Theoryland of the Wheel of Time

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Robert Jordan

Tom Schaad

Robert Jordan

Michele Dula Baum

So, Brandon, it's Sunday now. Did Hero of Ages sell enough to become a bestseller?

*crosses fingers*

We'll know on Wednesday, but the distribution problems have us worried. A lot of stores didn't get the books on the shelves until Friday or Saturday, which only gave one or two days in that market to get on the list. We'll see. It's going to be close. It will depend on how many stores got the books on time, how well other authors did, and whether or not I sold copies at the RIGHT stores. (The ones which report to the New York Times list.)

I will post on Wednesday when I know, though it might not be until late in the day, as I've got a lot going on during tour on Wednesday.

The Fantasy Series

I'm in the middle of an experiment. My newest book, Warbreaker, is a stand-alone epic fantasy, much as my first book Elantris was. Obviously, I'm not the only one to release stand-alones in this genre. There's a grand tradition of it, and some of my personal favorite books are stand-alones. I'm curious to see how readers react to me jumping away from a series and doing another stand-alone, as it's something I want to do fairly frequently.

And yet, though I don't let the sales choose what I write or publish, I do let them worry me. Really, releasing this book should be like releasing any other. I'm excited about it, I put my soul into it, and I think it represents some of the best writing I've ever done. And yet, at the same time, I know there's going to be less excitement about it from the readership than there was for the final Mistborn book. Stand alones tend to get reviewed more and better, they tend to make fans happy, and yet they just don't tend to sell as well. (I don't know for certain—I won't see numbers on the release week until next Wednesday.)

Ever since Tolkien had to split Lord of the Rings, there has been a strong tradition of the fantasy epic coming in installments. We fantasy readers like lots of worldbuiling, lots of depth of character, and lots of viewpoints. And yet, at the same time, it seems that we like to complain about the length of the series. We want them to be long—but we don't want them to be TOO long. The problem is, we all seem to have a different definition of what makes a series "too" long.

If you look at the figures, the Wheel of Time didn't start hitting #1 on the New York Times list until its eighth or ninth book. It took Goodkind longer, with Sword of Truth. I believe the eleventh book was the first to hit #1. Even while people were complaining about these series, they were buying more and more copies of them. Perhaps that's what was making them complain—they really wanted an ending, and were willing to read until they got to it. They just wished they could get the ending sooner.

Or maybe the ones complaining are just a vocal minority. Still, the genre's love of the huge series does worry me a little. The length of a story shouldn't be dependent upon what the market wants, but what the story itself demands. If I write a story that I feel takes one book, I want to (and will) release it as one book. If it takes three, I'll do three. If it takes ten, I'll do ten. I hope to have the flexibility to be doing a little from each of those piles during my career.

Yet even as it worries me, there's a piece of me—that fantasy novel lover who grew up as a teenager reading Eddings, Williams, and Jordan—that pushes me to do something BIG. Something grand in scope, something massive, long, intricate, and...well, epic.

So what are your thoughts? Short series? Stand alone? Big epics? Why do the long series sell so much better when people are vocally claiming they wish there were more stand alones and trilogies out there?

Together, Brandon Sanderson and Team Jordan began building the strategy for finishing the last volume for the Wheel of Time.

Well, he was working with everything Robert Jordan had ever written, including all the notes and speculations, as well as the outline that Jordan dictated in those last weeks.

Brandon Sanderson

He intended this book to be enormous. Getting the notes, I said, yup, it's here. I can do this, but it's going to be over 2000 pages long. At some point Tor and Harriet discussed how long it was going. And so that's when they came to me and said, "We want to split it."

Tom Doherty

This outline was too complex. There was too much that needed to be told, too much story.

Brandon Sanderson

We didn't add to it. This is the length that it was always going to be. But in splitting it—what it allowed us to do is take three books and focus them. The Gathering Storm has a focus on Rand and Egwene. They were able to shine in a much more spectacular way because of that. And the things happening with Mat and Perrin could have very easily been overshadowed by Rand and Egwene, who have monumentous things going on.

