Brandon Sanderson, the author of Mistborn and creator of the Cosmere, broke the online writing community a few weeks ago with his massive Kickstarter campaign to publish four books in 2023.
The instant success of his Kickstarter was met with declarations that he had changed the publishing industry overnight (he probably hasn’t) and people asking why he deserves all this support. Isn’t he already an unusually successful writer?
It’s understandable why some people are irked. Expected really. Any time some project or cause gets funded there will always be someone who thinks they can find something better to spend it on. But the fact is that Sanderson has put a lot of work into his fans and community in order to get to this point.
More than any other author alive today, Sanderson has put a great deal of time and effort into building a community. This is something that comes naturally to many large internet creators and influencers, but it is largely alien to most authors. A talented author like him deserves his success, and he is now giving back.
In a video posted Friday, he and his staff went through Kickstarter and backed all of the other publishing Kickstarters on the platform.
Brandon deserves his success. He’s worked a long time to get this far. A big part of his success is the community he had built, and it’s nice to see him giving back to it.