Online Tour (And Twitter Tomfoolery)

We've been feeling bad about the fact that I can't get many places on tour.  Even this fall, with the WoT tour, I'll only be hitting a fraction of the places where people want me to visit.

So my wonderful publicist Dot has set up two events for me.  First off, the Barnes and Noble book clubs website (run by Paul Goat Allen, the author of several interesting recent blog posts) has kindly invited me in to do a three day Q&A session on their forums.  I'll be focusing on two threads in specific. 

1)  Questions for Brandon Sanderson
2)  Talking about Warbreaker

(Most of my time will be on the first thread.)  So, feel free to ask me anything you want.  I can't promise that I'll get to everyone's questions, but I'm going to give it a try.  I'll be there the 8th-10th of July, so next Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. (Also, I DO plan to do something like this on my own forum here soon, but we'll do the B&N one first, as to not compete.)

The second event we'll be doing is a "Tweet the Author" session for those on Twitter.  Essentially, we'll be working this like a gigantic chat room session, where for an hour people are firing tweets at me, and I'm answering them on my twitter account.  Details are right here.  If you don't use Twitter, and have no intention of using it, you can follow the session without an account.  Just watch my twitter page or do a search for #tweettheauthor.  We'll be doing this 1-2pm CST on the 8th.  (Next Wednesday.)

And, speaking of Twitter, I don't know if you noticed me being silly last week and sending everyone out to tweet about Scalzi (Link goes to my original post), but I thought I'd mention some of my favorites here on the blog.  My additions are in parenthesis.  (And these are by no means all of my favorites.  You people are quite clever.)

@Ryshon Scalzi uses a piece of his own hair as a quill, dipped in blood to write, when he runs out of hair or blood, game over

@nethspace Scalzi reveals Ayn Rand tattoo on inner thigh - world wish's it didn't have to see that

@Qurtyslyn Feeding Strawberry Lemonade to six aardvarks and letting them run free in a crowded mall was not Scalzi's best Idea.

@zediir Scarlzi is the real mastermind behind the great kitten conspiracy of 2008. (Bonus points for referencing an Alcatraz book, Zediir.)

@jdack Scalzi secretly hates bacon. (I knew it!  If you're confused, google Scalzi and Bacon for an explanation...)

@MCaron1234 Scalzi is, once again, minding his mash potatoes with a lemon zester. AS EXPECTED.

@dressagegrrrl When I ran into Scalzi at the Natl Clog Dancing Faire (der Klompen), he insulted my lederhosen! THEY WERE MY MOTHER'S, JERK. (I cannot explain why this one makes me crack up every time I read it.  Props, Dressagegrrrl)

jddennis Dinosaurs were originally around 10k yeras ago, but that was too close to Scalzi. They travelled back in time to escape him.

@Ockhamdesign scalzi writes under the pen name Stephanie Meyer. That woman in Utah is just a prop. He needs to finish Midnight Sun.  (Brilliant!)

@Sorsha76 Scalzi's shoes TOTALLY don't go with his pants!!!! ...and he commits genocide on Tuesdays.

@dragonmount Scalzi killed Asmodean. (My personal favorite.  Jason, you rock.)

@Fiirvoen @scalzi 's mother was a hampster and his father smelt...of ELDERBERRIES! (Someone had to do it.)  (Yes, yes they did.  That last parenthetical was part of the original post, by the way.)

@jbrodman @Scalzi lives off the tears of @wilw.

@ru3 You know, BaconCat was actually Scalzi's THIRD attempt. A moment of silence for ShishCatbab and Baked Angora.

@cjent77 Scalzi fixed the Iran election!  (Wow!  Was this before or after he committed genocide and killed Asmodean?)

@RobertAvi Scalzi reads the last page of a book first

@Tryndakai John Scalzi likes the taste of Soylent Green.

@miss_emmeline If Scalzi was ever cast as the Doctor, they'd have to change the name of the show to Doctor Who Cares?

@Tryndakai @Scalzi came up with midichlorians!

And, one final sin to top the others:

@Tryndakai @Scalzi had Firefly canceled!

There are dozens more, and I didn't even get to post all my favorites.  Go read everyone's clever words here.  Thank you all for being so cool about this.  It's got me thinking that I need to do something like this to make fun of myself, maybe alongside the #tweettheauthor thing.  Perhaps a game of "140 character faux reviews of Way of Kings...?" 

Actually, that sounds kind of fun.  We'll start it off next week under the tag #kingsway.  I'll post to kick it off.

Then hide under a rock.

Mistborn Mini's contest

Last week, BSC review was giving away Goblin Quest minis?  Well, this week they're giving away a full set of Mistborn Minis in a contest.  I believe the entry method is pretty simple--all you have to do is send them an email.  So head on over and give it a try!

