An Ending and A Beginning — Brandon Sanderson's Writing Lecture #12 (2025)

0:00 BRANDON: Hey! Brandon here with the final lecture in my writing lecture series, Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy. This is the final Q&A. We’re going to cover anything anyone wants to know from me. So last lecture. You made it all the way. Hey, welcome to your last class! CLASS: (cheering and applause) BRANDON: This is the end of Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy. If you have one of those waivers, make sure to drop it off before you leave. Put it up here. And if you haven’t signed one, we’d appreciate it.

0:34 All right, so, this is the final big Q&A. This is—I’ve got some of your questions on here that’ll seed us and get us started. And then you get to ask me whatever you want for our last class period here, except, you know, you don’t get to ask anything. CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: He’s one of my employees. I can do that. CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: So we’re going to begin with, “If you were breaking in now as a new author, how would you go about doing it?” This is an excellent question. And it’s a hard one to answer. For the longest time, I recommended a hybrid approach that I recommended—this was back when indie publishing was working just a little bit better than it is now. I would recommend that authors write a book, and if they were interested in both traditional and indie, they would take that book, query it.

1:31 If it didn’t go anywhere, stick it in a pile and query the next one. And do that until they had enough books to launch a career indie publishing, where you generally need to do a big blitz at the beginning and have a backlist that can sell off of offering the first one free or heavily discounted. That’s still probably your best method. That said, indie publishing is not as lucrative as it once was. As a general body, it still is. In fact, more people are buying books across the board than they ever have. More people are making a living at writing fiction than they ever have in the past. But there are a lot more people publishing than there ever have been before, and this means that the New York publishers generally are, in our experience, dropping authors faster, even with decent sales, because the New York publishers are focused so much more on best sellers than they used to be. Best sellers were always important, but now, as I keep saying, with indie publishing taking a bunch of the midlist, a lot of the publishers can’t make a living, or make the money they need on the midlist. So instead they are dropping authors and always hunting the new best sellers. Meanwhile, the indie publishing world has required more and more money up front than it used to, and more and more money on ads, and more and more savvy on the publicity end even than it used to require. So in some ways it’s the best time ever to try to be a writer because, like I said, more people are making a living. Yet it seems harder to break in than it ever has before, which is a weird dichotomy.

3:29 And that might just be because the market is so crowded it favors those who have momentum even more than it used to because no longer do you have the bookstore browsing as a kind of gateway. For the longest time, you could only fit so many books on a bookstore shelf. Therefore, you have a certain number of sales you could count on just by people browsing the New Releases shelf. Now the internet can hold any number, theoretically, of released books in a week. And so this leads to just a lot of crowding of the market. I don’t want to be down on trying to make it as a writer. As I’ve said before, this class, part of the reason for it is to say yes, you can do this. That’s what I needed to hear from Dave when I took this class in 2000 was, yes, it’s a real job. It’s a job you can do. But breaking has never felt as hard as it does now because the market is so crowded. So what would I do? I would probably still try a hybrid approach. And I would, if you are very serious about being professional, learn what is selling in indie and how right now people are breaking in in indie, which are things I can’t answer. Because what I’m not as familiar with is what is working.

4:56 I’m familiar with what worked five years ago. But learning what works right now, it’s like the people in the trenches are doing that right now. If indie is not at all interesting to you, then hunting agents is your best goal. And that is a miserable slog. But that is your best method of breaking in. And to do that, I would start looking at good conferences in your region that regularly bring agents out that offer things like pitch sessions with that agent and things like that. Locally here in Utah, generally Writer for Young Readers, and Storymakers, and Futurescapes, are three of them that will consistently do that, have editors and agents out.

5:44 You’ll have to look where you are and find the ones. But those conferences tend to be more expensive than other cons. You can buy a ticket to ComiCon for fairly cheap because they make all of their money off of the vendor hall and people spending there. The conferences don’t have that. So they make their money off of the ticket sales, so you pay a lot more to get into one. So that’s what I would do right now, is I would be studying a lot about the market.

6:13 Don’t ever let that impact your writing. You need to learn to be consistent. But I am assuming you are already consistent and it’s about how you want to break in. “What is a mistake you make as a writer and to get into publishing that you wish someone would have warned you about?” The very first book I ever sent to anyone was to an agent that I had not done my research on. And fortunately it didn’t go anywhere. Right?

6:42 But it was an agent that didn’t live in New York. And not all the best agents live in New York, but most of them do. Because, as we talked about last week, generally agents need to be keeping their finger very closely on the pulse of publishing. So an agent living in—I’m not going to say where they lived. I don’t want someone to track them down. But in a medium-to-small-sized town in the region where I am could not sell my book to anyone. And I won’t go so far as to call them a scam.

7:16 I will go so far as to call them a well-meaning individual who thought maybe they could help people get published but realistically was just a waste of time. So that was a mistake I made. One of the other things that I think slowed me down was not learning to revise. Being kind of a classic architect writer, I would finish a book and be like, “Oh, I can just write the next book better than this one," and would start the next book. And the fact that I realized eventually that the best writers I knew were actually the best revisers, they’re the people who can take a good book and make it excellent, made me really sit down and teach myself revision, which is still my least favorite part of the process. But it wasn’t until I learned revision, learned to take a good book and make it great, that I got published.

8:06 So there’s a couple of those. Why don’t we do a couple here if you guys have questions? Yeah, go ahead. STUDENT: What would you say is the best way to learn revision then? BRANDON: Best way to learn revision? So this is partially, unfortunately, like everything else, trial and error. So you learn revision by looking at feedback you get on a story, trying out some of that feedback, and seeing if it makes your story better. And if it does, say, “OK, why did that work? What was good about this feedback?” And then trying it a lot of times with different kinds of feedback and seeing what makes your book better and what doesn’t. The trick about this is, generally you’re not going to be able to do this after you’ve written only one novel, because you won’t have the instincts yet for what makes a good book, or what works for you. And so in part I don’t know if I could have learned it much earlier. You need to be building instincts in yourself as a writer that what makes you write good stories. And then you need to have enough experience so that when you do a revision you know if it’s better or not. Soliciting more feedback could be helpful on that. But again, beta readers and this sort of feedback is not best for everyone.

9:21 It works very well for me, so I emphasize it. Some authors hate it. In this case, you find just a couple of very good alpha readers. You trust their instinct. You try revising and see if you think the book is better, if that makes sense. And so it’s a matter of practicing and seeing what makes a book better for me? What different strategies? Try different strategies of revision, such as try the 10% cut. Is your book better if you go line by line and try to cut 10%, using a spreadsheet, out of every chapter? Is it not. If you’re a short story writer, that probably won’t make your book better, a short story writer that jumped to writing novels. For a lot of novelists, that can force you to look at your language and say, “Am I repeating myself? Where’s my passive voice? Am I using too many verbs that don’t mean anything?” And that sort of stuff.

