YouSaid · the spoken record

Brandon Sanderson

lines on the record: 270
first: 2025-02-05
most recent: 2025-02-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Easy to find. Everything's on there. Sample chapters. Warbreaker, the free book is on there. It's now, like I said, I need to get a new one. It was written in 2006. So it's been a while, but it's on there for free. You can read a bunch of everything. You can, you know, we got socials. YouTube's a pretty good place for me too. My writing lectures are there. I do a weekly update every week on YouTube where I come on and say where I am in my writing process for the current book. So I like to do lots of outreach.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And see if it makes the story better. Because if it does, you'll figure out a way to make it work. You can revise so that it's foreshadowed. You can fix that. Error on the side of what is awesome.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Zero flaws. So Asimov added a zero flaw. I added one chicly, right? And I guess what I'd say to your honor is, thank you for putting up with me nerding out for three hours. If they want to try something, I would recommend Mistborn or Trust of the Emerald City, depending if they want something more heisty in action-y or something more whimsical. But Sanderson's zeroth law is always err on the side of what's awesome. And this came about because I realized sometimes I don't follow the rules. Sometimes I come up with something that's just too cool to not put in the story. And at the end of the day, I'm writing stories because I want to do interesting things with character, with plot. I just want things to be cool. So I came up with this little rule to myself, which is all of this is good, all this is important. But when you're writing, if you come up with something really cool, try it out. Even if it breaks the outline, if it breaks the magic system, try it out.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What his powers are centers on what he can't do. He can't get Lois to fall in love with him. He can't always protect everybody. He can't violate his code, and he can't do anything when Kryptonite's around. Then suddenly you've got conflict and story.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then the first book came out, and people still really liked it, but a lot of them are pointing at that and being like, that felt like a little like a GSX mocking. I'm like, it is. I didn't set this up at all. It just is out of nowhere right at the end. I'm like, why does it work sometimes and not others? And that's where this law came from. And flaws are more interesting in the same directions. Like, you know, looking at all the powers that I'm adding and trying to play with them and things and realizing that, you know, Superman is interesting because of what he can't do. Superman as a character is interesting because he has a moral code, which is a limitation he puts on himself. And the best stories happen either because of his moral code. Will he break or not? Because of the people that he loves, which are also kind of a limitation, or because he encounters someone who has kryptonite and his powers are taken away. Those are the great three Superman stories. All of them don't center on...”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Editor, my editor said, ending of Mistborn One isn't quite as spectacular as we want. Can you do something, spice it up? And I said, cool, yeah. I've got this thing I'm going to do in the second book. I'll just let it happen in the first book, but I hadn't set it up.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Later on, they realized if they just take hand care and they build a well crafted dungeon, they put fewer of them in, everyone's happier. It works way better. And so, but people would talk about those early Elder Scrolls games and be like, it's an ocean, an inch deep. You want to avoid that in your storytelling. So, the idea is that with the third law, it challenges me to reexamine what I have and to go deeper instead of just expanding. To say, look, you've got something interesting. And it's not just magic. Like this character, can you dig a little deeper into who this character is instead of adding a new one to make your story wider but more shallow? And it's just a challenge to me to do a good thoughtful job on my world building instead of always pretending bigger is better.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is the wrong way to approach the book? 30 Magicism aren't better than three. Three well done magic systems are way better than 30 non-well done magic systems. I need to sit down and say, what does my book actually about? What is the world building that's really going to enhance this story? Let's talk about that and do a really good job of it. This is in video games. There's this great series called The Elder Scrolls. And one of the first games to ever procedurally generate dungeons. And they pitched one of their games was like, there's a thousand dungeons you can explore. But the truth is all those thousand dungeons are built out of 30 different elements recombined in different ways. And so you were bored after the second one.