In other news, Orson Scott Card unexpectedly reviewed the Mistborn Trilogy in one of his review columns.  It's near the middle of the page.

Day of ScalziLovehate!

So, today on Twitter, I noticed my friend (and evil nemesis) John Scalzi complaining that the people saying mean things about him on Twitter just  weren't interesting enough in their hate.  Exact quote: 

@scalziI don't mind mean, nasty things being said about me, @jer_ . Just make them, you know, INTERESTING. Boring meanness is boring

Well, as Scalzi is my evil nemesis, I feel I need to do something about this.  (Note that I don't think I'm his evil nemesis.  It's mostly just a one-sided thing, perpetuated by some goofy friends of mine, that baffles dear Scalzi.  For fun, google the Scalzi award and Scalzibane, if you're curious.)

Anyway, I'd declaring today a day of ScalziLovehate!  Next time he searches for himself on Twitter, I want his search results to turn up the most awesome list of interesting meanness that has ever existed.  So, go forth and tweet with the tag #scalzilovehate and see what you can come up with.  (But keep it tasteful, folks.  And interesting.  Very, very interesting.  And if you have trouble with interesting, I'll settle for just plain odd. See example below.)

I'll start: As a midwife for llamas, Scalzi's abilities are decidedly lacking. I mean honestly, does he think that stapler is effective? #scalzilovehate

Garden Ninja Contest

The folks over at Garden Ninja studio wrote to let me know that a BSCreview.com is doing a contest where they're giving away some minis.  This week, it's a contest for a set of Goblin Quest minis (from the book series.)  They'll have mistborn minis for give away next week, but I thought you might want to head over this week to get in on the Goblin Quest ones as well. 

Also, a kindly reader sent me some fanart of Vin.  Thought you guys might like to see it. 

If you're following along at home, The Gathering Storm is now in the proofread stage.  I got an email letting me know that the manuscript will be coming back after the proofreads in July, and we'll need to have it back by the end of July.  Then it's on to production officially.  Things are getting close now.

I just need to remember to get new photos taken for the jacket.  The ones on my books are now six or seven years old... 

#24 (+ Idaho Falls Details)

First off, the Idaho Falls book signing tomorrow is from 1:30-3:30 at the Barnes and Noble at the Grand Teton Mall.

Now, for those who didn't see my Twitter/Facebook post, WARBREAKER hit #24 on the New York Times Hardcover Fiction Bestseller List.  You all have my deepest thanks for continuing to support me in this writing addiction of mine.  It's because of you, truly, that I can do this thing that I love for a living. 

#24 is a good place to be.  You'll note that it isn't quite as good as Mistborn Three's number (#21.)  But at the same time, this is a much different book.  With Mistborn Three, we had a large, multi-city tour planned and we had the benefit of being the concluding volume in a series.  I don't think hitting #24 is a sign of failure on Warbreaker's part, but instead a sign of just  how above-the-baseline Mistborn Three was. 

So, a lot of people have been asking what I think--now that it is all done--of the process of releasing drafts on-line as I wrote them.  Will I be doing it again?  Do I think it helped or hurt sales?  Both are hard to answer.  I think that, seeing how the book has done, that it's unlikely I lost sales because of this.  Actually, I still like to think that I picked up some readers--or, at the very least, reassured some Wheel of Time fans.  But the numbers are right dead-even where I guessed they would be, and beyond that, there are a large number of variables at work here.  I don't have a good estimate of how my books should be selling right now.  I haven't been an author long enough to establish an average.  However, because I like to be open and forthcoming about these things, I thought I'd try to figure out a system by which I could talk about my sales with you all. 

I don't want to talk actual numbers for a couple of reasons.  First off, the numbers I have are the Bookscan numbers, which are flawed.  Bookscan says they only reach about 70% of the market, and that percentage can vary widely depending on the genre and even the specific book.  For the Alcatraz books, Bookscan missed more than 50% of the sales because of all the non-bookstore markets that Scholastic uses. 

However, generally, we can use Bookscan as a comparison between books in the same genre by the same author.  And so, I've devised some units of measurement for us.  the EL(h) a the EL(p).  One EL(h) is equal to the number of copies in hardcover that Elantris sold in its first year of release.  (Which, in most cases, makes up almost all of the hardcover sales.)  One EL(p) is then the number of copies Elantris sold in its first year of paperback release.  Sound good?  I use Elantris as a baseline because it was my first book, and it did modest--without being overwhelming--in both hardcover and paperback format. 

Now, how do my other books stack up?  Well, lets look at them book-by-book.

