Brandon Sanderson (Best-Selling Author) on Writing, Careers and Finding Your Passion

Ali

My name is Ali. I'm a doctor and YouTuber.

Taimur

I'm Taimur. I'm a data scientist and writer.

Ali

And you're listening to Not Overthinking.

Taimur

The weekly podcast where we think about happiness, creativity and the human condition.

Ali

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the podcast. Now due to a few scheduling abnormalities between me and Taimur. This episode is going to be an in between episode. But this is a very good one. This is an interview that I did with my favorite author of all time, Brandon Sanderson. Brandon has written the incredible series of fantasy books like The Mistborn Series and The Stormlight Archive in particular, he also finished off the Wheel of Time Series by Robert Jordan. And I've been listening to Brandon Sanderson audiobooks pretty much nonstop since like 2017. And yeah, he has overtaken JK Rowling to become my favorite author of all time. So this is a very interesting interview, a discussion where we talk about writing, we talk about books, we talk about the business of book publishing, and we talk about kind of the strategies that he's picked up over the years to become such a prolific and consistent author with everything that he does. So if you're interested in fantasy books, you're going to love this. But even if you're not, I think it's just an interesting exploration of one of the most prolific authors in the space and the secrets behind his success for listening, and I will now transition to the interview between me and the one and only Brandon Sanderson. Enjoy. Hello, everyone. Welcome to this very exciting episode of the Deep Dive Live Stream. This is a lot earlier in my day than we usually do these things. But today, I am absolutely delighted to be joined by my favorite author of all time, Brandon Sanderson. Brandon, thank you so much for coming on. Welcome to the show.

Brandon

Thank you for having me. Sorry, to make you a change around how you work over here. It's quite late. So we found a time that is fine for both of us. But perfect for neither I suspect.

Ali

It's actually been pretty good for me like this is, this is a good reason to get me out of bed in the morning. I always try and schedule calls at like 8 or 9 in the morning just to force me out of bed. And this is like, yeah, the perfect time for that.

Brandon

I've been known to do the same thing, honestly. Different times as we might talk about, it's not 8 or 9 that I'm scheduling them, but I do schedule them to give myself a deadline sometimes.

Ali

Yeah, so on that note, you're very much like you've got a very unusual sleep schedule, like what is your, what's your day usually look like?

Brandon

So my day, I will get up. A lot of times around 1. I found that two sessions of work are better for me than one long one, about a four hour session writing is really good for me, it's this odd thing where I think this is similar, actually to a lot of work, but you got this like hour of spin up time. And near the end, you're starting to kind of spin down and run out of run out of steam. And if I try to push that too long, either one of those sides will kind of stretch out. And what I'm really looking for is that time in the middle that's really effective. And I found for me about four hours gives me good two hours of really efficient writing time in the middle. And so I tried to schedule my life around having two of those. And I have always been a bit of a night owl, I find it peaceful to work at night, there are fewer distractions. I spent a lot of my early career before I broke in working a graveyard shift at a hotel. And so I will stop my work at 5, shower for the day, get ready, this is 5PM, then hang out with my family and things until around 10 go back to work at 10 and right from about 10 until 2 and then 2 until 4 tends to be just whatever I want to do goof off time, so to speak, whatever, whatever I feel like doing at the time. And that that works really well. For me, it gives me enough time just by myself doing some sort of hobby or something, but it doesn't overload on it. And it makes sure that each of those writing sessions is pretty effective. So I've been doing this pretty consistently, since I broke in and before that I was doing one writing session at night during the graveyard shift in the day session was going to school or things like that.

Ali

Nice. So if we go all the way back, when did you realize that you wanted to be a writer?

Brandon

I got to it a little late. Later than a lot of people you talk to novelist and they'll say, Oh, I started. My first concept was in the womb. And by the time I was 2 I was working on my first piece of poetry or whatever. I discovered books when I was a teenager I was 14 I had a good teacher who got me into reading. And I found something in books that I had been missing in my life without knowing it. Some sort of connection specifically to fantasy and science fiction. There was something about the wonder, the world building, mixed with interesting concepts and philosophy, and just the whole package really grabbed me. And even as young as like 14, I'm like, man, I wonder, wonder if I could do this. I don't think I really started giving it a shot and considering it like professionally until I was 17 or so. And I finished my first novel, the first thing I got done, I was 22. And so I kind of Count 22 that age, that's when it's like, all right, I have decided, I've moved my major from Chemistry to English. And I am just going to throw my hat in the ring and do my best to become a writer.

Ali

Nice. Am I right in saying that you wrote 13 books before one of them sold?

Brandon

Yes, I did. I then for the next eight years or so, eight or nine years, I wrote two books a year-ish on average for now, I guess. So more around a little less than two books here. But you know what I mean. I eventually sold my first let's see, I sold my first in 2003. And so I would have been 28. So it's a little less than than 8 years, more like 6 years. So it was about 2 books a year, I wrote 13 novels. I sold my 6 one, right when I was just polishing up the 13th. That was 2003 that came out in 2005. So right around when I turn 30 is when my career kind of officially began.

Ali

And that was Elantris was it?

Brandon

That was Elantris. Yep.

Ali

Yeah, it's kind of weird for me because like I so I discovered Mistborn in 2017. And I made the mistake when reading Mistborn of reading it too quickly. And then I was like, okay, I've got lots of friends who are also huge, huge fans of yours. We have a Whatsapp group that we call "The Sander Lads" where we share like book recommendations and things. And everyone was like, okay, now that you've done, you've read Mistborn, you have to read Stormlight next. And so, like 2017-2018 was like my final year of med school. And that was like my Mistborn era. And then..

Brandon

[...]

Ali

Sorry?

Brandon

I said, you're insane. Med School plus large epic fantasy series?

Ali

Oh, yeah, it's got to be done. And then 2018 to 2019 was my first year of being a doctor, where I was kind of walking to work for 20 minutes, half an hour each day and back. And so that was the audio book for Stormlight, 1, 2, and 3, that whole year basically. And then 2019 to 20' was my second year of being adopted, where I was commuting an hour back and forth from work by car and that was Wheel of Time Saga. And so it's like each of these years of my life can be traced to Michael Kramer and Kate Reading in my in my Airpods or through my car speakers. But I I discovered Eantris I think it was only a few months ago. Like I'd been,Ii'd obviously heard about it through your website and stuff. I just didn't think to read it because it was it wasn't part of a series and I thought you know what, let's try Elantris and it kept me up until like 6 in the morning. Like for like 3 nights in a row. It was so good.

Brandon

Thank you. It is a little bit odd in that I wanted to start with a standalone. Now that my renown so to speak has grown. It's a little less necessarily but when I was breaking in one of the things I was really worried about, perhaps unreasonably, but I don't know it worked out for me was that in the 90s is when epic fantasy really became a bankable genre for the publishers. It kind of you know, started back with Tolkien, right? In the 70s is where it they really but in the 90s with Robert Jordan, and Robin Hobb and George R. R. Martin. This is when it became a blockbuster genre. And the hard covers were selling a ton of copies. And so every publisher wanted to have their big epic fantasy series. And a lot of the market got flooded by these. And a lot of them flopped hardcore. They were just not connecting very well. And interestingly This is when the YA sub genre if you want to call it whatever you call YA, really exploded. That's the Harry Potter and Twilight era, when all the epic fantasy publishers the Publish doing epic fantasy are kind of floundering. And this is right after this whole thing is when I broke. In 2003-2005 and I said you know what, I do not want book 1 of 10 on my first book, I want people to be able to read a complete story by itself I want it stand alone. And I know that I've tried several series to say book 1 of 10 and I didn't like it and I'm frustrated that I didn't just get a full story from that author. Excuse me. And so I was pretty adamant about my first book should be a standalone. The publisher wanted me to do sequels to it. And I said, no, let my calling cards to the reading community be a book that they get a complete story in, rather than a little sliver of something big. And once I had that out, I then did a trilogy, and then moved on to doing what I really, you know, I really want to do one of these big series, but I felt that holding off on it was a better choice.

Ali

Hmm. So you're 30, and you've just sold Elantris. And the way it works in fiction, is that you write the whole book, and then you sell the book? Or is it based on like a proposal? How does that work?