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Had three magic systems in Missport. How many will you have in the Stormlight Archive? And I'm like, there's going to be 30 magic systems. It's going to be so epic. All right. And then I sat down and I was building all this. And I'm like,”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Let me tell you what went wrong. In Mistborn, I came up with three separate magic systems for three books. They're all there in the first one. There's Alamancio, this thing that Cesad does, which is mysterious. It's kind of in the first book, Cesed's magic is a soft magic. Even though I know all the rules, you don't know what he can do. And when he solves problems with it, it's like used to create mystery and questions and even some danger, right? Book two. I start showing you how it works so that it becomes now understandable and things like that. And then there's hemalurgy. So each book I wanted to explore a different aspect of the magic. When it came to do the Stormalight Archive, I had started to fall into a trap. And the trap is bigger is better. And this is what killed the original Stormlight Archive. So you'd think I had learned this lesson, but people started to say, you.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because they're like, well, we just want to package it the same as yours and sell it to your audience. And I'm like, okay. So they packaged it and put it in the adult section.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'll tell you this no one knows what to do with the Golden Compass because Lara is actually like eight. And so it's not young adult. It's what the age group that that would be would be middle grade or chapter books. It was shelved in both sections. No one knows what to do with that. And that's an example of breaking the rules fantastically and it working out really well. I don't remember how old she is, but she's not young adult age. She might be 10. But young adult can be just as complicated as adult. And it's mostly a marketing thing like Mistborn. All my books Mistborn Shelved as adult everywhere, but eventually towards like, let's release a young adult version, but in the young adult section, why not? Maybe new people will find it. Skyward, which is my actual young adult series, is shelved as adult in the UK.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. And they both do different kinds of things. And so if you understand this, you can have the emotions you want in the stories, right? And Tolkien very wisely, he uses the ring to solve problems and escalate in certain ways. Like Sam being able to put on the ring to go save Frodo after Frodo is taken by the orcs, you are totally bi that Sam can do that because you know what the ring can do. It solves a problem. It's actually you're like, yay, Sam. Good job. And that's a heroic moment. He gets Frodo back, right? You know Frodo's alive. Everything's happy because Sam manipulated the magic that he's learned to the end. And then he gives up the ring. And you're like, good job, Sam. You have done it. Lord of the Rings is just a great manual for how to do both of these things.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's Causing a problem exactly. And so, yes, Gandalf did save them from the Balrog, but the cost is bigger than the whole point of that is not, yay, Gandalf, it is huge complication. Gandalf kept the fellowship together. What's going to happen when Gandalf isn't there to prevent Boromir from taking the ring? And then he pays that off. The fellowship shatters. Brilliant use of both a soft magic and a hard magic for what they're really good at. George is good at this too. He uses a lot of soft magics. Whenever someone uses magic in Game of Thrones, you get scared because people are going to die and things are going to go wrong and everything's going to suck even worse because of using the magic. And that soft magic is brilliant for that. It creates a sense of mystery and danger and sorrow.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everyone is down and like flop down and crying and broken because the magic use isn't satisfying. Ganolf didn't get up there and save the day. He sacrificed himself and it actually hits with a very different emotion. It's instead an escalation.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Luke struggled to use this magic. We see targeting computers, they fire and they miss. The targeted computers are fallible. We're at the big moment and then use the force loop. Obi-Wan is there. We've seen the whole time OB-1 preparing him and he takes off the thing and he shoots. We believe that he can do that because set up and payoff. Promise, progress, payoff. And that's what Sanderson's first law is. If you're going to use magic at the end of your story to solve the problem, promise progress payoff. Now, if you want to soft magic, use it to cause problems. Or you can use it to solve problems in an unsatisfying way. And sometimes you want that. When Gandalf saves the fellowship from the Balrog, it's actually kind of unsatisfying because Gandalf is dead and you watch the movie. Peter Jackson again, brilliant movies. After Gandalf dies,”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“God But the thing is, any book is that way. If you want to write a book where at the end the romance novel in a perfectly realistic setting that they just get together because you decide, you can just deus ex mocking that. You can deus ex mocking to the thriller. Any book the reader, the author can do that. With a goal, we have an extra tendency toward that with magic. So the charge that we do that is not unsubstantiated, right? Occasionally authors like, well, I have magic, so I'll snap my fingers and save the day. But as a reader with a magic system, if you make it so that we understand, so that like Star Wars, Star Wars is such a perfect example. We believe that Luke can shoot the missiles down the tube when he's using the force. Why? Well, through the course of the story, we've seen Obi-Wan Kenobi use this magic.