10:09 Go ahead. STUDENT: Yeah. Kind of along in that vein, I know that you’ve shared the prior versions of your books before. BRANDON: Yeah. STUDENT: Like Way of Kings Prime. BRANDON: Yep. STUDENT: Is there any resources other than that, do you know? Like, is it worth spending the time to, like, read up first drafts of an author who’s been able to share that, and then read the published work and, like, look at the difference? BRANDON: Hmm. Is it worthwhile to read an author’s first draft and last draft? I’m not 100% sure, but I thought it might be, so when we did Shadows Beneath, a collection that we did, we included every version of the story, including a redline version that showed what we changed.

10:49 If this is valuable to you, you might want to try picking up a copy of that. I don’t know if you can find--. You want to get the print version, because all four of our stories, me, Dan, Howard, and Mary Robinette, we did a version of first and last so you could see that. And I know mine has the track changes, like strike-throughs and things like that. I hope that that’s useful. I think it might be hard to find consistently ways to do that and ways to study that. I think doing it yourself is always going to be better than reading someone else’s, but maybe that’ll be helpful. So there is a resource that we have there.

11:29 Go ahead. STUDENT: When you’re writing your stories, like, say one of the Stormlight novels, do you write it in a linear fashion, or do you write one story arc and then another and then splice it? BRANDON: Right. Do I write in a linear fashion, or do I write by story arc and then splice them? Stormlight I always write by story arc and splice them. This is more work. I don’t recommend it, except for the fact that I have to do it on Stormlight because there are so many characters that I feel like I would lose the threads of the character arcs. So when I can write straight through, if there’s only a couple of threads, I will. Or I’ll write, like, one chunk and then jump. I have found that the amount of revision I have to do goes up if I write by story arc. This is because there is a natural sort of feeling of pacing you want to have in a book. And once you’re splicing together a bunch of viewpoints, what you will find is one viewpoint has a nice pacing unto itself, and then you mix it with another one, and it just messes up the pacing in ways that take a lot of work to fix.

12:36 STUDENT: Thank you. BRANDON: Yeah? STUDENT: You mentioned that when you sign on with an agent— BRANDON: Yes. STUDENT: That they have the first rights to the books that you write? BRANDON: Yes. When you sign up with an agent, you are signing up as a person with an agent, not for a specific book. STUDENT: So my question is, how did you handle that with your Secret Projects? BRANDON: How did I handle that with my Secret Projects? They were not published. I didn’t look for contracts with New York. So the agenting is—and these were kind of a special case. I don’t know how all agents would respond, but I didn’t go--. When I sold the rights to New York—with the Secret Projects you’ll see there are editions in bookstores—I went through my agent. And when I self-publish them, usually agents--.

13:19 And you can be very up front with agents. Most of them, their contract won’t include anything you’re indie publishing. You’re just completely blanket. And what they want is, if you’re going to go handle negotiations, if you’re going to use an agent you’re going to use them, is kind of what the contract is saying. STUDENT: Did your Secret Projects affect your relationship with your agent at all? BRANDON: Did my Secret Projects affect my relationship? No. Joshua was well aware I do lots of indie publishing. And Joshua—oh, look who it is. Sorry. I shouldn’t highlight you. This is nobody important except the most beautiful woman in the world. CLASS: (laughing and cheering) BRANDON: Yay, Emily! CLASS: (applause) BRANDON: So, no, but I did inform him early. Joshua was well aware of our strong independent publishing thing, and he had been along for the whole journey. Joshua is also a bit of a strange duck, and I say that with the most affection possible. Everybody who knows him is nodding. Joshua is a bit of a strange duck. And he basically lives to be an agent. He has, like, no life other than being an agent. I mean, he does have his board game night, but I think he cancelled that even during COVID. Right? CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: Like he does—he lives, drinks, breathes, everything, “What can I do for my clients?” And it is always about “What can I do for them?” He is very service oriented. And Joshua, you know, if there’s a place that he—there’s not a service he can perform, then he is totally fine with that.

15:01 And he’s been very clear with me. He doesn’t want to stand in the way of any of that. But he also knows that I’ll use him when I need to. When we were having really complicated contract negotiations with Spotify because, you know, the whole Audible thing, he handled those for us. Right? And any of the contract he negotiates then he gets his cut of. And there are authors for whom Joshua is only their foreign agent. He doesn’t handle any of their U.S. because they are strongly independent published. Like, the Sullivans, I believe, use him for foreign agents and things like that. I can’t get quoted on that 100%, but I think Michael J. Sullivan, that’s what he does. And Joshua, where he can be of service, he is of service. And he knows he earns his money, so he’s not—he doesn’t feel insecure.

15:49 But, you know, I think that the relationship with the publisher is more what someone would want to worry about in that instance. And we did approach them earlier before everyone else. And we explained to TOR what we were doing. And they would, of course, rather us have done everything through them, but they knew, and they know, that they can’t handle everything that my aspirations will want to include. I am a very strange case. In your case, if you go with an agent, just make it clear, “I want to be indie publishing also and I don’t consider that part of the agency contract,” and they almost certainly will be just fine with it.

16:32 Mm hmm? STUDENT: Did your agent help deal with your Kickstarter campaigns? BRANDON: Did my agent help with the Kickstarter? No. We did all of that ourselves. If he had helped, I would have expected him to take a percentage. But at the same time, he doesn’t know Kickstarters. That’s not a thing that agents really do. That’s an indie publishing thing. And so I wouldn’t be surprised if more agents are learning about it because of what we did. But when we did it, Kickstarter, there were definitely people who were doing it before us, and years and years and years before us. But we did change the market pretty dramatically when we did it. So I wouldn’t be surprised if more aren’t paying attention now. But back then an agent would have had no idea what to do with Kickstarter.

17:15 Good question. STUDENT: How was it that you were so successful with Kickstarter? BRANDON: How were we so successful with Kickstarter? OK. Big question. Let me break it down for you. The first and most important thing to be successful at Kickstarter is to already have an audience. Kickstarter generally is bad, at least in the arts, for people who don’t already have a way of reaching an audience. And so that’s the most important. With some fields you can have a Kickstarter where you don’t have an audience already. But if you look at the top Kickstarters in the creative fields, they’re all people who had audiences.