Brandon

You really in fiction do not sell on proposal, unless you are a celebrity that already has a built in fan base, that sort of book can be sold on proposal. Or if you're an established novelist, right? When I go to my publisher, right now, I say, here's the next thing I'm doing, here's the synopsis, and what the series will kind of be about so you can start to get marketing on board, they really like to get a summary and synopsis from me, rather than just waiting for the book. But as a new author, you got to finish the whole thing, almost without exclusion. And so it is this weird thing where you know, you get a nonfiction you'll get paid in advance to write the book, right? That will give you the time. And fiction you got already have the book. So the advanced is kind of to pay for your next book. But then we're not talking big money. Elantris and Mistborn was my first contract. And it was 10,000 for books split across around 3 to 4 years. It's really about 5,000 per novel advance every year for 4 years. And that's not a lot of money to live on. And so I was, at this time I had, I had that sweet, sweet public school teacher money from my wife that I had just married. We got married in 2006. So about a year after a Elantris came out, and I lived on her exhaustive salary for those early years of my career. But that's pretty standard least in sci-fi fantasy advances tend to be between $5,000 and $10,000 for a first book by an author whose book doesn't, doesn't drop would call an auction once in a while book will just take off, even before it's published. And a lot of publishers will want it, it hits the whatever's going on in the market just hits it just right, everyone gets really excited. And you do hear of these things happening. Book selling for $250,000, or things like this, by a first time author. Totally happens. It is so wildly unlikely to happen to you that it is not something to really bank upon. If you're going to become a fiction writer, you'll have to understand it's going to take a while for your career to spin up money wise. And that's just something to build into it and to expect if you're even lucky enough to be able to make a living as a writer, which is not guaranteed.

Ali

So during this like sort of 6 to 8 year period, where you're writing, on average 2 books a year and you haven't sold any books yet, so you're not making any money of the writing itself. How did you keep yourself going that this is what I want to do and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, like what was the thought process back then?

Brandon

Yeah, I often talk about kind of one of the big moments in my career happened before I had a career. And this is when I was writing those back novels that 10 through 13, where I was starting to think, oh, right. Everyone told me that this was a really hard job to do and that my chances were really slim, which by the way, they are less slim than people will tell you. My experience has been that people who really dedicate themselves to the craft of things. It's more like 1 out of 20 or 30, who end up going on to have a career as opposed to 1 out of a million, like everyone told me. But I mean, if you went to med school, and they said, yeah, you're gonna go through all of med school and you're gonna have a 1 out of 20 chance of becoming a doctor. I think maybe you would have rethought some of what you were doing. It's still a difficult job to get to work because it's in entertainment, but it's not as crazy difficult as people pretend to this, but that's a different conversation. During those years, I'm like, okay, maybe I'm, you know, 1 of the 19 who really enjoys this, but it's just not writing things that match the market really well. And maybe I will not ever have a career. And I kind of came to the decision that I had to be okay with that, right? That writing was something I did, because first and foremost, I really loved doing it. And I thought think it makes me a better made me a better person. I use the the metaphor of basketball actually tend to mix metaphors, a little bit between writing and sports, but I have friends who go play basketball. I mean, we're in our 40s none of us are going to the NBA, right? But I have friends that you know, regularly, they'll just go play basketball. Why? They enjoy it, it's good for them. It's really a great thing. And, you know, my publicist loves to go golfing, he is not going to end up on the PGA Tour. That's just, you know, not a thing that's going to happen in his life. But nobody asked him when you're going to go pro? But if you start writing a book, people will ask you, when you're going to publish it, when will you monetize this thing? And don't get me wrong. I think monetizing the thing that you're working on is totally a great idea. And maybe we'll talk more about that, and things like that. But understand that if you want a stable career and you want to earn? Well, writing is not the thing to do. That's not the reason to do it. I kind of made this decision. I said, you know what, if I hit, let's be aspirational. If I hit, you know, age 99. And I have written 100 novels that have not been published. That's okay, you know what, I'm a bigger success than if I give up now. Because I'm giving up on something that I truly love and maybe I have to scale back, get a real job, quote, unquote, I was in grad school at the time. Get a real job, have a real career, find something that I enjoy. And writing becomes my hobby. And I was okay with that. I didn't want that to happen. But I was okay with it. I was willing to take that and go with it. And that was a big, important sort of moment for me, realizing that I've legitimately just enjoyed doing this was extremely fulfilling. And I was going to keep going. And for me, I got lucky, right? I'm the one out of 20. I'm the one that what I happen to write matches the market really well. I have some natural talent I've been able to expand upon and I was in the right place at the right time, for a number of publishing opportunities. And my career has really worked out. I have friends, though, who they're also the 1 out of 20. They aren't, you know, best sellers, but they've made a career out of writing. And they enjoy it just as much. And so it's you don't have to become astronomically successful to have a career. But you do have to be willing to take that risk that maybe you won't have a career, and this will be your hobby, and just a dedicated hobby that is a big part of your self identity most likely for most writers.

Ali

Yeah. So it's, as part of this equation of, you know, helping us figure out what to do what to do with our lives in a way, it seems like this broadly like two strands of it, there's one strand, which is a find something that you enjoy and do it. And then there's another strand, which is like, find enjoyment in the things that you're doing. And it sounds like for you writing was that thing of you found something you were passionate about and you found that you enjoyed it as well. Do you have any thoughts or advice for people who are in that position where they're like, I'm not really sure what I'm passionate about. Like, what? How do you think about that?

Brandon

Yeah, it is kind of hard in some ways, because I've noticed this in some of my friends, some of my roommates in college and things like this, where I had this all consuming passion, and I was going for broke, right? If I didn't end up end up selling my fallback jobs were not the same sort of caliber, right? I end up becoming an insurance salesman or something, right? I couldn't really have even become a professor because becoming, at least in the States, an English professor requires certain hoops to jump through for PhDs and things that I just was not doing in grad school, I wasn't working on the papers and the journals and all this stuff. And so I was all in on this. And I had a roommate, who was at one point told me, you know, Brandon, not all of us are like that. I do not have an all consuming passion. I want to find a job. I want to enjoy it and I want to come home and play video games. And that is still how he is he's in my writing group. And you know, I basically I was kind of myopic, early before in my pre-published years, because I kind of had this, everyone must have this all consuming passion sort of thing, which I just don't think is true. I think there are a lot of very fulfilling jobs out there. And in fact, one of the things that I often say to people is, if you are a writer, and you really like writing, programming and writing feel very similar. In fact, I had to stop taking, I took a programming class in college. And after it, I'm like, I can never take another one of these, because that semester was the hardest I ever had writing, because I would do my homework. And then I'd feel like I'd already written for the day when I've been coding. And it would leave me kind of mentally exhausted. And most of my other classes use a different part of my brain. Coding is basically writing, it's the same sort of thing, when you're writing a novel, you are problem solving how to achieve these things you want to, these results you want to get out. And you know, the output is reader investment in emotion, rather than the outputs that you might have for the object you're coding or something like this. But I think that you can, humans are kind of the things that drive us. One is creativity, being able to make something, but another is serving people, I actually think the best, I had a lot of fun working a graveyard shift to the hotel, being able to be the person that at night, when somebody needed something at the hotel, I just got it for them, I made them happy I I didn't have to sell a single thing because no one was coming in and buying rooms, I was just there to make their experience better. And I found that wildly fulfilling. Shockingly fulfilling for me. Now, of course, I was writing at the same time I'm at the front desk, typing away, interrupted to go get somebody something they need. And so it was okay. It was kind of a good match of the two things. But I think that we just, you know, acknowledging what it is that human beings generally find fulfilling, finding out what it is you find fulfilling? Is it finding a need and fulfilling it? Is it being able to be creative? Is it problem solving, you can find these general groupings of things that you happen to find satisfying, fulfilling, and you can then find a whole bunch of different careers, and things that target in that grouping of yours. And just like writing, computer programming are very similar. There's a lot of things like that out there. And I often say, you know, try a bunch of different things. I wish that our college and profession building, how can I even phrase this, the way that we prepare people for the workplace, I wish it involved a lot more variety. I wish there were more opportunities for us to try different things out and try different jobs out, try different majors out, you know, and really find what people find fulfilling in them. Because if I hadn't had this teacher, get me into reading who knows what would have happened with me, right? And I, everyone thought I was a reluctant reader that I didn't like reading. When the truth was, I just had not found the right books yet. It was the world building and fantasy novels that made the difference. And then I became a huge reader. But before that, my teachers were saying our parents like, he just doesn't like reading. He's just not a reader, find a career for him, that doesn't involve a lot of that.