Tom Doherty

These last two books—number one best sellers. Number one international best sellers, number one up here on the Globe and Mail, as well, the national paper. People read and realized that, yes, it wasn't Robert Jordan, but by god it was being finished properly. And it was being finished from Robert Jordan's notes and his ideas, and Brandon's talent was that he could capture the dream.

Why a delayed ebook release for A Memory of Light?

This is not my decision or Tor's decision, but Harriet's. She is uncomfortable with ebooks. Specifically, she worries about ebooks cutting into the hardcover sales. It isn't about money for her, as the monetary difference between the two is negligible here. It is about a worry that her husband's legacy will be undermined if sales are split between ebooks and hardcovers, preventing the last book of the Wheel of Time from hitting number one on either list. (Many of the bestseller lists are still handling ebooks in somewhat awkward ways.)

As the last books have all hit number one, she doesn't want to risk one of these not hitting number one, and therefore ending the series on a down note. (Even though each Wheel of Time book has sold more than its predecessor, including the ones I have worked on.) I personally feel her worries are unfounded, and have explained that to her, but it is not my choice and I respect her reasoning for the decision. She is just trying to safeguard Robert Jordan's legacy, and feels this is a very important way she needs to do so. After talking about the issue, we were able to move the ebook up from the originally planned one-year delay to instead come out this spring.

Michael Mason-D'Croz

Last week I appeared on Wired's Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast talking about A Memory of Light. And USA Today had a cool Robert Jordan sidebar in the paper. Here's a photo:

My assistant has also uploaded two more Twitter archive posts. [Assistant Peter's note: The first one is spoiler free, but there are plenty of spoilers for A Memory of Light in the second one. Brandon tries to keep spoilers out of his Twitter feed, but there are major spoilers in several of the questions that Brandon answered.]

We'll find out how A Memory of Light did on the New York Times bestseller list later today or tomorrow, but we already know it hit #1 on the Ingram and National Indie lists. (The USA Today listing above was for the week before the book came out.) We also made Shelf Awareness's Image of the Day for January 16th, which you can see here (taken at Joseph-Beth in Lexington):

Thanks for all of your support, and I hope you're enjoying the book! It has been an honor.

I've got one—another technical question. You said when you were at the signing you were quite angry at your English publishers over your books because they published your last book in December.

They released it way ahead of schedule. They promised me not to do that.

Question

Did it take some steps in the direction to punish them for that?

Robert Jordan

Well, they will not be able to do it again.

Question

Because frankly, I have to say that I like their books better.

Robert Jordan

Well, I'm sorry to hear that.

Question

Because they publish better [ inaudible ]. The books are better, the cover doesn’t come off, and so on.

Harriet McDougal

There are some serious business problems with that.

Question

Yes, I understand.

Harriet McDougal

One is the copyright.

Robert Jordan

They put my copyright in danger. I don't hold still for that. They put my copyright in danger. So, they're still my English publisher; I will deliver the books to them as contracted. And I will deliver the books to them exactly as contracted. But it's not going to happen again; they're not going to release the books again. One thing they have promised me that they will put a hold on—their first class hold, which I thought they had been doing before, which is what they do in the United States—which means that if a bookstore puts the books up on sale early, there are sanctions against that bookstore.

Harriet McDougal

It's only a matter of a few weeks, but it's important to the sales of the book pretty internationally. If the book makes number one in the United States, and also if it makes number one in London; that matters. And by breaking the date, they put his opening at number one in both countries in at risk.

Robert Jordan

In danger. They put it at risk.

Harriet McDougal

And there was no reason to do that.

Robert Jordan

Because people from the States could have bought it, and perhaps enough.

Harriet McDougal

And they did.

Robert Jordan

And some people did—they found out about it and bought it. But they put the making of that number one opening, which from a purely commercial point of view, is important. If you open at number one, if you're at number one, you get publicity, you get a lot of things. You get discounts—stores sell your book at a discount. You don't get any less of a royalty, but they put a deep discount on your book, which they make a lesser discount if it's further down in the top ten. And there are more people who will buy the book at the deeper discount than will buy it at the lesser discount. So these things are important. This is my rice bowl, and they threw rocks at my rice bowl.

Harriet McDougal

Well, they did write a very apologetic letter.

Robert Jordan

Yes, they did.

Harriet McDougal

Because they read the internet, too. [laughs] And I don't think it will happen again.

Robert Jordan

No, I don't think it will happen again.

Harriet McDougal

And also, my dear husband had been kind of begging Tor Books to send the discs to England so that they could make the same date.

Robert Jordan

So that they could publish at the same time.

Harriet McDougal

And Tor really didn't want to do this.

Robert Jordan

They didn't, but I kept saying "please, please".

Harriet McDougal

He was doing them a favor to make them able to do this.

Robert Jordan

I was doing them a favor to get them to do that so they could release the books on the same day.

Harriet McDougal

Yeah.

Robert Jordan

Because see, even if I deliver the manuscript to New York, and at the same time I send the manuscript by courier to London, New York can get under way faster and have books ready to go faster than London can. So what I would do would be deliver the manuscript to New York, and New York would prepare everything ready to send to the printer on disc. And I would beg a copy of that disc from New York to send to England so they could hit the presses within 24 hours of the Americans doing this.

Harriet McDougal

On the same date. And they hurt Tor doing this. So that is also personally embarrassing.

Robert Jordan

It was very embarrassing to me.

Harriet McDougal

Yes, we'd asked one company for a favor.

Robert Jordan

Because I'd asked my American publisher to do this favor for me—for a number of years I had done it, to do it for the English.

Harriet McDougal

And the reason for that is once we turn the book in, I have done my editing but they then have a copy editor who goes through for commas and the little stuff, and that isn't on our discs, and it should be that the books are identical. So it was a mess. It was not happy.

Robert Jordan

No, no . . . but I think it's okay now.

Harriet McDougal

But I really think it will be okay now. And it's only a matter of about two weeks, but it made a big difference.

Robert Jordan

Honey, yes. And I don't think it's going to happen again.

A Memory of Light did indeed hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list for hardcover fiction. It also hit #1 on the USA Today list, which is much harder, since the USA Today list covers all print books, whatever the format, whether fiction or nonfiction. That's the sendoff we had hoped to be able to deliver for Robert Jordan's legacy. I'm honored to have been involved. Thank you to all the readers who made this a reality, and I hope you're enjoying the book.

Just to comment apropos of what I was saying earlier about this talented lady: we just got the Indie bestseller list in. Robert Jordan's A Memory of Light is number one, okay? But another book Harriet acquired, Ender's Game, is number seven on the mass market list. This novel was published in '85. Now, how many books from '85 are in the top ten bestsellers?

Harriet McDougal

This is a year for Ender's Game if ever I saw one.

Tom Doherty

Well, we're ahead of publicity. It's just starting. It's on the bestseller list now. It was last year too. Seventeen times, if you count the extended bestseller list of the Times.

Harriet McDougal

Wow, that's amazing.

Tom Doherty

Yeah. And Harriet's mentioned in the novel's acknowledgments. Scott [Orson Scott Card] talks about what a great editor she is, too. So there are other people with exactly the same opinion.

A Memory of Light was the biggest first day we've ever had.

Harriet McDougal

Which is something.

Tom Doherty

Yep. Harriet's agent, Nat Sobel, just sent us an e‑mail saying it's number one in England, too, right now. They said it outsold the one behind it four‑to‑one.

Harriet McDougal

It's so nice that missing Christmas didn't hurt. I really worried about that, but we just needed the time to comb its hair.

Tom Doherty

It had to be done right. It's just too important not to do it right. Rushing wouldn't work for this.

Sanderson hit the New York Times best seller list six times in four years. With A Memory of Light, the 14th and final book in the Wheel of Time—delivered to a throng of die-hard fans at a BYU midnight release party in January 2013—Sanderson topped the list again.

Stories are about people; the stories aren't about the fantasy. When I read Tolkien, the story of Sam and Frodo and what they went through, and their determination, and Sam's loyalty—these are inspiring. This is what changes peoples' lives.

That's my goal in writing this. You know, people—real people—and the struggles they go through. And hopefully, by reading them, and having a fun time because it's an adventure, but at the same time, what should stay with you is the choices they make. And hopefully that will help the people who have read them to lead better lives.