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because JK Rowling was really good at internal logic in a given book, and then she'd throw it out the window for the next one, right? Time turners, actually in the time turner book makes sense how they're used. She sets up the rules she uses them. Book four, they forget they can time travel and don't ever use them. But regardless, you can see what's going on here. The idea of Sanderson's first law is any plot element, but magic and fantasy, a lot of people who don't read fantasy, they point it and be like, can't believe any mistakes because anything can happen.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A mother's love and see, this is why I use the satisfying way. The mother's love protecting Harry is not actually a bad thing because that wasn't supposed to be a plot element.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All that work. In the other one, they get to the end. They are unable to solve the problem. But then through the power of just caring really a lot, they figure it out and save the day.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the first one, the character spends the majority of the book off and on figuring out how this magic works to the point that they realize by the ending, wait, everyone's been doing this wrong. Here's the rules. Here's how they got misled. If I make this one little tweak, suddenly I'll be able to fix the problem that no one else has been able to fix. And at the ending, they realize that they solve that problem and boom, they have taken their wits, their intelligence, their progress, right? We say promise, progress, payoff. The payoff is to the actual progress of the story. This person has been studying there entire time. They've learned how the magic works. So at the end, they're able to pull off something that no one else could. And you believe it because”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure can. So number one. If you, and I've actually added a word to this in a little phrase to this, author's ability to solve problems in a satisfying way with magic, and a story is directly proportional, how well the reader understands said magic. So let's pause it to sort of storylines. In one, your character is going to use In both of them your character is going to use the magic to save the day at the end.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because I did something wrong at some point. And I'm like, that broke my magic system. How can I fix that? And I came up with a rule, a thumb for myself that I could follow. And I use those to kind of build the magics the way I do them. It's not the only way to do it. It's not the only good way to do it. But it was really helpful to have a thing that was mine. What are you going to get when you come to one of my books? You're going to get at the core, I want an interesting story about interesting characters. But I can't brand that way because that's what everyone does. So what's the branding? You're going to get science fiction world building in a fantasy story. You're going to get people discovering how magic works that's repeatable and they're going to be able to use it in order to solve problems and make their lives better or at least manipulate them in certain ways. All of my books are going to have that sort of feel.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of stuff with that. I found a niche in hard magic systems, that intersection where people are applying their logic. It's so much fun. I talked about Mistborn, like, you know, you can drop a coin and launch into the air. You can throw it and push it at someone. You throw it, you push it at someone, it hits them, then you get launched backward. Suddenly, I can have characters having to figure out puzzles in combat. We're having a fight scene, but the fight scene is how can I get in position to use this medal against him? It's so engaging to write. It's so much fun. It makes every fight scene just a fun little puzzle box to try to figure out. And so because I like that, I decided to use it as part of my branding, like so hard to stand out. I know I like these things. I know I'm going to be doing in my books. So I became the magic system guy. I've thought about it a lot. So I released my three laws. It's just kind of their rules that I follow mostly in.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Rules that are inconsternally consistent that the characters can figure out and use. That's a hard magic system. Roto can put the ring on and vanish from Sauron's eyes, but will pay the cost, or he'll vanish from everyone else's eyes, but he'll be seen by Sauron. So he can pay the cost to get some short-term gain for some long-term detriment by using the ring. Perfectly within the realm of he can access it and use it. Kandalf is what we call a soft magic system. You never really know what Gandalf can do. And the movies, they do this brilliantly by being like, he holds up his staff and like the sun rises and like, did he shoot sunlight at the orcs or is it just like what's going on? But they like like Gandalf shows up in magical things happen. The other characters can't control this. You don't see it being controlled by the narrative. He just does things. And those are cool magic systems. You can do all kinds of things.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But Sauron can see you. Very simple. It corrupts people along the way. There are like three rules to the ring and you can understand them. Making a hard magic doesn't mean that it's like it makes sense, right? Superheroes are generally hard magics, even though it's like bonkers. Superman gets powers from sunlight, makes no sense with external logic, but internally it's consistent. He gets his powers from the sun and he can do X, Y, and Z. That's what we call a hard magic system. Gandalf.