Ali

Yeah, it's interesting how just sort of the right person at the right place at the right time can completely change the trajectory of your life. And I've definitely had that happen a a few times with me. It's interesting the thing you say about the graveyard shifts at the hotel you're working at, because that was basically exactly what I was doing on my night shift at the hospital, where I used to really enjoy night shifts, because generally it's quite quiet, you don't usually have new patients coming in the door. And it's normally just a case of a nurse rings you up or bleeps you and wants something prescribed for their patients. And because the hospital I was working at had like electronic prescribing, I could sit at the front desk and there plushy kind of chairs with like two computer screens in front of me, one that had the electronic health record, and the other one that had like a document open where I was planning my YouTube videos, and I'd get a call, I prescribe the thing or occasionally go see a patient. But I got so much like non-doctor stuff done during the shifts, I used to really, really enjoy night shifts. And all my friends used to be like.

Brandon

I really find one on purpose. I actually had known someone who worked as a security guard was like, wow, I get to read all kinds of books at night. It's great. And I thought, you know, I'm a night owl, I should find a job like that. And I went and tried actively to find one. And like I was very upfront with the people to tell I said I'm doing this because I want to spend I wanna have some free time at work to work on my writing. They're like great, the last guy we had fell asleep on the couch. This doesn't work for everyone. By the way. Those are listening like whoo, I'm going to go become a graveyard shift clerk, be aware that larger hotels generally have things they expect the night auditors to do. They don't let just sit at the desk and not do stuff. You're like folding towels or things like that, I found a job luckily that didn't do that. But also a lot of people just aren't productive. during those hours. I've had a friend who wanted to become a writer who went and got a job at the same place that I had worked. And it was a disaster. It was, you know, several months of him trying to adjust his schedule to do the Brandon shift. And it not working at all. And it just happened that that was how I'd worked since high school, I had actually, generally in high school, I was staying up late, going to sleep for 4 hours, going to school, coming home and sleeping for another 4 hours and then getting up. Which was an odd schedule for a high school student, and I don't recommend it. But I was basically already doing this.

Ali

Yeah, that makes little sense. This is something I'm starting to look into as well, this idea of everyone has their own, everyone has a specific chronotype in terms of are you a night owl? Are you an early bird, and so on. And so I've got some friends who are really into sports medicine, where they analyze athletes to figure out their optimum performance. So I'm going to try and get one of them on my YouTube channel. So I can have this analysis done for free.

Brandon

I find out really interesting. Because I don't think we really know yet. Right? Like, it seems all very speculative when I read about it. And I don't know how, all I know is that I generally keep falling into the same sleep schedule. I tried to get off of it when I was first married, and my wife was not thrilled by the idea of you know, me going to bed at 4 or 5, and her getting up at 6 for school. And so for a few months, I tried my best and it was just miserable. I did not adjust and eventually she's like, okay, just go back to your schedule. This is miserable for both of us.

Ali

So we've got a couple of questions from the chat that we can take now. So one of them is from Angus, our producer, who is "who was your biggest inspiration in terms of authors and who inspired you to write?"

Brandon

I usually answer this by there's a few authors that were really foundational to me. The first book I read was Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly. And that was the book that worked for me to pull me into it. It's a lesser known novel, and I still really love it. I would say it was more influenced as a writer though by Anne McCaffrey, who is a big fantasy writer at the time. And just that fantastic all around writer, a couple other writers. Guy Gavriel Kay's ability to write single volume epic fantasies just astounded me when I was younger and he still continues to write fantastic things. criminally under red Guy Gavriel Kay for those who don't know, was one of the people who helped Christopher Tolkien put the The Silmarillion together. And to this day, he won't admit how much he had to do with it, even to authors like me, but he was he maybe kind of did for The Silmarillion what I did for the Wheel of Time, Wheel of Time, also another big inspiration for me. It was the first really big epic fantasy series that I got into. And I also usually mentioned an author called Melanie Rawn, she's, again, lesser known these days. But she did some really interesting things with magic systems that I read early on in my career that made me say, you know, I really liked this sort of thing. Maybe I can do something like this.

Ali

Sweet. We've got a question from [...] and he says, "What do you read these days? And how much do you read amongst your other, amongst your writing?"

Brandon

Right. So not as much reading time as I used to have. This is very common for writers. And a lot of my reading also very common for writers is new authors books to potentially give them blurbs, books by my friends who are having books come out that I want to be able to chat with them about their writing. The kind of leaders in the industry that for some reason or another I haven't picked up on and need to read just to know what everyone is reading and student works. And that's kind of, there's very little of me going to the bookstore and being like, oh what came in this month, my reading is almost always targeted. It's like this new book is being a has been acquired. And this this author could really use a boost. Let me see if I liked the book, so I can give them a good review. Or this book is everyone is talking about in the industry. I better know what's going on in that book. So that I know what the trends are. Or one of my students just published a book, I had to read their book, you know, this sort of thing. And keeping just keeping up on my friends books is is a challenge right? My good friends, that and even kind of my writing partners at times keeping up on all the things they're doing is almost a full time job unto itself. So I did, I can give you a recommendation. Probably the best book I read last year, it's not out yet. It was Andy Weir's new book, he wrote the Martian. He's got a new book coming out in May, called Project Hail Mary. And I just loved it, I got an early copy of that. And that was more of a rare sort of thing where I really liked his work. So I just got an early copy and read it. Because rather than he doesn't really need me boosting him, he's got Matt Damon based on his books and stuff like that so, but I just wanted to read it. And so that's author privilege. I got to grab early books now and then of things that I like.

Ali

Nice. I've just pre-ordered it on Amazon. So thank you for that recommendation.

Brandon

Yeah, if you like the Martian, you will like this. It's more science fictiony it's more like a more hard science fiction, which I really appreciated. Like, I love the Martian, don't get me wrong, but this is a little bit more, more hard science fictiony. And it also has, I think, a more interesting character. The character for The Martian is really fun. This character, Andy stretching a little bit, working, you know, doing something a little bit harder, and it pays off in the book. I really enjoyed what he did with the character

Ali

when you're reading a book, so like, when I'm reading a book, like an epic fantasy or something, I am not reading it with a very critical kind of eye. I'm just sort of enjoying it. And it's a page turner. I'm like, Oh, this is really cool. And like, Oh, my God, like, this is such an epic moment. How does your reading of these sorts of books change given that you're a writer?

Brandon

Yeah, it changed quite a bit, particularly early in my career. And I stopped really being able to enjoy books in the same fun way I had enjoyed them before. And that was rough for a while, you'll find this with a lot of writers, right in their kind of journeymen stage as a writer. They're having trouble getting through books, and then you kind of come out the other side changed. At least for me, what happened is, I gained kind of this, this grand appreciation for the art form of storytelling that I didn't have before. And now, the biggest changes, I don't finish books that I'm not getting anything out of. And when I was younger, I just I finished everything. Even if I didn't like the book. Now I put it down. If I don't, that's a big change. But now I spend my time kind of impressed and in awe of the writer skill and being like, wow, I can't believe they pulled that off. Oh, that's a really interesting thing to try in this type of book. Basically, it's me hopefully learning from them, but also just kind of appreciating the craftsmanship of storytelling. They're just going into their books. And I really enjoy that I find it more satisfying, and in many ways, um, and I appreciate books kind of differently. But I have lost kind of just that, that wonder that was to reading when I was younger. And that happens to a lot of people as you become a professional. Same thing in like, you know, video games or movies, you spend too much time working on movies. And you instead of seeing the movie, you'll see the shot that cinematographers setting up and be like, wow, that's a really interesting shot. If you're thinking that the movie is not working at its core for the reason it's supposed to work on you. But it can work on a different level. And that hasn't really happened to me with movies, like while I'm watching the movie, I just love and appreciate the movie. Afterward, I do a lot of analysis in my brain kind of talking to myself about the story and stuff. But during it, I tend to still just get caught up in the storytelling.

Ali

So one book I have on my desk at all times is Austin Kleon's Steal Like an Artist. I don't even come across it. How do you think about like other fantasy writers and like getting inspiration from them and also vice versa. Like, you're such a huge name in fantasy that lots of people are probably now massively inspired by you. So how do you think about that in terms of like, ideas and collaboration and plagiarism and all that kind of stuff?