17:54 The things that go high that aren’t are some sort of big tech device. And in those cases, the number two thing that makes a Kickstarter successful is managing to get press coverage. Press coverage is really important for a crowdfunding campaign like that. We didn’t need it as much because we had the built-in audience. But if you don’t, then you have to be appearing in all the major, like, media and getting all of this attention, and things like that, in order to do very well on Kickstarter or other crowdfunding campaigns. So there is that. My video that I did at the start was very good at going viral, more so even than I anticipated. Faking out my fans and making them think that I was retiring turns out was super mean, but it really made them want to prank their friends and send the video to them. CLASS: (laughing) And so having a really big viral video was a super help.

18:56 But number three that makes a successful crowdfunding is having the infrastructure in place already to build the thing and fulfill. When Kickstarters go wrong it’s because they overestimate—or I should say they underestimate how much work it will take and overestimate how much they can do. And because of that they don’t factor in the actual cost of the thing. They don’t factor in shipping costs correctly. They don’t factor in all of this stuff that sinks Kickstarters. We were able to do it because we had already, for almost—what? When did we release our first one? Seven years? Seven years of already doing fulfilment on our own books. Yeah. Because yeah. And so because we had already had this whole infrastructure in place, it meant that we knew what our limitations were, how long it would take us to get books, what it would take to ship them, and all of that. So for a newer author, do I recommend Kickstarter?

19:57 I generally wouldn’t recommend Kickstarter until you have at least a small audience. Once you have a small audience, you can move to doing a crowdfunding. But I would recommend highly already having a business in place where you sign people’s books and ship them to them, so that you know what it takes to take a load of books to a mailroom. Who’s laughing? Yeah. Somebody was laughing. I’m looking over here at some of my fulfillment team. Like, going to the post office with a giant crate of books sometimes is—you need to make those contacts and things like and be doing that consistently. So if you have a small business as a writer, and you’re selling eBooks, 10,000 copies a year is where, you know, it’s kind of your threshold for really going pro as an indie author. And you say, “I want to do a Kickstarter for a print edition,” you’re thinking that. I would recommend first getting some printed for one of your books and saying, “I have these. Let’s start selling them on my website signed to get you copies,” and get used to doing that before you do the Kickstarter. And then you’re kind of in this big position where you need to fulfill on a deadline. When you do Kickstarter, don’t over-promise on your rewards for the Kickstarter. That’s another thing we were very careful on, building in money for--. Like, when people do a Kickstarter, often it’s like, “Hey, I don’t want just the thing. I want to get extra cool stuff.” And so building that in. There’s a whole lot of resources out there for an author. Get an audience first, even if it’s a small one, and then get experience shipping to people before you do it. You can, if you have a successful Kickstarter, use some sort of fulfilment group that you ship the books to them, and they fulfill for you. They will take a large chunk of your money, and I do not know how that works as we haven’t ever used one.

22:00 All right. Yeah? STUDENT: Just for, like, a writing as a business perspective, what would you recommend, especially for indie or new authors in order to build that audience? BRANDON: Building your audience as an indie or new author. So, one thing that I would recommend is kind of deciding—and you can’t do all of this because some of this will be artistic concerns. You will have artistic concerns override any business concerns. But picking an idea that is your brand. What is it that you are going to be doing? Even if it’s not necessarily the only thing you’re doing. Like, I do think it was advantageous to me to be, like, hard magic systems that we approach in interesting ways from a lot of different viewpoints are how Brandon’s books are going to work, particularly early in his career. And I kept a consistent tone across the epic fantasies to build a brand and say, “This is what you’re getting.” And I branch people out slowly. Right? I didn’t do Tress of the Emerald Sea right early in my career. And I do think that was a help.

23:07 Now that people are used to reading a variety of things from me, releasing a book that has a wildly different tone was super successful. But, you know, if I think early on, again, artistic concerns set aside, building and saying, This is what I do,” consistently so that you can have people start to associate your name with something. Build a mailing list. Mailing lists should come before most other social media presences, in my opinion. Because you have control over the mailing list. And the people who are willing to sign up for it are the most dedicated of the people. If they’re going to come and sign up for a mailing list, then be good with your mailing list. Consistently either send a newsletter or, you know, at least just inform people what you’re doing, and things like that. And make it good value, so that people want to open it, that your newsletter is not spamming them, that they’re not getting something every three days. Like, when you sign up for some of these newsletters, like, you know, you buy one thing off of Ollie Express, congratulations. Ten emails a day for the rest of your life. Right? CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: So don’t be like that. Send a really nice newsletter quarterly, or something like that, or monthly, or whatever it is for your--. Even if it’s yearly, consistently good newsletter so that you can then be able to say, “I have a new book out. I would appreciate your support.

24:29 And here is the places where you can find it on sale.” So the newsletter does value add. So after that, picking, like—deciding if you’re going to be a platform writer or not. We didn’t talk about platform writing. Platform writing is one of the ways that you can make a name for yourself is by having a platform that you speak about on social media and on your blog. During the early days of indie publishing, a lot of people made their platform “I am forging the path in indie publishing. Come to my blog to hear about indie publishing.” That worked really well.

25:04 You guys may know Larry Coreia. Larry came to me. He was indie publishing way back when, and I had a couple books out. And he came to me and said, “I think I want to try traditional publishing. Here, talk to me about it,” and things like that. And we had a really good conversation where he was in the days before indie publishing doing really well indie publishing. And I said, “How did you do this?” And he’s like, “Well, I like guns.” That’s an understatement. Right? When I said to Larry, “Hey, I want to—I’ve never fired an automatic weapon before and I’m writing a lot of books where they exist.

25:40 Can you, you know, can you find a way for me?” He brought, like, 30 automatic weapons. OK? CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: To a gun range with two of his friends who were experts in historical firearms and, like, a safety officer. Right? CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: And set up a tent. And he was so excited. And it was just like, fire all the guns. Right? CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: And he knew every one of those guns, and he could tell me all about them and things. This is Larry. So Larry likes guns. What does Larry not like? When people get guns wrong in their fiction because he wants his guns to be accurate. And he eventually said, “I want to write books that are fun and exciting but also they get the guns right.” And so he went to the gun nut forums that he was part of and was like, “Hey, would you guys read a book if I did this?” And they’re like, “Yes. The people’s use of guns drive us up the wall too. Write a book where people shoot monsters and use guns accurately.” And so he did and then he went back to them and said, “Hey, I wrote the book. It’s this.” And a ton of them bought it. And suddenly he became—he started—he blogged a lot. And these days Larry’s platform is gun nuts and yelling at people on the internet. He’s very good at that too. CLASS: (laughing) STUDENT: Did Skar buy the book? BRANDON: Skar, did you read Monster Hunter before it was a Baen book? SKAR: I went to a gun show to get it physically and had it signed. CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: Skar went to a gun show physically to get it signed. Yeah. Larry’s a great writer too. But he also has this platform. Right? By the way, if you are of a certain inclination politically that maybe doesn’t overlap with the people who love guns, you may not like his blog.