Mistborn Hardback:  95% EL(h)
Mistborn Paperback:  136% EL(p)
Mistborn Promotional 76% EL(p)

Mistborn comes first.  If you were reading the blog back when it came out, I believe I mentioned our worry about there being a dip in sales here.  Elantris was a breakout book by a new author, and that tends to draw attention, getting us a number of extra sales for novelty.  It was also priced a few bucks cheaper than it should have been, something Tor commonly does in order to help give a first-time author a push.  By raising the price three bucks and by not doing a sequel next, we saw a small number of the hardcover people jump over to the paperback.  However, the paperback numbers were very good (this is all pre-WoT) so it means that the novel got good word of mouth and sold well, even better than Elantris.

The third number is the promotional edition we did with the new cover (which is now the only cover) after the WoT announcement.  So you can see us picking up steam there.

Mistborn 2 Hardback: 175% EL(h)
Mistborn 2 Paperback: 210% EL(p)

Mistborn two showed an impressive gain on both fronts, taking us up to about double Elantris's numbers.  This was a big relief, since this was kind of the 'do or die' book.  Would people stick around and keep reading after they read the first book?  Would I be an idle curiosity, or would I become a consistent seller.  About halfway into the release of the Mistborn 2 hardcover, the WoT announcement was made, and it had an impact to say the least.

Mistborn 3 Hardcover: 360% EL.(h)
Mistborn 3 Paperback:  Too Early to Tell.  It's only been out for a few months, but it's gotten to about 75% EL(p) so far, and looks like it will hit about 300% El(p) over one year. 

Mistborn three marked a HUGE jump in sales.  I talked about this above; I think it has to do with the push we gave it mixed with the salability of being the final book of a series. 

Warbreaker:  60% EL(h) in the first week. 

This release for Warbreaker puts it between Mistborn 2 (which did about 25% EL(h) in its first week and MB3 (which did about 90%EL(h) in its first week.)   So we've got a solid release for it, I think.  Other notes for those who are curious:  Elantris did the following in its three years of paperback release:

Year One:  100%  EL(p)(Duh, this is the baseline.)
Year Two: 81% EL(p)  (Holding up well, selling almost as many.
Year Three 142% EL(p) (Yes, it sold better its third year than it did its first year.  Hello, Wheel of Time.)

And if you're wondering, here are the numbers for Knife of Dreams:

First day: 1600%EL(h)
First Year: 7100% EL(h) 

Yes, that's seventy one times as well as Elantris in its first year, or just shy  of 20 times Mistborn Three's numbers.  And Mistborn Three was one of Tor's biggest books of the year last year.  Robert Jordan was in his own league entirely.  One thing you should probably know about modest bestsellers like mine is that we aren't selling nearly the number of copies you probably think we're selling.  That was one of the eye opening things about this business to me.  Most bestselling books are not selling in the millions of copies, or even the hundreds of thousands of copies, but closer to the tens of thousands.  It's possible to hit the NYT list and sell a total of under 10,000 copies during the hardcover release. 

Signing In IF + Other Updates

I will be doing an appearance at the Barnes and Noble in Idaho Falls, Idaho this Saturday.  I don't have times yet--it will be in the afternoon, but I need to double-check with the store before I post anything.  I'll have it up here soon.  But if you live in the Idaho Falls/Rexburg/Pocatello area, I just wanted you to get a heads up.

Sam Weller's still has some numbered copies of Warbreaker left.  To get one:

Customers will need to contact us via email, fax or phone.
To confirm, they are: books@samwellers.com
(801) 595-0051. fax
(801) 328-2586, phone

I won't be able to get those personalized for you, I'm afraid.  But they ARE signed and numbered.  Last I checked, they had about thirty left or so from the original sixty I left behind after my signing.  I think they might still be discounting them 20%, so make sure to ask.

I've had a report or two of people who asked Sam Weller's to get me to personalize their book, but then got a book with no personalization.  I'm trying to figure out how widespread this is.  I know I personalized a lot of books, but I worry that someone on staff there didn't know how to write things down properly.  So if you're in this group, drop me an email so I can get a count and decide if action needs to be taken.

In other bookstore news, Chadwick--from McNally Robinson Booksellers in Manitoba, Canada--was kind enough to send me the following picture, with Warbreaker on display.  If you live in the area, this looks like a fine, fine bookstore to be visiting!

If you can't read it, that sign says "Fantasy you should be reading."  I'm flattered, Chadwick!  Thank you for the wonderful display.  Are any of the rest of you booksellers who have a Warbreaker display in store?  (And if not, do you feel like giving me one?)  If so, drop me a picture so I can post it!

Finally, since it looks like I'm doing all kinds of random updates, I got a big laugh when I read Pat Rothfuss's blog entry earlier in the week.  It appears that his girlfriend has been going to the same website Pemberly visited when Limebaby was still in the womb.  A quote from Pat:

Anyway, this current site talks about how big your baby is... compared to different foods.
Now at first, this seems okay. Babies and fruit share certain characteristics. Babies are natural. Fruit is natural. They both grow. They're both tied to reproduction.
Also, fruit is a good frame of reference. We all know how big a lime is, for example.

But as you scroll through the pictures, they don't use fruit exclusively. They use other foods, too, and some of these are... odd. Personally, I find it odd to compare a baby to things like a cooked shrimp, (which strikes me as creepy) or a pineapple (which makes my imaginary womb profoundly uncomfortable).

Ha. As many of you know, my son is affectionately called "Limebaby" on my website and sometimes in real life.  He actually got his nickname for the very reason Pat is talking about.  Pemberly and I were in the habit of calling him after whatever food they used on Babycenter. So, his name would be "Peababy," for the week they said he was the size of a pea.  "Blueberrybaby" when he was a blueberry, and so forth. 

Then we got to Jumbo Shrimp. And suddenly it just felt creepy. He froze at the name we'd been using before he became a jumbo shrimp, remaining Limebaby all through the womb.  He might be stuck with it for life...

To the Mailbag

Time for a couple of reader mail questions. 

Dave writes:

"Just a quick question...I purchased Mistborn 3 signed from Sam Weller's (and just ordered my Warbreaker signed copy as well).  Are you going to offer signed and numbered copies of The Gathering Storm?  I read your blog pretty regularly, but may have missed you already addressing this question.  If so, sorry!"

I think I've mentioned the possibility, Dave, but never given anything firm.  Well, I've been doing some asking, and it seems that Harriet and Tor are all right with this.  So, I'm about 95% sure that this is going to happen with the The Gathering Storm.  We'll probably do signed/personalized/numbered editions from Sam Weller's by mail AND will do a release party at BYU Bookstore again.  The release party will probably be a midnight release, followed by me flying to Charleston to do another event in the evening of the release day.

I can't say how many books we'll release to Sam Weller's to sell this way.  The numbered editions I do at these release parties aren't to replace the leatherbound collector's editions that Tor does.  (I think they're doing one for TGS, though I don't know.)  My numbered editions have no cap--I number as many, generally, as there are people.  (Note that Sam Weller's still has some Warbreaker copies that I'm going to go in and personalize for people tomorrow, so if you want one, give them a call.)  Mostly, the numbers are just to say "Hey, I got the book from one of the release events.  Isn't that cool?"  But I could see so many being requested from Sam Weller's that we have to cap it to save my hand (and my sanity.)

Anyway, that's a long way to say yes, Dave.  Keep an eye on the blog.  We'll try to get the announcements for these events up earlier than we did for Warbreaker.

Next, Don writes:

"I wanted to comment on the general impression that nothing BIG changes with each turning of the Wheel, i.e., history repeats itself.  It's mentioned in the books and has been confirmed by RJ in interviews.  I take issue with this, however.  The DO can influence the world AND he is outside the Pattern and the turning of the Wheel.  History doesn't repeat for the DO.  In his quest to break the Wheel, why would he repeat the same steps over and over again, knowing they don't work?  He remembers and learns with each turning of the Wheel.  Because of this, I feel that the possibility exists that something "different" could happen, and that perhaps this something "different" might happen at the end of this series.  No one really agrees with me, though.  : ("

I wanted to answer this one, since there has been a lot of talk about Warbreaker on the blog lately, and I wanted to do something for the Wheel of Time readers.  Don, you're actually quite right.  The Dark One CAN stop the Wheel from turning.  Indeed, this is his goal.  So far, history has repeated for the Dark One--but only because he has failed at his attempts to unravel the Pattern.

Now, the theory websites can go into all of this in much more depth (and specificity) than I can.  I'm no replacement for Robert Jordan when it comes to continuity and cannon within the Wheel of Time world.  Many questions and thoughts like this are better sent toward Bob at the Encyclopedia WoT or on the forums at Theoryland or Dragonmount (or on any of the other excellent websites.)  However, this particular topic was one I decided I needed to delve into during my research for the final books. If I didn't understand the Dark One's motivations and goals, I didn't think I could do the Last Battle justice.  And so, I can state with reasonable authority that the Dark One is indeed capable of doing what you say.  Though, it should be noted that in many cases, the Dark One's actions will repeat themselves--he will try the same ploys, though I can't speak for certain on how much he has varied those over the years..  But I can promise that just because he has failed in the past doesn't mean he will fail again. 

This series could end with the Dark One breaking the Wheel and destroying the Pattern.  That is what is at stake. 

Thanks for the emails!  And remember, I'll be in West Jordan tonight and at the Sugarhouse B&N tomorrow afternoon.  I plan to do readings at both, and will have Pewter Allomantic Table Medallions to give away as prizes.