Brandon

Yeah. So I think in general, authors worry a little too much It's exactly the same with for example, YouTube, as well. Like I teach a lot of about coming off as derivative and things like this. Now your early books are gonna feel really derivative that does happen. Like my first unpublished book, feels very derivative. But, you know, this is why we don't publish our first books. And it's really okay. Like, I am never going to fear like, I'm not one that's afraid of being plagiarized, right? Authors develop their own voices and people how to do well on YouTube. And it really is this case of, you know, look their own ways of doing thing. If you give two authors the same concept, they will come up with wildly different books. And I think that really the way that human creativity works is recombination, we remix. That's what we're really good at. We don't, we don't come up with a new wholesale creature, we put a horn on a horse. And like, look at that, that's cool. That's like how we create just kind at other people that you like the videos or figure it out, figure out what it is of on a fundamental level, we don't imagine a color that we've never seen. Our brains on equipped for that. What we can do is we can imagine, you know, something that is usually one color with a different color and kind of play with that, and theme and things like that. So I do think that you do have to be worried about a little bit about being derivative, but not terribly much. In my class with my students, I talk about the difference between what I call a "Chef and a Cook" I am a Cook when it comes to actual food. This means you give me a recipe, and I can follow it and generally get the thing that I'm supposed to be making. But if I do something wrong, or if I haven't accounted for something, I have no idea how to fix it, right? If the recipe just doesn't turn out, I'll have just no clue, a Chef would be able to say, oh, you're at a different elevation that causes this effect. That's why this bake turned out differently. You need to do this, this thing and this and tweak this, or your butter was melted. And you know, it was too melty. And so you got this result, as a writer, I encourage my students to try to think of themselves like chefs rather than cooks, which is train yourself to look at something you love, and break it down to why you love it on a fundamental level, and then rebuild it into something that is your own. And I think that's just a very useful skill for creators to have. And this is where, you know, you start to make these connections where you're like, wow, buddy cop movie, and a romantic comedy often have the same plot structure. Why is that? What are we? What are we loving about these things? How can I use an element from that? What is a heist, I love heist movies can I create, and you end up with something really cool, like Inception, which is a heist, but unlike any you've ever seen, it follows the heist beats really well. But it still feels wholly original. Because you know, Christopher Nolan and his brother have broken this thing down and looked at what they really love about what makes a heist work. And then they've created their own version of it that does something new and original. And that's, you can learn to do that if you can learn to, to boil it down to what you love and take that core element and build something new around it, you will be a successful storyteller, I am convinced. about those things that you like, and then think about incorporating those into your thing into your own videos. And not worrying too much about like originality at the start. Because in your quest to be like, you know, someone else that you like, you'll end up finding your own voice and kind of doing it your own way. Yeah, I actually kind of noticed this in YouTube, I like the kind of infotainment YouTube quite a bit. And the video essays and things like that. And years ago, Bill Wurtz dropped a kind of history of Japan video. And then it was wildly successful. It's this awesome piece of media, it's really innovative and interesting. And then he just basically didn't do anything more like that. Well, like, you know, five, seven years later, wherever we are now, there's like entire channels that are based around these kind of comedic retelling of factual events. That kind of oh, their DNA, to Bill Wurtz doing this thing, and it being really successful. And then just, you know, he wants to go off and make music. And so he does that instead. And it they all feel different, they all feel original. And they're all feeling this hole that nobody knew that they wanted, but they did. And it's kind of been fun to really watch that. And a few of them even acknowledge hey, I watched this Bill Wurtz video, no one was making these things. So now I am, I'm doing it. And you know, a lot of these things have hundreds of 1000s of subscribers are making really interesting original content, all because one person made this thing that had such an effect on the market, so to speak, the industry.

Ali

So changing, changing gears a little bit, we talked a bit earlier about the idea of finding something that you're passionate about and going for that and you were kind of lucky in a way because you found this thing writing that you were super passionate about. I'd love to get your thoughts on the other side of the equation, which is finding joy in the things that we're doing. And there was a quote from one of your one of I think, from one of your classes where you said, "success involves making yourself do the things you want to have done." I wonder if you can just kind of riff on that for a little bit.

Brandon

Yeah, I totally can. This is kind of a hobby horse of mine, so to speak a personal philosophy, if you will, like I truly enjoy writing, but it is also still work, right? And there are parts of it, I like less than other parts. And the part I like the most is writing the end, and then letting people read the book, the experience of knowing people now get to read this thing that I've created. That's like, you know, that's just, that's the top, that's what I want to do. But to get there, I need to spend between 6 and 18 months working on a story in a dedicated, very slow and steady way, in order to have this thing that I can show to people in some of those days, I'm really going to love working on it. And I'll most of those days, I'm going to be like once I get into it, I'm really enjoying it. But I have to force myself to start working, right? As much as I enjoy writing, playing another game of Civilization would probably be more pure dopamine hit joy, than working on my books. And so I've kind of looked at my career and how I made myself do stuff. Early in my career before I got published, it was a stick instead of a carrot. I saw, I joked that I saw a phantom cubicle chasing me. And if I didn't write my books, I was going to have to let it capture me and spit me out as a salesman or something like that. But very quickly, that stopped being a good motivation for me. And what started working was me realizing I love watching numbers count up on a spreadsheet. And the simple fact of keeping track of my daily word count would make me more likely to write the next day, because I like seeing myself inch closer and closer to that goal of finishing something and finishing, it was so satisfying, that I was able to kind of defer that and be like, each day, I have finished something, and the percentage counts up. And I'm that much closer to being finished. And that works really well for me, we talked about gamification, that's a bit of a, you know, experienced bar gamification. At times in my life, a carrot has worked also, it stopped working as soon as I got even a little bit of success. Early before I you know, when I was newer and younger, could be like, my nerd hobby is Magic The Gathering, right? And I could be like, you know, I can open a pack of magic cards, if I finished my work for whatever this week or whatever, I can open up one of these packs and look at my new cards. Once I achieve success, to the point that a pack of magic cards was no longer like I could buy 100 packs each day, and it wouldn't noticeably affect my bank account, the carrot stop being effective for me. And fortunately, I had this whole structure in place by then once it became a career. Because, you know, earlier in my career, one of the things that was interesting is that my writing time was in many ways more precious. Because I only had those few hours at night. And during the day, I wouldn't be able to write. Too much school going on homework, all these things. And so at when midnight rolled around at work at the hotel, and I had that time to write, that was precious time to me. And before I got that job, I even it was even more precious because I couldn't write at work. And so I'd have like an hour, you know, a week or things like this, where it's just like this time is my golden time and I cherished it. It became harder to write when I got more time in some ways. Because suddenly, writing time was not a precious commodity in the same way. And so having, basically, I talked about learning to hack your brain, find out what motivates you on a day to day basis. And figure out how your brain works. And the things you can do kind of to trick yourself into doing what you want to have done. Because if you do this the right way, the days become very satisfying. And you'll notice like for me if I get my word count, and then I get to go play a video game for a couple of hours. And I've also spent three hours with my kids playing their games or doing things with them. And a couple hours, my wife doing what she wants to do. When I retire for the day. I just feel incredibly fulfilled, right? Like I've got good family time. I've gotten so much of my work done because I've made myself do it. I haven't had a few hours just to goof off and you know recently it was playing Bowser's Fury on the Switch, right? I'm like, hey, my kid bought this let's let's play an old school Mario game. And you know, it's a really light good balance for me. Other people work in different ways. There are people who that bingeing is better. There are binge writers are like I need three months to write a book and you do nothing else during that time and then I spent the other nine months of the of the year just kind of gearing up for the next book doing some revisions and things like this. That's not me. Slow and steady, make every day satisfying, don't put off to be like, I'll be happy in the future. Be happy now by making good work life balance and spending time with family. And you know what, it is just pretty wonderful. I highly recommend getting to a place in your life where you are feeling like that when you go to bed each day.

Ali

Yeah, it's, it's kind of funny because often if I'm interviewed on a podcast or something, and I'm talking about this topic, the line that I just land on is "journey before destination." And I think that's just that's just such a good like mantra for life. And it seems like you're really kind of living that yourself.