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you can push off of it. And through Newton's laws, if it's pushed against the ground, you're launched upward. If you're pushing on it and you throw your weight against, it shoots across the room. And how much can I do with that just by playing with vector science and things? Again, I don't want to get in the weeds, but the idea is people applying their intellect to magic and that's a magic system. What is the magic system? do people have access to Lord of the Rings has several magic systems. One is the One Ring, it's what we call a hard magic system. Lord of the Rings, if you put on the ring, you turn invisible.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Magic together. What is real? What isn't real? What works, what doesn't work. Mistborn has kind of a periodic table of the elements where they're discovering that they can use certain metals to do certain things that are magical. Doesn't exist in our world. The difference between fantasy and science fiction to me is science fiction says this thing could happen. Let's construct toward that, you know, like what are they the possibilities that would lead to it? Arthur C. Clark says, I think we can do satellites with geostronous orbits. Here's all the science. I'm going to write a book where they can do that. And then later on we figure it out. Fantasy for me starts with the cool idea and justifies it through the text without real science, right? I want to have people who use these metals to bounce around like ninjas, right? You can drop a”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Article of Science Helping Everyone. And that period of superstition becoming science, I love. It's so interesting. And that's why Mistborns actually set a lot of epic fantasies set around in an analogous of like the 12 to 1400s. Mistborn set in about 1820s to 1840s if it were on Earth. They don't have gunpowder for various reasons, but that right pre-industrial revolution where science and fantasy and superstition are colliding. And what I found I really like reading is fantasy worlds that take a little bit of science fiction world building and a little bit of science fiction aesthetic and say, what if you apply the scientific method to something that in our world doesn't exist, but in their world is a new branch of physics? And that lets my characters explore science.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a lot. Yeah. He tried so hard to be able to transmute lead into gold or whatever. And turns out we can do it. We just need, you know, an atom smasher. But regardless, like this idea of spontaneous generation, people used to think that if you left meat out and it rotted, it spawned flies. And that's where flies came from. Scientific method says, well, let's try some tests and see. And lo and behold, it's not that eggs are being laid, right? All this stuff. Up until, like, I said the 1900s, where I read an article once from the time period about someone who gone and studied the science of digging ditches. And the whole theme of it was, if we can help the ditch diggers, we help everyone, right? Here's how they can labor more effectively so it isn't as hard on their joints so that they are more efficient, but also so that they're happier and they get tired less. Here's a whole.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let me talk about it in a way that for the audience, I'm going to avoid getting. Found when I was writing something that I really love in world building, and that is I love in history the time period of the scientific revolution, time period between Newton and about the early 1900s, where people were learning to apply science to everything they did, where they were saying, hey, wait, all these things we assume, what if we use the scientific method on them? And then they start to discover Newton believed in alchemy and he tried to apply the scientific method and couldn't get it to work, which is one of the reasons people started saying, well, maybe alchemy isn't actually scientific.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then they went to reprint, and then there was this clamor online, people emailing bookstores, emailing the publisher. Where is our Mistborn 2? We have to have Mistborn 2. And that fueled Mistborn 2 eventually with all the reprints going to like 12 to 15,000 in hardcover. And that primed Mistborn 3 to hit the bestseller list.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really fun series. Fantastic book. And he and I had this on separate continents, the same idea, and got him out around the same time. And I highly recommend that one too. And his is more heisty even than mine. Mine takes more of the epic fantasy direction. Like Kelsey's trying to overthrow the empire by robbing. And so all of those things meant that when Mistborn actually got covered right, it really started selling. It would have been better if there would have been books for people to buy, but instantly selling out week one made the publisher go, oh.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We use the same illustrator, cover artist as Jim Butcher's books. It has that sort of urban fantasy feel. Mistborn was really well primed to take off, partially because of Hunger Games. Girl protagonist and a kind of dark future world. In fact, in Taiwan, it released before Hunger Games and it became the Hunger Games, meaning the market wanted a dark dystopian TNYA. That's fascinating. And we outsold Hunger Games there. Hunger Games became the Mistborn. And Mistborn became the Hunger Games in Taiwan because we beat it to market. We didn't hear and we didn't market it as YA. It was, you know, it's an adult. It's got two viewpoints, one a teenager, one adult, but it was really good for the market, right? And so the fact that it was really good for the market, it felt dystopian, but it wasn't using all the dystopian tropes that eventually killed the dystopian sort of thing. It was no one had read a fantasy heist.