27:31 CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: So you may just want to read his books and stay away from the blog. I’ll just tell you that. But he is a good example of what we call a platform writer. Another great example of this is Cory Doctorow. Cory Doctorow was one of the—in the early days of blogging, of professional blogging, he was one of the first early professional tech bloggers. He started writing books kind of about open source, and he was one of the forces behind the creative commons and things like this. And his books very much sort of tie into those sorts of things. Like, he has a whole book about, like, gold farmers in China for video games banding together to make a union. Right? The Gold Farmers Union. Stuff like that. And so he wrote books that align with what his platform was as well.

28:20 And so he would blog and draw like-minded readers that maybe are self-selecting into reading his blog who might enjoy the stories he’s writing. And then he would release the books. And that’s what I call a platform writer. You are using something you are passionate about that you write about eloquently and interestingly as a platform by which you sell your books. And indeed, most of you would call most politicians, most YouTube authors, and things like that, platform writers. But you can be writer first and platform second and still be a platform writer.

28:58 This is, if you are going to dig deep into social media, I recommend you be wanting to do it for platform writing reasons. Otherwise, it will both suck your soul and your time. But if you have a niche that you can get into that you can then platform on, and you enjoy that aspect of it, you can then turn it into something that will help you sell your books. If you are not, then I recommend mailing list, a website with, you know, and a minimal social media presence, and not spending too much time on those sorts of things. Do some interactions.

29:40 But one of the questions you’re going to have to ask yourself is why would someone go to my social media except to hear about my books? Once you get big enough it can just be to hear about your books. But people get so much information and so much marketing that it’s like, you know, what’s the value you’re adding to their life if you want people to follow your social media, and things like that. If you’re not sure what it is, keep it to a minimum. Don’t invest too much effort in it. Maybe pick one platform and do a good job with it. You know, TikTok is the one right now for books, particularly books of a certain style.

30:16 CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: I didn’t mean that to be a joke. CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: Right? Certain things sell better on TikTok, meaning certain styles of books. Like, YA and new adult sell really well on TikTok. Epic fantasy sells worse on TikTok, but romantasy sells well. Right? Book club books, anything that someone can take to their book club sell really well on TikTok. Right? So it’s not like a specific genre. It’s just like you know it when you feel it what kind of book, like, would do really well as a thing. And so if you’re on TikTok and you can make funny videos, then you can maybe platform with TikTok. But if not, don’t feel you have to do it. Nothing will be better for your career than writing the next good book, but you do have to do a minimum amount of this. That’s why I say mailing list, keep a website, have sample chapters on the website, stuff like that.

31:12 STUDENT: Thank you. BRANDON: Yeah. Go ahead. STUDENT: Do you see any value in going to conferences out of state to meet and talk with agents? Or do you find that easier online? BRANDON: Do I find any value in going out of state to talk to agents at conferences? This is going to depend on the value of a dollar to you. Meaning, to a person to whom a thousand bucks once a year to go to a conference outside of the state is not a hardship, then it’s probably worth your time, because you will be able to go to--. Like, the bigger the city, generally, the better the conferences will be. We are lucky in Utah that we have a pretty vibrant writing community and so we have, I feel, above average conferences.

32:02 Generally, areas where books sell well will be the same. Pacific Northwest tends to have better than average writing conferences for that reason. But otherwise, you know, New York, Baltimore area, Boston area, places with large population centers and things like that are going to draw the agents because the flights are easier. Right? And East Coast is going to draw more agents than West Coast because the flights are easier. They can hop on a train, and they can head up to Boston and do a conference up there.

32:40 And so watching for and learning--. This is one of the things I would say if someone said, “I want to break in.” Learn the names of the agents. Learn the names of the agencies. Do what I said last week and have your little black book that has a list of all the agencies that are selling books right now by new authors you can find in bookstores, and the agents who work there. And keep track of conferences that are consistently getting these people. Put them on your list to check every year to see who are the agents going. And then you can spend the money.

33:10 But there are some people in this room for whom a thousand dollars is just an enormous hardship. In that case, staying locally if you live here, or if you live in one of these other places I mentioned, and going to those. They will try to get different agents every year, and your bang for your buck is probably better at the local ones. But, you know, if you can spend the money, this is an industry that will take as much of your money as you’re willing to spend, so be careful. Right?

33:38 But I do find value in it. Conferences I elevate above cons right now for professional development. I am going to WorldCon this year. I’m going to scope out how I feel it is for new authors just by kind of watching and seeing. And hopefully you’ll be there too because you can tell me the new agents that I don’t know. And be watching and see who’s there. Because it’s in Seattle, which is a big enough city that we might draw a decent number of agents and editors. And then I’ll know better for next year, in the -COVID era what percentage are going to WorldCon. Used to be WorldCon was one of the better places to go, and it might still be. But that’s only if you know how to network. Where at the other ones you don’t have to actively network. You can buy a slot in a pitch session rather than find your way to a party and see if you can find someone to talk to who can actually help you with your career. And that’s hard, and that’s really stressful.

34:33 One of the most stressful parts of my life was going to these conventions and being like, “I can barely afford this. I need to walk out of this having met editors and be able to send my books to them.” And that was just like a giant bolder upon my back at every one of the conventions. Yeah? STUDENT: What, if anything, can you get away with changing between your first and second books? BRANDON: Yeah. STUDENT: What can you get away with changing first to second books? You can get away with anything. That’s how this industry works. That’s how the world works. You can get away, but what are the consequences? Right? There are pros and—there are advantages and disadvantages.

35:13 There are pros and cons to each method. So what are the pros to swapping? Training your audience earlier, and/or having not all your eggs in one basket are both very viable reasons to have your second book be different. I would recommend your third book, not your second, generally. If you’re going to—if you really want to write YA or middle grade and your other is going to be adult, I would do two in a row and then branch out. But if you really want to branch out, this doesn’t put all your eggs in one basket. There was a point in my life where I thought I was going to turn into a middle grade author because Mistborn was not selling, and the Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians contract had been for $40,000 per book, which is basically that’s getting to where I could live on that money. Right? And so I’m like, “Well, I guess I’m a middle grade author now." But then, you know, I lost my editor at Scholastic. She moved to another thing. And the new editor and I didn’t click very well. And though the first Alcatraz book just sold tons, the second Alcatraz book barely sold anything. Which is why I eventually bought the series back and gave it to TOR. So yeah. What are the cons? Well, the cons are what I mentioned a little earlier, which is if you’re starting to build a fan base, giving them something to latch onto, to remember who you are can be really valuable. Having them say, “Wow, I like this book, and I like this book, and I like this book,” means that they’ll start to look for your books and things like that. They will accept if you’re like—if they see a middle grade, a lot of them just won’t buy it and then look for your next adult one. As long as you’ve got one coming, you can be fine. It’s not super dangerous. But those are your pros and your cons. Right?