Brandon

Yeah, a lot of artists and writers I know, they do not have a good balance in life. And people often come to me, and they're like, why are you so prolific? And I'm really not, if you look back at the the highly prolific writers during the pulp days when it was if they didn't turn in their pages, you know, they get paid by the word. So they turned in their pages, and the pay was not good. These people were doing way more than me. But I feel like we artists just don't tend to have good structures in life built around helping them get to a productive, effective long term productivity, right? That other businesses do, they kind of understand this. And, you know, there's like this entire culture at places like Google centered around, let's make sure that you remain productive for a long time. And writers have to be self motivated. No one's there telling you do your work, like, you don't have a lot of external motivation. My roommate in college, Tom, he picked his major by looking at which majors earn the most with only a four year degree, he didn't want to go to professional school or to get an advanced degree, what would be the highest earning and at that time, at the school, we went to, it was chemical engineering, so he just pick that. And they had a very rigid schedule for four years, if you wanted to be a chemical engineer, like every class was picked for you, and you were taking these classes, I assume you maybe had some of this in your life where it's like, you know, you try really hard to get a 65% on the test. Because that's, you know, that's gonna be a B, you're gonna be fine. Where I'm over here in English, where, you know, we're dancing through fields and flowers and talking about our feelings and reading Jane Austen. And nobody is saying, you know, here's what you do to actually turn into an author, they're all just kind of talking about our feelings. And, you know, if you get 65 on a test, then you're just like, mortified. Like, that's just not okay. And these two different worlds couldn't be more opposite. And I think a lot of artists are in this kind of thing, particularly writers, because even in the visual arts, you end up with people who can kind of counsel more, but so few people understand how to make a living as a writer, you end up with all these people just kind of bumbling through it on their own. And it's no wonder that they don't have, you know, good work life balance and things like this. Because how do you build habits like this, when no one talks about it? When everyone says, what you do is you feel your inner muse. And then when your inner muse speaks to you, you let it out, and this color flows onto the page. That's how you write a book. And you sit in these classes, you're like, okay, but then what, right? And so, anyway, I feel like writing has a lot of dysfunctional people who are, or function they're good, you know, they're trying very hard, but their lives through no fault of their own become very dysfunctional.

Ali

Yeah, there's a quote that I think, again, from one OF your YouTube videos, which was probably from one of your classes, which is that you think of yourself as an artist with the work ethic of an accountant. Is that fair to say?

Brandon

Yeah, my mom was an accountant. Before she retired, and she taught me good work ethic when I was young, and she doesn't understand fantasy novels. She kind of she reads my books because they're mine. But she trained me in a really solid work ethic. Like I had a job when I was 14. And it was paper out right like a little self employed thing. And there were she was setting up you know, these kind of ways that I go about it, how I accounted I had to account it myself, kid have an accountant, right? and I applied a lot of that to becoming a writer, because I am more ahead in the clouds type person than I am naturally an accountant but I had that really good training as a kid, and it has served me very well.

Ali

Yeah, I think for a lot of people, it's a bit like, for all of us is really this balance of like, how can we make like, how can how can we make the stuff that we're doing more fun so that we actually do it. In a way it does need us to talk ourselves into doing it. Like, there's a lot of times where I can't be bothered to film a YouTube video, but I do it anyway. And then once I get started, I'm like, Oh, you know, this is kind of fun, because I like the sound of my own voice. And then when I'm done with it, I'm like, oh, this is great. And I've just done another video. And I'm so glad I forced myself to do it at that, and that early stage. And I think if you fall off at that early stage, then things don't necessarily work.

Brandon

Yeah, yeah, totally. And this is so important in doing any sort of self motivated, artistic, or creative pursuit. Like YouTube, though, you know, we could talk for hours, I don't want to go down this path. But I do think there are some dysfunctional things about the way that we treat work in society. And the way that we, like, I worry a lot about, you know, what we do to doctors to be relevant. There's this sense that I don't know how it is, where we're you live, but over here, it's like, your first 10 years are going to be miserable. But then life will be good after that, you're going to work these in incredible shifts, and it's like, we have to make the doctors feel pain, to make sure that they deserve than having a higher than standard living wage later on. I just think that's a terrible idea. I think it's an awful thing to be training people, I think it's awful, to be training people that they want to become attorneys, that they're going to have to go through hell in order to end up being an attorney. And that's the way we gatekeep who gets to become our attorneys is the people that are willing to suffer through hell, I think it's just terrible. And I also kind of think that in general business practices, making, one of the things that makes us want to work is ownership. And I don't know that people are proportionally rewarded for their work, and a lot of businesses. And it's important to me, for instance, that my kind of full time employees and partners, they have, you know, a percentage of what I make as a bonus every year, and even though it's kind of smaller, it's real. And they are part of this when, you know, my art director is working on a book. And, you know, he's pouring his creative energy into making this book, it is his passion, as much as it is mine, even though I you know, I've done the bulk of the words, like he is lending his true genuine artistic talent to doing the maps and the symbols and the things. This is Isaac Stewart, he deserves a cut of that not just you know, a salary in my opinion. And I think that we disproportionately reward in our society based on where someone falls in a certain ladder and things like that. But that's a different conversation. But it's so hard to feel investment for something you're working on, when they say you're part of our family, or things like this, which is very common in corporate speak over here. But you don't get a cut of the profit. You're just part of our family isn't a great word of family. And, you know, people need to be allowed ownership over the things that they create, because that is how one of the reasons we feel fulfilled is this thing that we have created that we're part of, is making people's lives better in some way.

Ali

Yeah, absolutely. Just on that note, one thing, one thing I'm curious about, because I've been thinking about this for my team, sort of who's helping me with the kind of the YouTube in the business and stuff. Do you do the sort of percentage of profits overall from the business? Or is it like on a per project basis or like, how do you work this out for you and your team.

Brandon

So for my team, it is I basically have two baskets. The first basket is kind of what I call my "officers". These are the people who've been with me for a long time, they work for me full-time. And they're involved basically, in everything I'm doing to some extent or another. And these people get a percentage off of the net that the company mix, basically, it's what the company is going to pay taxes on or what I'm going to pay taxes on, since it actually just kind of flows through to me the way the company works. So what I pay taxes on, a percentage of that is a yearly bonus that is not counted their salary, I still pay them a salary, going at market rate. And then there's this on top of it. The other basket is the people who work on my store. And these are the people that are kind of doing the online orders or kickstarter, and things like that. And their bonuses are based on store revenue directly rather than the whole books revenue. And so we kind of have those two different baskets for people. And you know, when I hired my very first employee, this is Peter Ahlstrom. He's my editorial director and he had been for years, working with me. And just for free as a friend reading my books and offering feedback and his feedback was just fantastic. He eventually became a professional editor working at TOKYOPOP, bringing manga over to the US and things like that. And I hired him. And I said, you know, I want to give you a percent. Right now the business is not huge. I hope that someday I'll be worth lots. But it's important to me that you know, that your creative energy, because I feel that accountants are creative, I feel that, that editors are creative. Like, it's a different kind of creativity. My mom always says, I'm not creative at all, like, the way that you have set up your life is super creative. And right from the get go, I said, I think this is important. I feel like I wouldn't want to be involved in something unless I was saying part ownership to me. And that percentage is actually theirs to pass on to their descendants. Like it's not just, you know, a wage working for me, it is like they have built with me this business, and a piece of it is theirs. And that's every time I've gone. You know, usually it takes a few years of someone working here before I invite them on as an "officer" and things like that. But it is the way that I approach my business. And you know what I think it is the moral way. And I'm not saying that there aren't other businesses that do this, they do this with stock and a lot of companies, it's totally, it totally happens. I just feel like it doesn't happen on the extent that perhaps it should. It's like you have to fight for these things as a worker, rather than it being offered directly to you. I don't like this sort of community where people don't talk about their salaries. And corporations try to get whatever they can out of the people working for them. This is just not a good way to have productive fulfilled people working for the company. Then there's my diatribe, diatribe out, you know, I basically barely know what I'm talking about. I have like, you know, 20 employees, what do I know about large scale corporate sort of things. But as a small business owner, these are my philosophies.

Ali

On the note of money. One thing I'm curious about, so you sold Elantris when you were 30 for like a few $1,000. And now you're like phenomenally successful, like, at what point did you get to the point where you didn't really have to worry such think about money anymore?