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a whole new game. Whole new game. They were willing to put a new cover on it. So actually, it was the $499 thing that worked. We were at our wit's end until I thought of that and pitched it. And they're like, oh, yeah, a $499 edition. We do those. And then suddenly they're willing to repackage it and put a new cover on it. As a big red banner, $499, it has the nice cover blurb from Robin Hobb, but the hardcover had that too. The cover was a little more targeted at what was popular then. Photorealism was starting to be a thing for fantasy, partially because of Jim Butcher's books.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was the lower price point, and it was the cover. Those are the only things we changed. Now, you'll love this. Publishing is weird. They were not willing to release a new version of the book with a new cover until we said, it's a new edition. It's the cheaper. When they had in their head, it was a new edition.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Then you don't have the space on the shelf. People can go to bookstores and not find the book if you're down to like that many copies and things like that. And so Death Spiral is what they call it. And we'd already gotten the orders for Mistborn 2 and they were bad, right? They were, you know, on the death spiral. But then the paperback, that paperback we got selling. And so what happened is Mistborn 2 came out, instantly sold out.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you sell 10,000 of your first book and then 8,000 or 7,000 like Missborn Sold, what do they order for your third book? It's called the dust spiral. So they ordered like 5,000 copies at this point.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Don't click, and this cover was one of the worst covers that I've had. It didn't click with my audience, and that paperback came out and just crashed, just completely tanked. And that's the most dangerous point my career has had. I was right then thinking, I'm going to be a middle grade author writing these kids books because that's the only thing. That's the new thing. But I went to my agent and we went to the publisher and said, we need a new cover. This cover is not clicking and we fought and we fought and we fought. And I said, remember way back when you released the Wheel of Time, you released like a 499 version. I think it was $3.99 then. Do a 499 version of Mistborn. Let's jump start my career, do a new cover. And Tom Doherty, again to his credit, I had to fight him, but he said yes. We released a new paperback a few months before Mistborn 2 with a new cover. And that one, boom, it sold. Now there's this thing.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we have the exact same wavelength on that. But Tom Doherty, he's a publisher, not an editor. Like his job is to look at the business. And he was right. So Launchers came out, sold 10,000. Mistborn One comes out on hardcover, and it sells fewer. The audience that liked Mistilantris likilantrus, certain percentage of them just didn't move to Mistborn because it wasn't a sequel. I no longer have the new author's shiny glow so that people who are looking for a book are like, oh, I saw that before. Let's pick up this other book by a new author. So Mistborn's a stronger book than Elantris by Manifold. Launch is my sixth book. Mistborn's my 14th. I learned a lot. It's still one of the best starting points. And so it's a much stronger book, but I get fewer sales. They released the paperback and the paperback has a dreadful cover. I love the illustrator. He did the hardcovers of all of them. But once in a while, a cover just...”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All the Marvel movies where you have like, and so Mistborn Elantress Warbreaker, I'll have one character who's traveling between these planets with a mysterious objective behind the scenes. His name is Hoyt. And you'll see him in all three of them. He's a main character in Stormlight then. And I wanted to do this big thing. And I was really ambitious about it. And I wanted to build something bigger than a launch in a sequel. And the publisher is like, it's a bad idea. I'm like, it's a bad idea, except it's investing in my future. If I do it right, then when I finish Mistborn and go to something else, they will follow me to the something else because so many authors get trapped in one series. We were talking about.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That is why generally publishers recommend that you take your first book and you write a sequel to it as your second book. Because when you jump from a sequel to a different series, you lose a percentage of audience. And so I had the shiny new author thing. We sold about 10,000 copies in hardcover of Elantras, which is really good for a debut author. It's even better now. Back then, it was good. Now it's fantastic. And Tom Doherty called me. He's like, well, we want a sequel to Elantris. And I said, no. I've got this idea of Mistborn and I really want to do this. One of my real goals, my powerful goals early on was I wanted to build an audience for me, not for a given book series. I wanted to write in a lot of different subgenres. I wanted to do a lot of different things. I wanted the flexibility to do this thing called the Cosmere, which is probably bigger than this podcast to get into. But if you haven't read the books, it's like the M.