37:12 Another one I haven’t talked about that is valuable to think about is in the days before you publish. This might be even more valuable to you. Let’s say you’re set on traditional publishing. Do you want to write all your books in one series or not? Right? I get this question now and then. It’s worth thinking about. And let me give you two case studies about this. I, early on, thought, “Well, if I write a sequel to Elantris, I can’t send it to the editors who rejected Elantris.” CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: “But if I write a different book and they liked Elantris, or whatever, or even if they rejected it, I can send them this other book that’s not a sequel.” So my philosophy was, write a whole bunch of first books that have sequel potential. That just gave me more books to be submitting out to the world. Naomi Novik did not do that. Naomi, who was breaking in around the same time as me, wrote Temeraire. If you haven’t read them, they’re very good books. They are Patrick O’Brian, naval, Master and Commander, except with a dragon air force. It’s about the dragon air force. What’s that?

38:22 STUDENT: So much better. BRANDON: Yeah. They are very, very good. STUDENT: Everything’s better with dragons. BRANDON: Yeah. Everything’s better with dragons. She’s a very good writer. She’s written—she can write very widely in a lot of different things. But when she was trying to break in, she wrote Temeraire. And again, I’m going off of, like, thirdhand accounts. I can’t remember if I’ve even asked Naomi about this. But she, as I understand, then just wrote the sequel, and then just wrote the third one, and then sent them in, and a publisher—she had all her eggs in one basket. The publisher wanted the first one. She said, “I have two more.” And the publisher’s like, “Wow. These are all great. We have three books.

38:59 We can launch you big.” And they did the indie publishing thing back before indie publishing was a thing. They launched, like, her first book one month. And her second book was, like, two months later, or even the next month. And her third book was, like, two months after that. They launched the all in paperback and just flooded every market with them. They didn’t do the traditional “Here’s a big prestige hardcover.” It’s like paperback, paperback, paperback. And because they had all three, they were able to leverage a lot of kind of internal going to all their marketing teams and things like that. And they got cover blurbs from, as I remember, you’ll have to look this up and double check me, Stephen King, Anne McCaffrey, and Terry Brooks. CLASS: (chuckling and whistling) BRANDON: Which, for that era, just like, if your blurbs are Stephen King, Anne McCaffrey, and Terry Brooks say read this book. Right? So she just exploded onto the scene with this just huge marketing blitz, which is the way indie authors now do it. Release a bunch of books really fast, kind of as loss leaders, to build a career out of. And so you can see that both have pros and cons.

40:09 If someone had rejected the first Temeraire, they’re not going to look at the second Temeraire. But when she did sell, she had this backlog of great books that then she was able to leverage into bursting just huge on the scene. And this is why she stomped me for the—not a Hugo—they can’t even call it the Campbell anymore. Whatever they call the Rookie of the Year Award nowadays. STUDENT: New Author. BRANDON: What is it? STUDENT: Now they just say New Author. BRANDON: The New Author Award?

40:36 STUDENT: Something like that. BRANDON: OK. That’s really boring. They should just make it a Hugo for Best New Author, is what everyone’s always said. But that’s why she stomped me. And the other person who stomped me was Scalzi, my nemesis. CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: And Scalzi was a platform writer. He was—this is going to date us—AOL’s official professional blogger. CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: He wrote professionally for AOL as their blogger. And on his own blog he just started serializing his novel he’d written.

41:04 And an editor’s like, “Stop serializing this. I’m going to buy it.” I might be shortcutting some things. I think he wasn’t planning to put the whole novel up. And that’s how he sold by having a built-in audience already. So of course when we were all up for the awards he also stomped me. And so he became my nemesis. All right. Other questions. Go ahead. STUDENT: So I get really confused and I’m trying to straighten this out looking online.

41:29 But I get really confused what delineates it if it’s going to be YA, middle grade. BRANDON: OK. Let me talk you through. The middle grade/YA one is much easier to delineate. OK? Middle grade are books that kids are reading that are given to them, generally, by adults that they know. OK? The age at which—so the line between YA and middle grade is that line where the kid doesn’t want to get a book from a teacher anymore and wants to go read the book that they’re not given. OK? And so middle grade is generally—it is a bit fuzzy, but you can see it generally covers maybe 5th grade, definitely 6th and 7th grade, maybe 8th grade. It can go as low as 4th grade.

42:20 So Harry Potter 1 is middle grade. But by Harry Potter 4 it’s actually YA. Age of the protagonist minus two or three or sometimes one is about your age group. Kids like to read about kids older than them as a rule of thumb. All of this gets broken. I think Lyra from Dark Materials is, like, eight. Right? Ender was, like, what? Eight or something? STUDENTS: Six. BRANDON: He starts at six. When’s he go to battle school though?

42:48 STUDENT: OK, yeah. That’s like eight. BRANDON: Eight or nine. And that’s considered YA. OK? And so really it’s books targeted at a certain age group. And so once kids stop reading what are handed them by adults and want to find them on their own or get them from friends, that’s the big YA transition. Another couple of things is, middle grade, puppy love yes, dating no, generally. This is the age group where kids are like starting to be interested, but they aren’t—they don’t want stories about that. “Is this a kissing book?” CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: That’s middle grade. Right? Right?

43:30 Where by the end they’re probably OK with a kiss. CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: Right? And YA is full-on romance. YA is generally coming of age. “I have to learn how to be an adult.” Middle grade is generally whimsical adventure where the parents are either idiots or locked away somewhere. CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: Right? And so that’s kind of your differentiation. One other thing is, YA is not edited for content, despite what people may think. Some YA lines are, and some authors. But a YA book doesn’t mean clean. A middle grade book does. Middle grade is generally edited for content. In fact, I don’t know of any that aren’t. YA lines generally aren’t. That doesn’t mean, you know, you can write whatever you want, and plenty of clean YA sells.

44:23 But you shouldn’t assume that YA means clean. And then the transition from YA to new adult is real fuzzy, and then into adult. These just kind of turn into marketing things. Generally, YA needs to get to the point faster. It does generally use fewer viewpoints. And it generally digs deep into one, maybe two characters’ experiences very deeply as they are transitioning from child to adult. And that’s kind of the hallmark of what makes YA. But, I mean, Ender’s Game is YA. His Dark Materials is YA. Who knows, right? Wheel of Time would fit that, but it’s published as adult. Right? Like, at that point it kind of becomes marketing sort of stuff, and you talk to the marketing. Shannon Hale famously submitted Goose Girl to TOR as an epic fantasy. You guys don’t read Shannon Hale enough.

