fanart commission for you, coming right up! We bring you an art commission from last year, all the way back from August! Yumi and the Nightmare Painter had just come out in July, and we had decided to dedicate the next commission to the book. It was a close call, but Yumi and Nikaro at the Kilahito carnival beat Nikaro painting Yumi back to life (or whatever actually happened there) by a single vote, so that's what we did! We knew we had to bring Botanica Xu back for this piece, as their distinctive style was a perfect match for this book. Real life obligations made this piece take a bit longer than usual (turns out being an artist, editor, and translator makes for a busy life) but we couldn't be happier with it. Hopefully you like it too
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  5. Oh, whee, it's been a minute, hasn't it? Since we showed you art? Well, the end of the year is always a little crazy for everyone - between conventions, new books, exams, holidays, everyone is just a little busier, and things take just a little longer. But! Things are still moving along, and what better way to celebrate the upcoming holidays than with our October fanart commission - a piece as spooky as it is spoilery, so proceed with caution! If you haven't read all of Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, begone! Come back once when you've done your homework. But for everyone else... ... this is obviously the moment Yumi realizes she, just like everyone else in Torio, is a nightmare. Your artist for this heartbreaking piece is Megan Murphy, aka comiclysmic, whose iconic style you might recognize from a series of meme-y posts (like this Hoid being very upset with Design's stance on spoilers), but also "proper" fanart (like this Sja-anat). Regardless, familiar or not, Megan did a great job with this piece, just like she does with all her pieces (oh, do make sure you check out this Dustbringer OC), and we are all very happy to have worked with her on this, and are very much looking forward to working with her again in the future!
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  6. We have the announcement for Secret Project 5, and it's called Isles of the Emberdark, and oh boy... it sure is high cosmere connectivity! There's so much to discuss, so let's dig in. We also discuss the announcement itself, so feel free to skip to 30:52 for discussion of the chapters! This episode we have a very special guest, Steve of the wonderful cosmere YouTube channel, ReadAndFindOut (https://www.youtube.com/c/ReadAndFindOutCosmere), which you should all check out because he does great explainers. It was lovely to have him on! We also have Eric (Chaos), Veronica (Cheyenne Sedai), Ene (Aon Ene), and Ala (Rasarr)! Words of Radiance campaign: https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/dragonsteel/words-of-radiance-leatherbound Brandon's announcement video: https://youtu.be/X9HEKnswsy0?si=P1XG1vIQ4_OqnMOi Isles of the Emberdark sample chapters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0L06Y37W70 Brandon's stream with Isles of the Emberdark's artist: https://www.youtube.com/live/xjsKRmXaPcA?si=LxwBnWalZj2ri6lZ Veronica's article on Audible: https://www.17thshard.com/news/brandon-news/brandon-works-with-audible-for-a-historic-deal-in-the-audiobook-industry-r1039/ Old Sixth of the Dusk 2 reading: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/448-row-release-party/#e14408 Our old Sixth of the Dusk 2 podcast: https://youtu.be/kM0sfy7IzXU?si=SyQJK_iZk3_e6M5D 0:00 Introductions 1:54 Intro thoughts on the announcement 10:46 Flashbacks thoughts and Emberdark 23:35 Other Words of Radiance campaign news 30:52 Prologue 46:35 Chapter 3 1:04:01 Chapter 11 2:02:08 Who's That Cosmere Character If you like our content, support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/17thshard For discussion, theories, games, and news, come to https://www.17thshard.com Come talk with us and the community on the 17th Shard Discord: https://discord.gg/17thshard Want to learn more about the cosmere and more? The Coppermind Wiki is where it's at: https://coppermind.net Read all Words of Brandon on Arcanum: https://wob.coppermind.net Subscribe to Shardcast: http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:102123174/sounds.rss Send your Who's That Cosmere Characters to [email protected]
