Real-world implications of the Secret Projects

[AquaRegia he/him]

I'm interested in discussing the real-life aspects of Brandon's Secret Project novels and the Kickstarter campaign.  I'll start with two thoughts:

The biggest Kickstarter campaign (until now) was Pebble's 2nd smart watch, at $20,339,000 in 2015.  As of 4:30 a.m. March 4th, 2022 (fewer than four days since it started), the "Four Secret Novels" project is at $20,341,000 - and counting.  Brandon now owns the record for highest-funded Kickstarter campaign of all time.  This strikes me as both faintly ridiculous and mighty cool.

The plan is for the physical copies of the novels to be published in-house by Dragonsteel, which means they have just agreed to print, by my count, at least 173,000 premium hardcover novels.  Does anyone know if they have the capacity to accomplish this?

Edited March 4, 2022 by AquaRegia
updated Kickstarter details

[dbulick]

I was just thinking about this while I was in the shower this morning(don't judge).  I didn't realize that the kickstarter pulled in that much already.  I wonder what the cost of producing that number of books is?  I wonder how much money he typically will get from his typical book deals for like a Mistborn book?  This method of distribution might be more lucrative than traditional distribution.

[StormingTexan he/him]

I am almost as fascinated with this as I am about the secret books for some strange reason! I am in the printing industry (but not publishing). Your cost to an extent will go down by the volume of books printed but there is a point of diminishing returns especially considering the fulfillment aspect which does not get cheeper the more you do. On the other hand the digital content is heavily front end loaded but amortized over a project like this there will be a pretty big margin on those sales. If I had to guess the margins will be fairly slim on the printed books compared to the digital content but offering packages like this more than likely offsets some of the lower margins (books and boxes). Either way I think this will be a pretty successful endeavor for Brandon and his team and It is pretty clear the supporters feel confident they will pull it off. Exciting to think about the future possibilities. I am predominately a digital content consumer I try to limit physical possessions in my home so this is a no brainer for me $60 for 4 digital and audiobooks from Brandon is a win any day.

 

[AquaRegia he/him]

53 minutes ago, dbulick said:

I was just thinking about this while I was in the shower this morning(don't judge).

Why would I judge someone for doing something I do too?  ;-)

I agree with you, and even more, Brandon actually alludes to this in his most recent KS update:

Quote

I can't help but think that something huge has just changed.  Not just for me, but for publishing as a whole.

We may have fundamentally shifted the paradigm for publishing.

2 minutes ago, StormingTexan said:

I am predominately a digital content consumer I try to limit physical possessions in my home so this is a no brainer for me $60 for 4 digital and audiobooks from Brandon is a win any day.

Oh, how I wish... I remain old school, and prefer a physical book in my hands.

[Stormlightning she/her]

13 hours ago, AquaRegia said:

The plan is for the physical copies of the novels to be published in-house by Dragonsteel, which means they have just agreed to print, by my count, at least 173,000 premium hardcover novels.  Does anyone know if they have the capacity to accomplish this?

They don't print the books in-house, they have printers and binderies that do all that, so that's not an issue.

However, they do all the fulfillment themselves, and if they have the capacity for that is the real question. My guess is that, currently, no. They don't. But they have plenty of time to ramp up their operation before they have to start fulfillment, so I don't think you have anything to worry about.

[StormingTexan he/him]

11 minutes ago, Stormlightning said:

They don't print the books in-house, they have printers and binderies that do all that, so that's not an issue.

However, they do all the fulfillment themselves, and if they have the capacity for that is the real question. My guess is that, currently, no. They don't. But they have plenty of time to ramp up their operation before they have to start fulfillment, so I don't think you have anything to worry about.

I was surprised to find out he has a staff of 30 people. Obviously not all of the will do fulfillment but he has built a bigger operation than I would have thought. We do a lot of fulfillment at my work and on really large projects we will bring in contractors and have our full time employees supervise them. I think this could easily be done for this and they will figure it out. 

[AquaRegia he/him]

On 3/4/2022 at 3:19 PM, Stormlightning said:

I don't think you have anything to worry about.

That's good to hear.  Does anyone here know the numbers of self-published novellas they have produced, and over what time frame?

Edit to add:  I was very pleased to hear Brandon and Isaac on the livestream of March 8, 2022 reporting preorders at over 200,000 hardcovers... and neither seemed to be concerned in any way.

Edited March 10, 2022 by AquaRegia
updated info