45:29 Otherwise you’d be laughing at that. CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: Go read Shannon’s. Her books are great. This is a fairytale retelling. And they’re all like, “ make your protagonist a teenager and submit it to Bloomsbury.” And she did and she got published. CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: Right? So yeah. STUDENT: What if you want to write in, like, a more nontraditional way that’s like—because I know—an example is like Cormac McCarthy. He wrote for years not making money but now his books are more, like, hotter than ever after he’s dead.

45:55 BRANDON: Yeah. STUDENT: Is that style now profitable? BRANDON: Is that style now profitable, Cormac McCarthy? So, I mean, Cormac McCarthy is one of the greats. Right? And Cormac McCarthy is, like, such a bizarre story. Right? No quotes. Right? Just breaking all the rules and things like this, but it works. Is that style more marketable now than it used to be? I don’t know. I can’t speak to literary fiction, what’s marketable or now. I know that Nora, N. K. Jemisin, has done a very good job, selling very well in science fiction and fantasy as literary. So if there’s a line, which is a fake line that doesn’t exist, but kind of separates literary science fiction and fantasy from science fiction and fantasy that has some literary prose, she’s definitely on the literary side. Whereas someone like Pat Rothfuss is on the commercial side with literary prose. And she sells very well. She writes very good books. I would say that in sci-fi/fantasy, N. K. Jemisin selling as well as she does, has helped make a market for literary fantasy. But you could make the argument Ursula Le Guin was doing that for years and years and years, and Octavia Butler and some of these, and Gene Wolfe. And there’s always been a market. It’s just, why do some things take off and some things don’t is really hard to figure out. Why did it take people so long to figure out that Cormac McCarthy’s books were amazing? I don’t know. I haven’t studied that market. But I can tell you there’s a whole lot—like, Jane Austen started off writing for her family, and only right before she died did she start to get popular. Right? That unfortunately happens a ton to artists.

47:46 STUDENT: They die faster. BRANDON: What’s that? Oh, you should just die faster? OK. Let’s not take that as it is. We’ll go here and then over here. STUDENT: What’s your opinion on trying to publish at Shadow Mountain or smaller regional presses versus New York? BRANDON: OK. Let’s talk about small presses. So there are—there’s actually several ranks of presses. And I would call Shadow Mountain—for those watching on the videos who don’t know, this is a regional press headquartered in Salt Lake, but they cover more of a range than a small press generally does, and they generally have hardcover—or no, paperback contracts with New York publishers. So basically they’ll handle the hardcover distribution, and then they’ll use the channels of the big publisher. So there are a bunch of kind of mid-size presses that do this.

48:38 For the longest time DAW. DAW was one of the big forces in sci-fi/fantasy. They published Pat Rothfuss. They published Tad Williams, and things like this. And they were indie, that was not one of the big five, or big six, but had a distribution partnership of some manner—I don’t know all the details—with Random House, Penguin Random House. And so they could release their books out wide as if they were one of the big five, but they were not. And so there are some like this that are not one of the big five that can do things like that.

49:15 I do locally, particularly if you’re writing middle grade or YA, recommend Shadow Mountain. I’ve known enough people that have been there that’ve been pleased with their experience, and I’ve seen enough people go fully pro from Shadow Mountain to say that Shadow Mountain is a good place to publish. Watch out for your contracts. When you get a contract, make sure you have an agent. They aren’t always the most up to date on what current contracts should look like. I’ll say that. Their advances generally tend to be smaller, and they do generally use a lot more school visits and sort of grass roots marketing. But I do recommend them.

49:58 I don’t know of a lot of other regional presses that work. DAW’s had financial troubles lately, but they’re still a very good publisher. Baen that I mentioned before functions like this. Generally, if it’s smaller than those, I don’t recommend them except for specialty books. This is because for the most part, and your mileage may vary, there are some very good small presses out there. And sometimes you can be the name that helps launch a small press to a mid press.

50:27 This happened with Joe Abercrombie and Pyre, a small press that became a mid-level press that started to be a force in the market by Joe Abercrombie, that they got the U.S. rights, started selling so well. And you can be that. But in general, in the internet era, publishing with a small press is essentially the same as indie publishing, minus you getting indie publishing royalties. So I don’t recommend it because you’ll need to do all the same work that you need to do. The reasons to publish with a small press.

50:59 Number one, you have something that just does not sell well otherwise, but the prestige of the right prestigious small press can do it. Some of them do very well special editions. Some of them do short story collections, or an example of something that just doesn’t generally sell well, but having a small press behind it can let it prestige and actually help sales on a short story collection. Sometimes novellas work very well with small presses. And just watch for ones that are reputable. I’ve worked with Tachyon, and I can say they were excellent. This is a small press out of San Francisco. I think it’s San Francisco.

51:36 Might be L.A. I can’t ever remember. But they do a very good job. But I wouldn’t publish my first epic fantasy novel with Tachyon, as much as I like them, because in general you’re just going to have to do all the same things that you would do indie publishing. You’re going to have to do all that work yourself, because yeah. If what you want is to have a nice looking book that someone else does all the work for, that you’re not trying to make a career out of this, a small press that loves your book and wants to just give it the best cover, and the best editing it can, and you all know that in the best case it’s going to sell a thousand copies, that’s totally fine. Right? But it just depends on—your mileage may vary. OK?

52:21 STUDENT: This is a more personal question for you, Brandon? Today you signed my copy of Mistborn. BRANDON: Yes. STUDENT: And in it you wrote, “I am hope. BRANDON: Yep. STUDENT: You are, of course, referencing your character, Kelsier. BRANDON: I put that one in quotes. It’s him, not me. Yeah. CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: Mm hmm. STUDENT: So he says, “You can’t kill me. I represent the thing that you’ve never been able to kill, no matter how hard you try. I am hope.” BRANDON: Mm hmm. STUDENT: With this in mind, what would you say is your biggest objective as a writer? BRANDON: My biggest objective as a writer is to tell good stories. Tell good stories and make good--. So I actually got asked something similar on this on a podcast just recently. I know—I look out at the sea of faces, and I know all of you want to be where I am. Right? And statistically, most of you can’t be. I have been given the shot to be in this position. And, let’s see, I’ll talk a little bit after another question, kind of wrapping up. But I know you all want to be here. And so I need to make good on having gotten this opportunity and do a good job with it out of respect for you who would happily take the spot if I didn’t do a good job with it, if that makes sense. So I just want to do the best job I can with my stories. Yeah, OK. Let’s go over here.

