Brandon Sanderson’s Kickstarter for 4 secret novels raises $15M in first day

Fantasy and science fiction author Brandon Sanderson has become a household name thanks to his prolific output, and he’s been very busy lately. Sanderson has launched a Kickstarter on Tuesday in order to raise money for his secret books, which he’s been writing over the past 2 years. The campaign “Surprise! Four Secret Novels by Brandon Sanderson,” run by his parent company Dragonsteel Entertainment, brought in more than $15 million in its first day. This platform has already broken many fundraising records.

The secret novels do not yet have names — the Kickstarter includes a mockup image, where the books are entitled “Secret Project #1,” “Secret Project #2,” and so on. They’re each full length, with three in his existing Cosmere setting, and one that’s “completely different,” Sanderson says, in the Kickstarter campaign’s opening video.

Image by Steve Argyle and Howard Lyon/Dragonsteel Entertainment via Kickstarter

Backers of the Kickstarter will be able to receive one book each quarter, in any format they choose. There are also reward tiers that allow backers sign up for eight subscription boxes with swag themed around Sanderson’s existing worlds or concepts.

In the Kickstarter video, Sanderson says the project started as a secret gift to his wife, but soon developed into something more, reminding him of the early days of his writing career when he “could write whatever [he]Wanted, when [he] wanted.” He credits the time he saved not traveling during the COVID-19 pandemic with giving him the extra flexibility to write, while noting “life has been tough lately.” He refers to these secret novels as a “silver lining,” in the difficult past two years.

On Tuesday, Sanderson also posted a longer YouTuber video “It’s Time to Come Clean” to his account, where he gives even more details about the project. It also includes whiteboards that outline the project timeline.

Over the course of his career, Sanderson has penned numerous series and created fantastical worlds, notably Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive (both set in the Cosmere universe), and finished Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. A number of his series are aimed at young audiences have also been written by Sanderson. This isn’t Sanderson’s first Kickstarter: In 2021 Dragonsteel Entertainment ran a successful campaign, fundraising $6,788,517 to to fund a 10th anniversary leatherbound edition of his The Way of Kings.

“I’ve always loved the idea of surprising you with something new, something unexpected,” Sanderson says in the new campaign’s video. “I wanted to take my readers to the furthest reaches of my imagination to be constantly offering some incredible, yet unexpected, experience. It’s one of the things I’ve wanted to do throughout my career.”

“Surprise! Four Secret Novels by Brandon Sanderson” will run until March 31, 2022, 7 p.m. EDT.