Just a reminder, all. Steelheart—my new novel—is out right now! It’s sitting at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list in the Young Adult section. If you’re curious, you can read about the book here, and listen to a cool audio sample here.

Just a reminder, all. Steelheart—my new novel—is out right now! It hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list in the Young Adult section. If you're curious, you can read about the book here, and listen to a cool audio sample here.

For an explanation of my Wheel of Time retrospective, see the beginning of my first post, which talked about the notes. Here's post number two.

Just a reminder, all. Steelheart—my new novel—is out right now! It hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list in the Young Adult section. If you're curious, you can read about the book here, and listen to a cool audio sample here.

For an explanation of my Wheel of Time retrospective, see the beginning of my first post, which talked about the notes, and my second post on the process. Here's post number three. Before we begin, it should be stated that this post will contain spoilers for the entire series, ending included. If you haven't finished, you will want to do so before reading this post.

Just a reminder, all. Steelheart—my new novel—is out right now! It hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list in the Young Adult category. If you're curious, you can read about the book here, and listen to a cool audio sample here.

For an explanation of my Wheel of Time retrospective, see the previous posts on the topic. Here's post number four. Before we begin, it should be stated that this post will contain spoilers for the entire series, ending included. If you haven't finished, you will want to do so before reading this post.

Just a reminder, all. Steelheart—my new novel—is out right now! It hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list in the Young Adult category. If you're curious, you can read about the book here, and listen to a cool audio sample here.

For an explanation of my Wheel of Time retrospective, see the previous posts on the topic. Here's post number five. Before we begin, it should be stated that this post will contain spoilers for the entire series, ending included. If you haven't finished, you will want to do so before reading this post.

Just a reminder, all. Steelheart—my new novel—is out right now! It hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list in the Young Adult category. If you're curious, you can read about the book here, and listen to a cool audio sample here.

For an explanation of my Wheel of Time retrospective, see the previous posts on the topic. Here's post number six. Before we begin, it should be stated that this post will contain spoilers for the entire series, ending included. If you haven't finished, you will want to do so before reading this post.

Just a reminder, all. Steelheart—my new novel—is out right now! It hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list in the Young Adult category. If you're curious, you can read about the book here, and listen to a cool audio sample here.

For an explanation of my Wheel of Time retrospective, see the previous posts on the topic. Here's post number seven. Before we begin, it should be stated that this post will contain spoilers for the entire series, ending included. If you haven't finished, you will want to do so before reading this post.

Just a reminder, all. Steelheart—my new novel—is out right now! It hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list in the Young Adult category. If you're curious, you can read about the book here, and listen to a cool audio sample here. And as a side note, Amazon's US Kindle store today has The Way of Kings at $1.26 for some reason.

For an explanation of my Wheel of Time retrospective, see the previous posts on the topic. Here's post number eight. Before we begin, it should be stated that this post will contain spoilers for the entire series, ending included. If you haven't finished, you will want to do so before reading this post.

What have you guys been up to? Any sales or signings or agents news or finished manuscripts or other good stuff you want to share?

This is the promo page: post whatever new stuff you have for this month here!

I...kind of have the country's #1 bestselling YA book this week. Does that count?

EDIT: Link, by request, to the New York Times bestseller list. I am #1 on the YA list, which you have to scroll WAY down to find.

bethrevis

Sure does! Link that shizz up!

Also: congrats!

Also also: my husband ADORES your work. He's incredibly stompy right now that I won't let him buy Steelheart, but it's only because I've already gotten him a copy for Christmas. Fortunately, he never ever reads this sub.

Brandon Sanderson

Link posted. Thanks! It's my first time at #1 on the teen list, so we were quite excited.

bethrevis

That is truly awesome and amazing! You have every reason to be excited!

Lilah_Rose

If that wasn't impressive enough, I've just realized you've been on reddit for 5 years!

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. I've wasted my fair share of time around here. :)

chihuahuazero

Hello! I haven't read any of your stuff yet, but I might check your books out now.

Do you hang around here much?

Brandon Sanderson

I've been impressed with the sub. It seems well managed and genuinely helpful. I don't post much for time reasons, but I do read much of what gets posted here.