53:47 STUDENT: How reasonable is it to include things like maps, or diagrams, or sketches with your submission to a publisher? BRANDON: Maps, diagrams, sketches for submission to a publisher. This is all going to depend on your caliber of artistic talent. CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: And we laugh about that. But if you are not of a professional caliber, I would not send any of that with the submission. If you are professional caliber, particularly if you have professional credits as an illustrator, then it’s value add, and they will want to see it. Otherwise, you don’t want to do that, generally.

54:26 I recommend, if you sell with a New York publisher, that you commission any art for the interior of your book yourself. Let them handle the cover. I recommend you work with that artist and get copyright to it or at least licensing rights to it for all foreign publications and future editions of the book. And keep that contract handy so that you know--. Like, I love to protect artists’ rights. I don’t like that a lot of places take artists’ copyright away.

55:03 But in this case you should get a work-for-hire and have the copyright because you don’t want to have to write—if you sell in 30 countries, just being able to provide that map is going to streamline the process so much. So I recommend paying well, getting a nice map, and the same thing with some interior—whatever interior art you want, and then having that copyright yourself so that you can put it in all the books in all the different countries and things. All right?

55:31 You can trust the publisher to do it. Your mileage may vary. I’m glad that I don’t. STUDENT: On a similar note, if you’re a writer but you also are the illustrator for a project. BRANDON: Yeah. STUDENT: Like, I’m pre-illustration so that’s going to be professional as well. How easy would it be to get traditionally published that way? Or would it be easier to do indie publishing when you are the writer and the illustrator for a project that’s not a children’s book? BRANDON: If you’re a writer and illustrator—good question and I’m glad you put that. If you’re a writer and an illustrator, is it better to indie publish or New York publish if you want to do both? And I’m glad you left out the exclusion of children’s books. Do be aware that except in rare cases children’s book publishers meaning--. Children’s book in the industry, by the way, is 18 and under. So just be aware that’s how the vernacular goes, children’s publishing.

56:25 So picture books, you want—in picture books, they do not want art with the text. They want one or the other unless you’ve really proven yourself. They’re more OK with it nowadays than they used to be. But they used to just really hate it. Now they only mildly hate it. If you’re publishing in adult science fiction and fantasy, and your sketches are of a professional caliber, no one’s going to complain. They might not let you do the cover, because a cover--. I don’t think I’ve talked about this yet. The cover is not an illustration of your book. Write that down and underline it. The cover is a movie poster for your book. Just like Luke Skywalker never stands holding a light saber like this in Star Wars, your book cover is not an illustration. It is a marketing piece, and it’s job is to capture the right mood. It’s your first tone promise for an audience. You can, if you want, argue that your character’s left-handed, not right-handed, they got it wrong on the cover. But when you do finicky things like that, you’re maybe misunderstanding. OK? Interior art they’re much more OK with. I would still do my submission without it unless it’s integral. Right? Unless it’s partially graphic novel in some way that you have to have it. Like Way of Kings, even with as much art as that had, I wouldn’t have submitted with the art. But if it was a step beyond Way of Kings, I probably would have included it. Like Illuminae, Illuminae is not art, but it wouldn’t work without all the redactions and all of this sort of stuff. That’s a famous one that I think I talked about last week.

58:03 So in your case, if they love the book, send them the illustrations. Say, “I intend to illustrate this myself,” before you sign the contract. Make sure they’re cool with it, is basically what I’d say. In indie publishing, do whatever you want. In indie publishing you do it. But authors historically have not been as good at understanding their limitations in visual mediums as they think they are. Meaning, a lot of authors think they’re better illustrators than they are. So I’ll just leave that with you. That said, Christopher illustrated all of his books, I believe, and did the original covers. That’s Christopher Paolini.

58:43 Yeah, it’s extra hot today for whatever reason. So it can be done. And I would say if it’s interior art, and you’re good at it, no one’s going to complain. And if they do complain, make it an in-world artifact. Be like, “The character is not as good as the professional artist you want to hire. But this is their art.” They might be more OK with that. CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: Right? Go ahead. STUDENT: What suggestions do you have for consuming art in order to look for, especially books, to look for how characters. BRANDON: What advice do I have? Read widely. Read outside your genre. But don’t read only outside your genre. Watch what people are doing. And start to think critically about books. Critically not meaning “This is terrible.” Say, “Why did the author do this?” Make the assumption that the author is making the choices deliberately. They aren’t always. But where criticism comes, it’s usually better to go under the assumption of, “The author did this. Why did they do this? Why might they have done it? What would I have done differently? Or what can I learn from what they did?” And just start consuming media that way. You’re probably doing it already. I don’t know that I can give you more advice than that because the more you do and the more you write, you will hit this bump where reading stops being fun for you like it used to be, because now it’s work. You generally if somewhere in that, you generally will get over that, and then it’ll come back. But most authors I know, the difference is, if we compare my wife to me as readers, she has to finish anything she starts, no matter what the quality is. That’s very common among readers. Among writers, we give up on books way earlier. We read a little bit and be like, “I’m not learning anything from this. I’m done.” And we put it aside. That’s often one of the changes that happens to you. So yeah.

60:38 All right. Other questions. We’ve got just a couple minutes left. STUDENT: I’ve had a dream for a while to write a book sort of like Percy Jackson in the sense that anyone who reads it just learns about a topic extensively. BRANDON: OK. STUDENT: Do you have any advice for a project like that? BRANDON: You want to write a book where someone who reads it learns about a subject extensively? Story comes first. Topic comes second. If you’re not a good storyteller first, doesn’t matter what the topic is. That would be my recommendation to you. Learn to write a compelling story. But then pick something you’re passionate about. Make sure you’re using all the tools we’re talking about, where you’re not overwhelming with too much. Make sure the story comes first. It’ll probably be a value add if you do it that direction.

61:19 Yeah? STUDENT: How do you prevent being scammed by publisher companies? BRANDON: How do you prevent being scammed by publisher companies? Don’t give them any money? Don’t use publisher companies. Just don’t, is my blanket recommendation. Find reputable editors who have worked on projects with reputable indie authors, that charge a standard fee. Generally it’s by word, or by page? I can’t remember. RACHEL LYNN: It’s by word. BRANDON: Oh, it’s by word. By word. Give them a sample. Pay them to do the sample or see if they do one for free. Usually you just pay them to do a sample. They get back. And then hire that. OK? Pay money for that, and then like a proofread/copy edit, if you do that separately. Again, people who have worked, who have good, you know, good pedigree. Buy artwork from a reputable artist. Oftentimes, you can get it cheaper by buying something that’s not an exclusive license. Right? Finding people who are working, like, you know, sometimes--. Back in the day it was Deviant Art. Now it’s—what’s that other place?