Brandon

So my income basically doubled every year until it plateaued at my current state. And I would say that it was right around that, you know, the 20,000 mark, every like contract, I did double, it wasn't a yearly double, if that makes sense. The 20,000 mark, not enough, right? I'm right about when I was at that 80,000 I was starting to be like, Alright, I feel good. Because what people don't know is 80,000 probably sounds like a lot, to a lot of people there. But that's 80,000 minus 15% to the agent, minus 7 and a half percent self employment tax. Minus because I'm in the states and we're weird and dumb over here minus healthcare, right? Once you minus all of that stuff, then suddenly you are at kind of a normal, comfortable. That's where I felt comfortable, where I'm like, if I can make this for the rest of my life, I can make this work. I can have a modest house, I can support a family. We're good. When it started to hit that like 300,000 mark, that's when I'm like, oh, suddenly, money is just irrelevant to me, to it starts there. And actually, early on, right around the like 40,000 a year mark, I went got a financial planner, and I said, I'm in a volatile field, I want to get to where I am completely self independent. And I want to be there, you know, I want to be there if I can possibly make it. I want to be there by like 60, right? I'm a little earlier than most people and things like that. I made it at about 37 maybe even a little younger than that, where we had saved enough and we've had this plan and we put everything into it, that if no more money came in, I could live with a modest house and a kind of normal lifestyle for the rest of my life presuming I lasted into my 90s and never have to worry about money again. And that was hugely freeing. That's, you know, a smaller amount than you might think because really, if you own your house because another thing we're doing is paying off our house which strictly monetary does not make sense. You can probably invest that money and do better against your interest rate. But there's a certain peace of mind to being an artist who knows that you don't have a house payment. You can live on this a budgeted amount, you know, for a single car, and this much food and saving, you know, for you've already, you know, one of the things I put in is like kids futures and stuff like that, when that's all taken care of, that's basically when I quote unquote, retired, that's when I no longer ever had to take a contract I didn't want or things like that. And I was working kind of solely for myself, and for the joy of creating something. And that, like I said, that hit pretty early in my career, relatively 30 you know, it took me seven or eight years, I would guess. But I had a string of a very fortunate occurrences, right? Being able to write on The Wheel of Time was just a huge, a huge boon to me in my life. And I would have done that for free. Because number one, I love the books growing up. And number two, I knew is a basically a chance to put my business card into the pockets of several million fans of epic fantasy. People talk about exposure, being worthless. That is most people who try to take you to take exposure for work are indeed trying to scam you. But there are certain opportunities that legitimately are worth it. But because Harriet, who is Robert Jordans widow is like a good person and things like this, they paid me a very generous salary on top of that, you know, like, the exposure. They paid me like they were paying someone to finish The Wheel of Time. And that money upfront went into those bank accounts and was what made me financially independent. And I will always be thankful to Harriet, because she knew I would have done it for free. And she wasn't willing to let me do that. And it was wonderful. And so just some good financial planning mixed with and legitimately super lucky windfall in my career and life turned me into someone who no longer has to worry about money.

Ali

Nice. Given that you're, you're in this position of financial independence, to what extent do you still care about making money?

Brandon

So, it's kind of weird, right? Like, money really doesn't matter that much. But at the same time, one of the things like my quest right now, what you asked me what is my quest right now, I have two main quests in life. One is to finish the cosmere sequence and, you know, bring this vision which is only about halfway done, to my fans and make good on my promises to them. Starting it. For those who don't know, Cosmere is like the interconnected universe of my books. And the second one is aspiring to create something that has large scale cultural significance, which is a level beyond where I am, right? If you if you look at the people that I aspire toward, it's people like George Martin, who are like a step above me and I've had, like, I'm very well known in the community, people love my books, I would be totally happy staying where I am for the rest of my career. But there is a level up, which is having cultural significance on the level that George managed to have. And some people like him have managed to have. And that's not going to happen until I get a mass media project, film or television show. And the sales and the money are the things that let me do that. And let me do it my way. And so right now, all of this basically exists for a couple of purposes. And one of the main ones is to be able to say no to bad movie deals and have the resources and means to make good movie deals actually happen, and to be involved in them. And so at that point, that's kind of where it's going right now. And, you know, I'm still kind of relatively new to being this successful. Like, it's like The Way of Kings 2010. And it was the last book that didn't chart really high on the bestseller list. It did fine, it was Words of Radiance, where things just started to explode. And so it's been less than 10 years that I have had the level of means that I have now that I kind of have plateaued at this amount. And I'm kind of putting that toward that sort of project. And, you know, making the company better like you know, we're installing a pool that's going to be a company pool, and things like that, you know, there are some things that I'm doing just to be like, hey, guys, do you guys want a swimming pool? Let's put in a swimming pool. Do you guys want a movie theater? Let's put in a movie theater. My classes actually broadcast from the movie theater right now or to my students not, you can watch the on my YouTube channel, we're slicing up bits of it and put out so you want to get a glimpse of the theater that we're putting in. But you know, that sort of thing. They're definitely fun things I'm doing with it as well.

Ali

Sick. I know we're on the hour. But if you've got a few more minutes, I've got a few more questions from the chat and some stuff, I'd love to ask you. Okay, so with the book that I'm writing, I, annoyingly, I'm annoyingly looking at the goal of hitting the New York Times bestseller list. I feel dirty admitting it. Because a lot of authors that I've seen interviews would say, there's a lot of baggage associated with having the goal of I want in a New York Times bestseller. What was that like for you hitting the list? And do you think it's a reasonable goal for someone like me to have in my sights? Or should I, because I feel like it kind of conflicts with the journey before destination, which has become one of my mantras for life.

Brandon

Well, you know, I don't think it is a bad goal for you to have. And I'll tell you why. Journey before destination doesn't mean don't think about the destination. Goals of where we want to get, like, yes, you need to enjoy the process of writing the book, you know, or you'll never get to that destination. But the goal is to have a finished book, right? There is a goal there. And for a lot of new authors, I would say don't have hitting the list as a goal on your first book, because you can't control that. But you can you have an audience, you're already established, you're doing a nonfiction book tied into what you actually you do on your YouTube channel. This is a very reasonable goal. In fact, I think it is well within the means. And it is something that can help you to make the decisions during the journey toward what you want to accomplish. And understanding the list and how it happens and things like that is handy in this regard. And so, yeah, hitting the list the first time, it was very, it was a very gratifying moment. Because once you hit the list once you are a best seller for life, right? You have been a best seller. And that's really cool. The kind of companion to that, though, is that hitting the list is a different thing than a lot of people think it is. Books don't generally sell as many copies, particularly during the what we call the "mid-list" or the high, the low bestsellers, or the high mid lists that people think. So in fiction hardcover, to get the very bottom of the list in the years where I was breaking in, you needed about 2000 copies in a week to get onto the list. that was kind of your threshold. Because like a very successful mid Lister would sell 20,000 copies total in its life in hardcover that was considered really successful. Elantris sold 10,000, right? For a brand new author, that was really good. In fact, that's kind of one of the at least during that era was one of the thresholds, if you were selling 10,000 copies in hardcover, you would never be dropped by your publisher, you would always have a career that was considered a successful mid list book, you would probably even start hitting the bestseller list as your name grows, more people front load, and the list is all about front loading. Right? You can have books that do very well. But you know, they're selling 1900 copies a week, and therefore never hitting the list. But they do it for 50 weeks and end up out selling the books that hit the list, right? List is a measure of momentum, not a measure of total sales. And so I'm having momentum, this is why it's totally valid that you would want to hit the list. I don't know what it is a nonfiction, by the way. And I don't know it has changed over the years. Like the list is always undergoing these revolutions and things. When I broke in. There were 25 places on the New York Times bestseller list in fiction. I don't know if they're still 25 places, right? And I hit like number 25 with like 2200 copies or something like that. And so it can vary. to get the top spots in fiction during a competitive month on The New York Times. You need probably 120,000 copies in a week. Bu this is kind of weirdly changed by ebook plus hardcover. You know, it used to be just the hard covers. Now they have a separate list. That's ebooks, and hardcovers, but it doesn't count audio books. But this other list does 10 audio books and things like that. The New York Times list was really opaque for many years, and no one kind of knew how they were picking their books. And then the Nielsen ratings for books started happening. And at least in fiction, the New York Times list pretty much follows the actual sales numbers as recorded in the Nielsen ratings these days, it may be different in nonfiction, more shenanigans happened in nonfiction, there are more people who, like have platforms and know how to use them and also have means behind them to perhaps game the list a little bit. I don't think that happens as much as people talk about it happening. I think theexamples of it happening are notable enough they catch people's attention, and they talk about it, but you'd have to ask some nonfiction people what it takes to hit the list but in a non competitive month, back before ebooks, 22,000, could hit you number 1 in a week. This was in January or February, and I know of one author in sci-fi fantasy who hit number 1, one time by strategically placing his book in the month that he already had a following. And so if you have a following your book, The month doesn't matter as much, you still kind of generally want to release around the holidays. But if you release in, quote unquote, a bad month, but you already have a following, it's not really gonna hurt you the way it will hurt a brand new author. And so they strategically placed their book there, and they hit number 1 with a good campaign and they legitimately sold the copies, they didn't do any shenanigans, but it was very strategic, what month they released the book and so from then on, that author could always put number one New York Times bestseller on the cover of their book. And so just being kind of strategic about some things like that, and having your audience saying to them, look, if you're going to buy the book, I did this a lot in my career, it doesn't matter anymore to me, but early in my career. So if you're thinking of buying the book, buying it opening week will help the most because if everyone buys at the same week, you chart higher on the list, a lot of bookstores then put you in favorable placement in the bookstores. And you get on these like charts and things like that, which generates its own attention. And it helps sells quite a bit to have momentum at the beginning. But, you know, that's kind of like something you really only have to have happened once. Well, really twice once to get on the list once to hit number 1 if you can. And then those two things just are there. But the other thing that said that's a part of this. Sorry, I'm blabbing on this so long

Ali

This is good stuff.

Brandon

Being a best seller means less than it used to, because of Amazon, right? And Amazon has their sales ranks, which their actual bestseller list, they don't count that, sales ranks is the best seller. But bestsellers a generic term. And so there are a lot of people can you can release like a book in, you know, the subcategory mysteries with involving cats happening in the 1800s, right? And you can just hit number 1 in your category pretty easily if you work on it, and be that for a couple of hours, and then you're a number 1 best seller. And so the New York Times part is actually the important part, in a lot of ways, and Amazon's bestseller list does not actually count that. They kind of count like the Nielsen's do they count it for a whole week and things like that. But their best seller is a term that has lost a lot of meaning. And even in the early days, it didn't quite mean what people thought it mean because it means sales momentum. And before the Nielsen ratings, it was sales momentum, plus the books that the New York Times thought should be bestsellers that maybe weren't. So there were definitely shenanigans it's all, this is what your readers or your viewers should keep in mind and ever should keep in mind. It is a marketing term. Best Seller is a marketing term. And it is used like a matte marketing term. It is not a stamp of quality. But it is when it's working right a stamp of momentum that a book has.

Ali

Okay, it's a reasonable goal to have but enjoy the journey along the way. How much does charting high on the list matter to you these days, if at all?

Brandon

Doesn't matter that much. I don't really stress it. And it depends on the list right? Like the Sunday Times I've never hit number 1 on. I would like to hit number 1. That's the UK's main list. The UK is different from the US in that they have fewer lists, and so it's harder to hit high on those lists. Like if lists are combining fiction and nonfiction. The USA Today list for instance does this it's much harder to hit the number 1 list because you're competing against a wide different you know, you're competing against diet books, which can be really hard to compete against in the holidays. If you're releasing epic fantasy books instead, it would be fun to hit the Sunday Times list. Like that's the one that I haven't gotten yet. I think I've gotten all the other ones. But that's historically one of the hardest lists to hit. So Sunday Times actually means a little bit more than New York Times does. New York Times does this thing where they kind of split into like, there's a paperback list and there's a they consolidated recently, they used to have a nonfiction and a separate business nonfiction list. And you know, if they had all these lists of there could be like, 20 number ones in a week, which dilutes the value of number one a little bit. And, but, you know, we enjoyed it, because more people can hit number one, which is. You know, I'd like to hit number one, but I'm not going to lose sleep about not hitting number 1, because the truth is that if I didn't hit number 1, it's because, it's not because I sold less, it's because somebody else sold more, which is totally fine, right? Like, hey, good for them, they're selling books. As long as my fans are happy, and the books aren't, you know, crashing in sales numbers, I'm not going to worry about what number they happen to be. But it would also be pretty hard for me to not hit number 1, at least the times and fiction, because when I'm releasing, particularly a Stormlight book, people do not release that same week. You know, if George we're gonna ever release is the next Song of Ice and Fire. The publishers just aren't going to put a book that they hope will hit number one in that week. And they kind of all dodge one another because there's enough list and enough variety that they can be like, Ooh, this books coming out here, let's put it out a different week. So that we don't have to go up against, you know, a Stormlight novel to get number one. And, you know, the days of me and John Grisham fighting over number one just don't happen anymore, because we're like, we'll just have Grisham have his week, and Sanderson have his week, and that'll be fine.

Ali

Sick. We've got a lot of questions from the chat. And this is something I'm very curious about, as well as changing gears. What's your like, technology stack when it comes to writing? Like, what are the tools that you use to this.

Brandon

So I am fairly low tech, Microsoft Word is my writing platform of choice. The only tool that I use that a lot of people don't use is I do have a wiki. It's a personal wiki. It's an open source software program called Wicked Pad. And it's for me and my team, to keep track of continuity in the cosmere books. And that's only inward facing that's not outward facing fans can't go to that. But it is there. It's not even on the internet, right? It's hosted locally just for us. And that is really handy. I find the wiki way of thinking just it's easy to look things up. It's easier than encyclopedia entries for me, and whatnot. So I do recommend that but I write the books in Microsoft Word, I'm pretty old school. You know, start with word one and right to the end of the chapter, sort of stuff. And then I usually have a notes file, that's a separate file, and then an outline file that's a separate file. And then what I call Floating Outlines, the short term outline and the stuff I'm doing immediately next, as a separate file.

Ali

And purely. So, again, shifting gears, purely out of my own curiosity, to what extent do you look at like 17th Shard people sort of fan theories about what's going to happen in future books? And to what extent does that like guide your decision making about what's gonna happen in future books?

Brandon

You know, I don't spend a lot of time with that. I understand it, I was part of that for the Wheel of Time fandom. I went to those sites and things like that before I was long before I was involved, and I totally get it, I am happy those people are there. I like that they're making lots of interesting theories. But you know, I have learned from, let's just say, I've seen what other authors have done, and it's generally I recommend against changing what you're going to do, because people are theorizing in the right or wrong direction, either way. And I kind of have this thing that if you do your job well as a writer, that means that upcoming twists and turns are foreshadowed and nothing's completely out of nowhere. Except for you know, there's the occasional sort of thing that's supposed to be a surprise to the characters like you know, an unexpected illness or death can happen in any book, right? You don't have to necessarily foreshadow that but plot twists and turns in general I am going to lay foundation for and big world building surprises that might be surprises to the casual reader just will not be surprises to the endtrenched reader. This kind of plays into my philosophy on world building, I have this thing I call "fractal world building". I like world building where big picture, someone who is a casual fan who reads the book is able to see the big picture and understand it, and someone who wants to dig in deep. The closer they zoom, you know, fractal gets more detailed, the more you look at it, that's kind of one of the features, the more detail you look at the world building, the more interesting things you find, to explore and to talk about. So it's kind of this two prong thing. Don't make it so obtuse, that the casual fan is lost. But don't make it so simple and surface level that there's nowhere to dig, and try to do both at once, if you can, very, very easy to understand on the large scale, very complex under the hood, so to speak. And because of this, I'm just not going to surprise this people because I want them to figure it out. I want it to be there for them. And I've learned that it's madness to try to trick them just for the fact of "Haha, you didn't expect that." That just not how I work. I don't think ultimately that's going to create a satisfying series is like trading off the long term satisfaction of your series for the short term, being able to punch someone in the face and not have them see it coming. So I do read them on occasion I', amused when they're right, I'm more amused when they're way off. But there's basically no big twist in my books that somebody hasn't theorized on one of the websites. And I don't spend a lot of time looking at them. So I see them casually just you know, on my front page of Reddit, which means that I'm doing my job to an extent I just hope those hardcore fans are vindicated and feel satisfied rather than feeling I saw this coming years ago. Now I'm not interested anymore. That's just what I have to.

Ali

Absolutely. And we've got [...]

Brandon

It actually plays into, there's different ways of of creating interest in your story. And an illustration of this is the book Dune, which is an omniscient and often will play its cards face up, meaning if you have a, if he has a twist coming, he will not just foreshadow it, you'll have the character that's going to betray them in their thoughts. Think about man, it's going to suck when I betrayed these people. Rather than depending on the twist, Frank Herbert depends on the suspense of you knowing what's going to happen and feeling like you're like, oh, no, how are the characters going to respond to that? And there's a lot of depth to that kind of emotion. And that's one thing that I think writers could practice a little bit more. How is your book going to work? If there were no twists. Don't make the twist a gimmick, make it work, because the reader is really, really interested in this twist, the effect on the characters, and how they're going to respond. You're gonna have a better story in that case. Don't subvert expectations, just to subvert expectations. Subvert expectations, because it's going to have an interesting effect on the characters and the readers will be more engaged because of it.

Ali

Yeah, like you kind of did that with Taravangian, where you see his thoughts and feelings. I was very surprised when that was happening. I was like, oh, wow, he's telling us that Taravangian like, you know, is a bit of a snake.

Brandon

Yup.

Ali

And then he hit them with the end of Book Four, I was like bloody hell.

Brandon

Yeah. No spoilers. Yeah. Here's a big thing [...] Book Four. Yeah. And Book One. I, you know, we did a few chapters, but it's not a big spoiler, because I don't consider it a spoiler, it's not a big surprise reveal. It's instead of, oh, this is scary short of reveal. And that's what I was trying with that. So anyway, I'm glad that that worked for you.

Ali

It's like within my Whatsapp group of your fans and sort of my friends at university. Anytime one of us gets to towards the end of one of your books, there's always like, OMG, OMG OMG. What the fuck? Like, it's like, in their gut, everyone's like, yep, that's the end of Way of Kings or yep, that's the end of Words of Radiance. And it's a incredibly satisfying experience. Cool. Oh, final thing I want to make, so your, my channel is all sort of themed around productivity. You're famous for being a very productive prolific writer. So I wanted to take sound bites from this chat, and make it into a like a, you know, something suitably clickbaity, like interviewing the world's most productive writer or something like that. I wonder if you can just sort of toss out a few other random productivity tips you have because it would be useful to drop into the video. How are you so productive as a writer?

Brandon

Yes, let's see what I got. I feel that writing wise, knowing my destination is really important. I outline backward and I write forward. And I think this is very strong for me. Because I know where I'm going, I always have momentum, because I'm pushing towards something that I think is going to be really exciting. That said, you have to make sure that each chapter can be somebody's favorite. This is one of the mantras of my editorial director, he says, don't write a chapter that can't conceivably be someone's favorite doesn't have to be everyone's favorite. But there should be something in every chapter that some readers can be like, I love this. Don't make any chapter the boring filler, make sure that the boring filler is exciting and interesting in its own right, maybe just a different type of exciting. And I think that works in life as well, right? Make every thing you're doing exciting and interesting to you in some way. Even if it's not your favorite part of the process. I do not like revision very much. Revision is my least favorite part of the writing process. But one of the things I've been able to do to make myself excited about it is I create an outline for my revision, I really liked the outlining process of books. It's one of my favorite parts is this this exploration this world building. So the fun of creating an outline for this is what my revision is going to accomplish. And this is what it's going to look like when I'm done, gives me that same feel for the parts of it that I really love. That makes the revisions more interesting to me, because it's goal based rather than just oh man, I have this broken book I've got to fix. Instead, I've got oh, I get to implement this new thing that's going to make the book so much more interesting. Let's go and do this, that's going to be more exciting. So I really enjoy doing that. One productivity tip I have for creative professionals it's worked very well for me, is I try to make sure that all of my non writing things are segregated into a single day, I have one day's work that I can spend on interviews, that I can spend on meetings that I can spend on working on my class, for instance. All the things that are beside my career, doing YouTube videos, all of this, those all light fall on Thursdays for me, and I have a limited number of hours in a Thursday. And my whole team knows that those hours, that's all they're going to get, we can't let that overflow, because it's very easy to let the non productive things that are still important, overshadow actually creating new content as a creative professional, you could spend forever on publicity. You could spend forever creating all these things, doing all these interviews, and then stop writing books. And so for me, my life got better when I said, I'm just going to like ripping off a band aid, I'm going to do all these things on the same day. And I'm going to limit it to these hours. And now when something comes up that we need to do, that you know, we're like, oh, we totally need to do this. Well, the Thursday is full. So we'll schedule that for next Thursday. And we just have to tell the people, Brandon's next hole in his schedule is that Thursday, and they deal with it, right? People are used to this in the business world. Another important thing to practice and learn as a creative professional is learning to say no, very hard to say no. You want to do every publicity opportunity that arises. You want to say yes. When people write you emails that say, hey, can I take you out to dinner and pick your brain? You just totally want to say yes. Because you know what? You had opportunities like that when you were breaking in, and you want to pay this back to the community. And that's a good instinct. But it's so easy to say yes to the point that you are unable to continue your career. You can't say yes to everyone, and coming up with certain rules and criteria that allow you to say no, is just a really good plan. That when something falls outside of that, you just say you know what, I'm going to say no, they can't do it on a Thursday. I maybe just have to pass on this opportunity as good as it would be because I have too many things already I already to do on the Thursdays. I can't let it take my time on the other things. I have to say I have a blanket I just say no to going out to dinner with fans now. I just can't do it anymore. I used to do it and try to help out but I could be at a meal every hour of every day of the week. I could be signing books every hour of the day for years and not get through everyone's books and so coming up with these rules and saying this is what we do. Brandon like back before COVID we had a Brandon can do one event a month. That's it if the event is already scheduled that month, and someone comes to us and says we really want Brandon, can we do this and that month is scheduled we to say I'm sorry, we can't do this. Brandon is booked that month. And we just go ahead and let that be our rule because there are times in my career, particularly the Words of Radiance era that I've mentioned earlier, when I was starting to explode in popularity, this is where I first hit number 1 on the times list. This is when I was starting to sell, you know, in the hundreds of 1000s of copies, instead of the 10s of 1000s of copies. The publisher was like, we need to push this guy big. He's not just The Wheel of Time thing, like his own career is huge. And the opportunities for promotion just started flying at me and they were high quality. It's like, do you want to fly to Paris for free and speak at the speaking engagement? Yes, I want to go to Paris. I love Paris. Yeah, sign me up. And so we had a couple of years in there were like I was in I was in London, like 4 times, which is you know, for me, like a 11-12 hour flight. And I did like a 32-day tour for the Words of Radiance Tour, which is just insane. And those were like 8 hour, well they weren't 8 hour back then there were like 6 hour signings. And then the more recent ones like the Oathbringer, the signings were 8 or 9 hours. And I really quickly overbooked to the point that it was terrible for my productivity some of those years, because I was just always on the road. These rules have helped me quite a bit in keeping the focus on what I want to do most which is write the books.

Ali

Fantastic. Amazing stuff. That's that's like really good.

Brandon

[...] Writer focus. But that's how the lens through which I see everything.

Ali

Yeah, I've been finding that like, basically all of your writing specific YouTube videos are also very good, just like general life advice, creator advice. It's, you know, it's always interesting. Brandon, thank you so much. This has been an absolute joy. Any final message you'd like to say to the people watching?

Brandon

No, enjoy it, find a way to enjoy it. I think the way your philosophy of let's figure out how to make the things that you need to do more enjoyable is a really good philosophy in life to have.

Ali

Amazing, and I will use that as the quote for the book. All right, thank you so much, Brandon. Thanks, everyone for watching, and we'll see you We'll see you next time. All the best, Brandon. Bye.

Brandon

Bye.

Ali

That's it for this week. Thank you for listening.

Taimur

If you liked this episode, please leave us a review on Apple podcasts on the apple podcast website. If you're not using an iPhone, there's a link in the show notes.

Ali

If you've got any thoughts on this episode, or any ideas for new podcast topics. We'd love to get an audio message from you with your conundrum question or just anything that we could discuss.

Taimur

Yeah, if you're up for having your voice played on the podcast and your question being the springboard for our discussion, email us an audio file mp3 or voice notes to hi@notoverthinking.com.

Ali

If you've got thoughts, but you'd rather not have your voice played publicly, that's fine as well. Tweet or dm us @noverthinking on Twitter, please.