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  7. It's been two years since Brandon's huge Year of Sanderson announcement, so we thought we'd talk about how we feel about it. How tired are we? What was our favorite Secret Project? How were the Year of Sanderson boxes? Do note we recorded this prior to the Words of Radiance leatherbound announcement of yet another Secret Project, so please keep that in mind. There's a new one coming in 2025 and we get a reading on March 21st. This episode we have Eric (Chaos), Ian (Weiry), Evgeni (Argent), Ene (Aon Ene), and Kendra (little wilson)! Postcard display: https://dragonwoodshop.com/products/postcard-display-3-slot Pin display: https://dragonwoodshop.com/products/pin-display-2x3inch-slots Chapters: 00:00 Introductions & News (But not SP5) 10:12 Year of Sanderson, Brandon (Not) Dying, How Tired Are You 17:06 Titles Being Spoilers 25:10 Exhausted by Brandon Content, Cosmere Drought, Industry stuff 45:33 Favorite of the Secret Projects 1:09:23 Subscription Boxes 2:01:46 Who's That Cosmere Character If you like our content, support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/17thshard For discussion, theories, games, and news, come to https://www.17thshard.com Come talk with us and the community on the 17th Shard Discord: https://discord.gg/17thshard Want to learn more about the cosmere and more? The Coppermind Wiki is where it's at: https://coppermind.net Read all Words of Brandon on Arcanum: https://wob.coppermind.net Subscribe to Shardcast: http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:102123174/sounds.rss Send your Who's That Cosmere Characters to [email protected]
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  8. Hello all! Long time no see. Doozy of an article to return for, though! Let's cut right to the chase: Roaring Brook Press will be releasing a kid's picture book titled The Most Boring Book Ever, written by Brandon and illustrated by Kazu Kibuishi (who you may know from his Amulet series of graphic novels). It will be 48 pages long, targeted at children aged 4-8, and is expected to release September 24th, 2024. And now without further ado, here's the official blurb: The book is up for preorder in the usual places: Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, and probably wherever else you usually get your fix from. It appears to be separate from Super Awesome Danger, the so-called "Secret Project Zero"—see State of the Sanderson 2023 for more information on that. And yes, if you're keeping track, that makes this the tenth book since he started the Secret Projects three years ago, or more if you count co-written stories. At least this one shouldn't cause nearly as much havoc for spoiler policy... So um, how do you all feel about this news? Let us know in the comments below, I suppose... For my part, all I have to say is *confusion noises*. But hey, all for anything getting us closer to a The Dog and the Dragon storybook!
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  9. Hear ye, hear ye, here comes another Patreon fanart commission from last November - once again, full of spoilers for The Sunlit Man! Just like before, your artist for the evening is Max, aka MadxMellonArt on places like Instagram and Tumblr. The scene, should it not be instantly recognizable, is the epic moment when Nomad realizes that the last ship of Beacon will not make to the safety of the shadow of the mountain before the sun incinerates it, so he dumps all of his Investiture into Aux's shield form, making the spren large enough to protect the people for a few seconds until they get to safety. Beautiful color work on the illustration too!
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  10. Happy New Year, everybody! In the spirit of the whole "new year, new me" mantra, we are turning a new leaf and... well, not really changing anything! We know you like these monthly fanart commissions, we like these monthly fanart commissions, so why break what isn't broken? Spoilers for The Sunlit Man So why don't we take a look at this amazing character piece by Max, aka madxmellonart on Instagram or Tumblr? We tried to trick our patrons into voting for a Nomad piece by stacking the November poll in his favor, featuring him in 4 out of the 5 options, but people were adamant - they wanted the Night Brigade admiral, and that was that! Well, joke's on you, patrons, we are very happy with this outcome too! Max did a great job capturing the no-nonsense stern character of the Admiral, and the shade behind her is the absolute stuff of nightmares, the Night Brigade certainly lives up to its reputation. And - yes, we know we say this every time - Max was great to work with, so we'll definitely bring them back for a future commission!
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  11. And finally, to round off Kelsier's crew, we give you one spooky boi - it is spooky month, after all, we would be remiss not to include Spook himself! We say this a lot 'round these parts, and especially so with these crewmember commissions, but this piece's artist - Theodore Oliver, a.k.a. lazifyre - is yet another artist we've been wanting to work with for a long time. They have a lot of good art we could show off here (like this Siri & Susebron), but none are more iconic than this Inktober piece of Harmony looking after the cast of both Mistborn Eras, except they are all children, and he is a single father of some truly chaotic kids.
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