62:37 RACHEL LYNN: Art Station? BRANDON: Art Station. Art Station’s the good one. Deviant Art’s terrible now. CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: It used to be good, but now it’s terrible. Sometimes you will be able to find people on Art Station that are like, “This is concept art I did for myself.” You can go be like, “Hey, what’s a non-exclusive license to use this for cover art cost?” And sometimes, like, we would do this, and they’d come back and be like, “Eh, it’s $50.” And you’re like, “For this professional caliber piece?” And they’re like, “Yeah.” And you’d be like, “What’s exclusive? Exclusive only for book covers. You can sell it to anyone else.” They’d be like, “Oh, $250.” And then you can get, like, fantastic book covers. I haven’t done that in a while. But sometimes you can do things like that. You know. Or if you’re lucky, or not lucky, if you are writing in a field that doesn’t require an illustrated cover, it can be photography based, you can sometimes find people who are making professional caliber covers for pretty cheap using stock imagery that they buy and manipulate. But pay for your cover title lettering and things, your cover design, separate from your artwork. So cover design, artwork, substantive editor, copy editor. Those are the things you need to pay for. Did I miss anything?

63:49 RACHEL LYNN: No. BRANDON: Don’t pay for anything else. OK? Don’t pay for a company that says they can do this all for you. Do it yourself. If you’re indie publishing, you are now a small business owner. Do it yourself. They will—your chances of getting scammed plummet if you do what I just said, and particularly if you’re asking other indie authors who they’re using for their editors so that you can get those recommendations. OK? STUDENT: OK. BRANDON: Don’t pay agents. Don’t pay publishers.

64:15 Pay editors and artists. You’ll probably be fine. Right here. Yeah. We’ve got a little time. STUDENT: What about using AI art for this? BRANDON: What about using AI art? So I’ll try to be as even-handed as I can. Right now you can not own a copyright for an AI-created image, and that’s being contested in the courts. AI art has generally been trained on the work of artists who object to that training, and for that reason is highly unethical, if not illegal yet.

64:51 And so what do I say? I say there are enormous ethical concerns to using AI art, and you can’t have a copyright for it anyway. And right now, AI art looks very much like AI art, and it’ll make you look unprofessional. So all things are stacked against it. That last one will change, but I don’t know if the first two will. So I recommend against that. I think you are much better off buying a package to a stock image website, buying licenses to use the stock images, and building a book cover that way than using the AI art. But that is--. It’s hard for me to be even-handed because I know so many of the artists who are so upset about the art being trained, the AI being trained on their art without their permission. Yeah. Go ahead.

65:48 STUDENT: If you were to go back to the early days of writing, what good practices would you establish for the organization of your thoughts and ideas? BRANDON: Organization of my thoughts and ideas? I think this is going to be too individual to the individual. I don’t know what I would do. Like, back then, I just used a Word file. I found a wiki more helpful for me after I moved to that. But I would say more important than organizing your thoughts is, like, what makes you productive. Right? And so try the different programs. Try the different—try a Word document. Try the Post-it note method, you know, the index cards method, not usually Post-it notes. But people have index cards that they use. Try a bunch of these things. See what makes you productive. See what doesn’t distract you from the writing and do that. All right? All right. We’re going to stop the Q&A there and go back to whatever your actual goals are. You have, hopefully, this information. These lectures are online. You can rewatch them. I say this because I want to both inspire you and be a realist. Almost certainly, several people in this room will go pro, statistically, watching what’s happened. That said, going pro doesn’t necessarily even mean making a living.

67:36 A lot of people sell a bunch of books and have a professional credit but still have a day job. And I’ve got to comment on one of these YouTube videos recently that someone’s like, “So wait a minute. You’re telling me--.” I think they’d just watched the first one. “I need to work for 10 years to learn how to be a writer, work for years and years, maybe another decade, to sell a book, and then I’ll finally have that book come out, and I might not even make a living? I’ll make, like, $5,000 to $10,000? And then the next ones—that one might flop, and I won’t even have a career after doing that? What kind of maniac would do this?” CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: Right? And yes. Right? I cannot be here and sell you a dream if that dream is being a professional author. There are thousands of people outside that door that will try to sell you this dream. They’re all the people that want you to give them money in order to learn the secrets of publishing. There aren’t any. OK? The secrets of publishing are work hard, be diligent over a long period of time, then get lucky. OK? And even now, I cannot tell you what percentage of me getting published was diligent effort mixed with skill and what part was the luck. It could be 90/10 on either--. (coughing) CLASS: (laughing) BRANDON: Pretend I didn’t cough. It could be 90/10 on either direction. Right? I think I worked hard.

69:15 I think I have natural talent. I can’t tell you what percent that was behind my success. And so when you leave today, you’re going to have to, at some point, either you’ve done it or you’re going to need to do it in the future, you’re going to have to make that decision that I did back when I was just finishing Book 12. Do you guys remember this story? Where I realized, "Oh, man. Twelve books and not published? What am I doing?” Right? “Should I have learned my lesson by now?” And I did. I learned the lesson of “I am writing because it is good for me. I am writing because this is what I have built my self-identity around, a talent I have, and an interest I have.

70:02 I think it is legitimately good for me to do, and I am passionate about it.” And I made that decision that I was going to keep writing for the rest of my life, even if I never sold a book. And if you are writing to sell a book, that’s not enough. Certainly, you can want. I desperately wanted to. And, you know, most of you in this room, I would guess desperately want to, or at least very much so want to. That’s not enough. You have to, in this business, be writing--. If someone came to you today and said, “You are never going to publish, but your friends and family will enjoy the books that you write. Are you still willing to?” You have to be somebody who’s willing to say yes to that. Because, you know, statistically, a couple of you will make it. That’s two out of what? Two hundred? And those two are going to fight, likely, for 10 years to even see if they can make it as a pro. Talk to Rachel Lynn sometime about what it’s like to sit there in those trenches and fight even after you feel like you’ve made it. And it’s excruciating. I went through that with Mistborn, and I came out the other end as, again, one of the lucky ones. So, that’s the sad part. Right? I am also here to inspire. This can be done. I was in one of those chairs in 2000. I didn’t know what I was doing. Dave gave me the information, and I took it, and I sold. I would not have done so if he hadn’t told me. It worked. It can be done. And it is not a one in a million shot. It’s more like one in a hundred of serious professionals. You can do it. And if you can’t control the market, which none of us can, what you can control is the satisfaction you get from writing, getting better with every story, building good habits, and being proud of the things that you create. I would bet there are millions of people in the world who want to write a book. And I would bet less than 1% of them do. If you finish a novel, you are among the elite, and you are my colleague. So make that your goal, and we’ll see where it goes from there. Thank you for taking the class. Good luck in your writing journey. CLASS: (cheering and applause)