Another big thing is, Tress of the Emerald Sea, Secret Project 1, is out. There are a lot of ways that you can get this. We are selling a bundle that includes the audiobook, the eBook, and the print book. I’ve always wanted to be able to do this. New York has made it very difficult. I remember being on phone calls with the head of McMillan back in the mid-teens, saying, “Why are we not selling bundles where everyone can buy everything?” They have all sorts of excuses. But I am doing it.

That said, the audiobook for this bundle, we aren’t quite equipped to deliver audiobooks on our own yet. We’re exploring that. But we have a wonderful partner, Spotify. Anyplace where Spotify has podcasts, you should be able to redeem that code that comes with this bundle.

We are also just selling the hardcover by itself. That does come with an eBook. And you can find that here. It’s available anywhere that we ship, which is quite a lot of countries. If you want the audiobook, you can get it, even if Spotify is not in your country, on places like Google Play and Apple Books and things like that. The audiobook is available!

If you’re waiting for a less expensive version of the print book, those are coming out in April through my various publishers. And you can find the Audiobook through various Audiobook retailers, except it is not available on Audible yet. Speaking of that, Mr. Wells is here, because we actually had another book launch last week. And we don’t want this one to get lost in the shuffle of Secret Project 1 because it’s a really cool book.

DAN: “It is. It’s awesome. So the first Dan and Brandon collaboration to enter the wild is called Dark One: Forgotten. I think of it as a prequel to Dark One, even though The Dark One novel is not out. But The Dark One graphic novel is out. This is before that. It is an audio exclusive. Brandon had the really cool idea of presenting this story as if it were a fake true crime podcast. And that is a format that only really works in audio. So it’s an audio original, audio native, and they did an incredible job with it. The actors are incredible. The engineering, the sound effects, full cast, full everything, it really does sound like you’re listening to some girl’s podcast.”

If you like Serial or things like that. It’s basically a fake version of Serial. That was my pitch on it. You don’t have to have any knowledge of anything to do with the IP. In fact, this is your best introduction probably possible to the thing that we’re working on together. Give it a try. It’s six hours long. Go pick it up. It is a blast. We think you’ll really enjoy it. Though there is a question of why is this available on Audible? And I want to talk about this.

For those who don’t know, I did not put the secret projects on Audible. I think Audible has some unfair pricing practices, particularly for independent authors, but for all authors in general. That said, I don’t dislike Audible. I think Audible is a great company with great people working at it. And I don’t want people to mistake that I am saying people should never use Audible. I’m trying to shine a light on the fact that Audible does not pay authors what I consider a livable wage, so to speak. It doesn’t quite work because it’s not a wage but you know what I mean. They are taking a huge cut compared to all other parts of the industry. And I want to shine a light on that. That said, they are a good company in a lot of ways. They have a good user experience, and we signed these contracts for Dark One before I made this decision on the secret projects. I might still have even done this with them after that because there are things that Audible’s very good at doing. And, you know, like I said, I’m not really trying to declare war on Audible. I’m just trying to highlight the fact that some aspects of their business practices I think are unfair. So this is available on Audible. It is a deal we did with Audible. And I am happy to point you at it even though it goes through Audible. I don’t want anyone to feel guilty that they have subscriptions to Audible. I still have a subscription to Audible.

DAN: “So do I. And most of my recent books have been published by Audible, not just available there, but they’re the original publisher. It is worth pointing out that Dark One: Forgotten is available on many, many different audiobook sites. It’s on Libro.fm. It’s on Google Play Books. It’s on a lot of different things. Audible’s just one of many.”

Yes. So you will see, probably, other things of mine get released on Audible. But I’m going to do my best to try and get them to treat authors a little bit better.

The last thing that I want to mention is those who backed the Year of Sanderson getting swag boxes. The first one we are halfway done sending out. They’ve already started appearing in the wild. I’m seeing openings and things happening. So those are going out. So if you ordered one, it should be coming very soon.
I’ll be back next week with another Weekly Update. Hopefully, I will be past the halfway point in Defiant at that point.

Thanks everyone,

Brandon