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, when you're a new author, you have a shiny new author glow with your first book and you get picked up a little bit more for reviews. You get picked up more by people who are like, oh, I've never heard of this person. There's a certain demographic of reader who'll just read a first book by an author to try them out.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Whatever they offer, you just say yes. And she was very generous. It was a good deal right off the bat. My agent's like, wow, there's not even really that much to negotiate. He like went to batty. Forced me to let him go to bat on some foreign percentages just so agents have to flex their muscles, right? But I just said yes. And then by December, I had the manuscript. And then I got the call in like September, October. And the manuscript, he'd written like 50 pages of the final book.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's when Mistborn 2 just exploded. And then at the end of that tour, she called me and she said, I want you to do it. Actually, it was in the middle of the tour because I was still on tour when she told some of the other people because they came and met me. So I didn't have to wait that long. It was pretty excruciating. It was probably only like two weeks. And she calls me and says I would like you to do it. So I call my agent and I say they're going to offer us a deal. Take it. And he says, well, we'll negotiate. I'm like, no, no, no. This is just a yes.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Would probably rank George as the greatest living sci fi fantasy writer. There's Jane Yolen, who's just incredible. But if you put that diagram together, there's not a lot of people in the middle there that are pretty big Robert Jordan fans. And I think pretty excellent sci-fi fantasy writers. And that was me. And so I realized I wanted to be me because if it doesn't go to me, it might go to someone who's a good writer but doesn't know the books. And so she said, all right. Well, I'm considering there's some names I'm considering. It was me or George I later found out. And when she tells this story, she says, there was really only one. It was Brandon because she knew by then she couldn't have George. And so she went and she read Missborn. And then she thought on it. She took a month. She read Mistborn and thought on it for a month. I went on tour not knowing if I was going to finish the Wheel of Time and not being able to tell anybody.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tom's authors. And so he's like, Oh, it's one of my authors. And so he sends her Mistborn. And so she's like, well, before I read this book, I should find out if the young man's interested. Maybe he doesn't want to do this. And so that's when she called me and asked if I was interested. And that's when I bawed like a sheep. And then I wrote her that email that night and said, you know, I've thought about it a lot. And I thought if someone's going to do this and it can't be him, I want it to be me. At least I know I'm a fan. Like I always use this Venn diagram, right? Venn diagram of pretty good sci-fi fantasy writers and pretty big Robert Jordan fans. There are bigger Robert Jordan fans out there than me. Hardcore by far. There are better writers than me, right? Terry Pratchett, I always call the greatest writer of my generation, right? There are amazing writers. George is a fantastic writer.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is the last line. I wrote something along the lines of you go quietly but you leave us trembling, right? Just something, you know, it was, and so she calls Tom and says, what about this branded Sanderson guy? And he's like, oh, yeah, he's one of our authors. I've read one of his books. Pretty good. Let me send you one of his books because he was super excited it was one of his authors. She was asking about because a lot of the names that came up were not his authors. The main one that kept coming up was George Martin because he and Robert Jordan were friends. Well, George was already behind on his books in 2007. And the publishing industry would not stand for him taking someone else's book series. Going on a side quest. Side quest. But a lot of the names that came up were not.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep, nobody mentioned me because. Mistborn had been floundering for reasons we'll talk about. Mistborn had been floundering. My name was not mentioned, but somebody that day Her name was Elise Matheson, and I'm very thankful to her, printing off things on the internet, nice things that people had said about Robert Jordan. And she printed off my thing and she put it in the stack. And that night Harriet read it with the other things. And I mentioned that he had influenced my writing. And she's like, well, this is really eloquent. He wrote this really well. He's a writer. So she called Tom Doherty.”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is 2007. I only have three books out. Maybe two. I have two books. No, three. I have three books out. I have Elantris and Mistborn and then the first of my kids series, the ones I discovery wrote. I'm about to go on tour for my second Mistborn novel. This is before I've blown up. I blew up on Mistborn 2. We can talk about that moment before. That's the first one. Mistborn 2 is where the publisher knew. So they didn't know yet. They still thought I was maybe going to be a failure as a writer. We'll get to that. So the publisher had not brought my name up to her. When she had asked who should finish it”
2025-02-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #794: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT