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Questioner

So your Mistborn leatherbounds went out tonight.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. Mistborn leatherbound is coming out.

Questioner

Are there any other plans? When would the next edition be coming out?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, let me talk about these a bit. So, I love the leatherbounds that were released for The Wheel of Time, but they were very limited print-run, and they were very expensive. They were 250 bucks. And so I don't have many of those. I have the ones that I had published, but when I was a kid getting them I would just... drool over these things. When I was a college student. So I went to Tor and said "Would you do leatherbounds of my books?" and they're like "They're just so hard to distributed. Not a lot of bookstores want to carry them?" and I said "Well do you mind if I do one?" for Elantris last year. And we did a leatherbound for $100, which had-- We tried to pull out everything we could do to make something awesome. So these have 24 full-color pages, with all of the different covers from the different foreign editions around the world, some fan art we really like, new color versions of some of the maps, and stuff like that. And so we print those and we did Elantris last year and people really liked it, so we did Mistborn. The fun thing is, some bookstores told me "Yes, we want to have those. No, it's not a pain to carry them..."

But the question is, what are we doing next. So we will do these one a year. They're a lot of effort to put together. We have to contact some twenty different illustrators and buy rights to the covers to include in it. Peter goes through and does a really detailed copy-edit, fixing typos and trying to do stuff like that, making sure that-- Like in Elantris I had said something that-- people traveled a distance that was impossible to travel in the time given, so we tweak things like that. And so it takes a while. We'll do Mistborn 2 next year, then Mistborn 3, and then we'll see where we are. And they should match very nicely on the shelf...

Questioner

Is there eventually going to be a Way of Kings tenth anniversary edition?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, if I have the ability to make it, if Tor doesn’t reverse and shut these down, then yes we’ll make it. My guess is, we will probably release it broken up in a slipcase, sold as one, because I worry about the binding on a nice leatherbound like that. So my guess is we’ll start doing those divided by parts or something like that. We’ll figure it out when we do it.

Questioner

Are you eventually gonna work on getting all of them out in leatherbound?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. One a year is the plan, just kind of, tenth anniversary style.

Brandon Sanderson

If [the Elantris Leatherbound] is popular (and it looks like it will be), then we will do the other books. Our goal will be to have them sell at around the same price, and to make them match on the bookshelf, so you can have an entire Cosmere sequence of leatherbound books.

The goal will be to proceed with the 10th anniversary idea, doing Mistborn: The Final Empire next year, The Well of Ascension the year after, and The Hero of Ages the year after that. From there, Warbreaker would be next. That’s all I’m willing to commit to now, but we would eventually like to do Stormlight in this treatment. (Assuming people like these editions we’re doing.)

Questioner

How do you get illustrators for your leatherbounds?

Brandon Sanderson

My assistant Isaac, who's my art director. He just looks around on the internet, and finds people who are doing really interesting art, and he asks if he can license them. So, if you know an artist, or are an artist, that's done art of my work, you send it to Isaac.

Questioner

How can I get on the waiting list for the leatherbound of The Way of Kings. Because, I know, when it comes out...

Brandon Sanderson

I don't think we're gonna be doing the waiting list for leatherbound Way of Kings.

Questioner

So I'll just have to keep up on it? Keep looking at the website?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. We'll try to make sure that we get enough of them, maybe order a few extra of that one.

Askhundel

Will the Stormlight Leatherbounds look like the Mistborn ones, or something totally different ?

Brandon Sanderson

They'll be split into two volumes each, so they'll be different in that regard. There's a chance they'll come in slipcases, but we'll see if there are any other differences. We're still a few years off of the first one of those.

Questioner

Have you thought about leatherbound Stormlight Archives, how that's gonna work?

Brandon Sanderson

We're gonna print them each in two volumes in a slip case. We probably won't be able to keep those at $100; they may be, like, $150. But they will come with two volumes.

mmSNAKE

There isn't anything story specific I'd want to ask, I wish to discover by reading. I was wondering if Stormlight Archive books are going to get a special edition limited prints from Subterranean Press, like some of your other work?

Brandon Sanderson

Our plan is to do tenth anniversary books of all of the cosmere novels, though right now I plan to put the four Wax and Wayne books into two volumes. (So, sell them as two-in-one.) Likewise, it's possible that the Stormlight books will be better as two volumes each, sold in a slip case together, so that you don't risk ruining bindings by reading them.

Questioner

Do you have any leatherbound plans for the Reckoners series?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, I plan to do Reckoners. What we haven't decided yet is if we'll just do three in one volume. That's what I kind of want to do. My team's like, "We don't know if people will like that as much." So we're just kind of asking around, the fans. You would prefer it in one volume, right? 'Cause, together, they're about this length, right?

Questioner

Maybe the Mitosis side story as well.

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, we definitely would find a place for that.

Oudeis16

I will confess that over the course of my study I learned that we're nearing the 10th Anniversary edition, and that [Brandon] has asked [Peter] to go over the book, take Brandon's notes, and make sure there is a consistent system behind the scenes. Humbly, I do hope that perhaps by at least locating the times in the book when Breath-count is mentioned, I have saved Peter a bit of busy work, if nothing else.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, a more precise system of how many breaths it takes to do X (and the exchange rate, so to speak, with other magic systems) is something on the list to do for Warbreaker 10th anniversary. I have the resources now, with more assistants behind the scenes, to get more precise on this sort of thing than I've done before.

Paleo (paraphrased)

What symbol will be on the Warbreaker leatherbound?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

He referred us to Isaac, who showed us several designs which are not finalized, but they are confirmed as Tears of Edgli.

B1G_If_True_

Is there any updated news on a 10 year anniversary (Hero of Ages?) leather bound book for the holidays?

Do you plan on doing the leather bound books for works outside the Cosmere as well in the future?

Brandon Sanderson

Just that the printer is suffering (another) delay. (I think this might be our third printer, so I'm not sure if we are unlucky, or if this is just how the business works.) We sent it in back in August, but still haven't seen the books. Hopefully they'll come while I'm out on tour, for a December release.

We are thinking we might do Steelheart when it comes around. So there's a chance. We'll see where we sit once Warbreaker is out.

Questioner

Alloy of Law leatherbounds? Have you made any decisions?

Isaac Stewart

Alloy of Law and Shadows of Self will come together. They will be separate leatherbound books, but they will be packaged together, not in a slip case. They will probably be, together, around $150 as a package.

We're gonna try to keep elements of the design from the Mistborn books, so that they look good in a line, but have something that is a little bit different about them.

Because of our contracts, we will not sell them separately.

Brandon Sanderson

I think what we're gonna do... this is your first warning. It's probably gonna be officially in the State of the Sanderson. I think we're going to push back the Words of Radiance leatherbound Kickstarter. Main reason for this being that I'm just- we've been talking about it in March, planning for March for a long time, but we're all- I called my team together and we're all just a little uncomfortable with the idea of doing another Kickstarter when we haven't fulfilled on, you know, enough of our previous ones. 

...

Expect us to be pushing back that Kickstarter. The Words of Radiance one. I would feel a lot more comfortable with it if we have had six months of the Year of Sanderson shipping and if we've had the first of the minis start to go out and we know that the things we're doing people are appreciating and are liking and that we're doing a good job before we ask you to do another one. Expect that announcement in the State of the Sanderson officially, but you get a preview here, on the spoiler stream. Spoiler! For the State of the Sanderson.

Rotten_tacos

Will there be leatherbound editions of The Stormlight Archive anytime soon?

Brandon Sanderson

We do those on the 10th anniversary of the original. So, not for a few years.

havfunonline

Will there be one for Edgedancer? I know if I was buying the leatherbound editions (which I might someday) I'd want any canon novellas in the correct spots on the shelf XD

Brandon Sanderson

Arcanum Unbounded (which contains Edgedancer) will eventually get one.

Questioner

Are you still going to do the ten-year release for this series [Stormlight Archive] as well, for the leatherbound?

Brandon Sanderson

In fact, probably, the plan is to do it as a Kickstarter. The reason for that being, we can offer a few little options of how you'd like it. I'll probably do a novella along with it. There's some people who will just want the novella, some want the story, some want both. So, it's really easy to track on Kickstarter.

So that's the plan. Next summer, if it all works out, we'll do a Kickstarter for it.

Questioner (paraphrased)

You're doing a leatherbound edition of Elantris. Are there any plans for Warbreaker?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

If the leatherbound Elantris does very well, we'd go through the books. So we'd probably do Mistborn next, and then we would get to Warbreaker.

Paleo (paraphrased)

Will the Warbreaker leatherbound contain the Nalthis essay?

Isaac (paraphrased)

No, but the Arcanum Unbounded leatherbound will contain it.

Questioner

Will there be a Hero of Ages leatherbound edition?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, it will be this Christmas. Isaac just turned in the Hemalurgic Table artwork. So we shipped it to the publisher last week, so we should have them in time for Christmas. And the Hemalurgic Table, he knocked that one out of the park. We've been waiting a long time to get that one.

Brandon Sanderson

As we said, we're not gonna do Kickstarters for most of our leatherbounds. But we will probably do one for Words of Radiance.