00:00So, one of the questions we're getting a lot lately is why is it going to be such a long time before Ghostbloods 1 comes out?
00:09If you're not familiar, I released Wind & Truth, Book 5 of Stormlight, in 2025.
00:18And so the question is, what's going on next?
00:21Well, the next thing that I'm working on is Mistborn Ghostbloods.
00:23And that first book is coming out in 2028.
00:26That's a long gap between mainline books for me.
00:30In the past, usually, you know, we have some cool side projects and things like that, but mainline books come pretty regularly one a year.
00:38So why a three-year gap?
00:40Let me talk you through what happened in the early part of my career.
00:44So, early part of my career, I would turn a book in to the publisher, and it would go through production.
00:51It would take about two and a half years before it ended up on shelves.
00:54This is pretty common for authors.
00:57I would say that, on average, it's closer to 18 months, but a lot of authors, it's two years.
01:02This gives the time for editorial.
01:04It gives all the time for everybody behind the scenes to be working on the book, for marketing to come up to speed, all of those things.
01:11So, you turn in a book, two to two and a half, 18 months to two and a half years later, a book comes out.
01:17So, I was doing that.
01:18That's what happened with Elantris.
01:20That's what happened with Mistborn.
01:21Suddenly, something happened in my career that you might be aware of.
01:26I started hitting bestseller lists.
01:28That happened, I believe, with Mistborn 3 for the first time and Warbreaker, hitting bestseller lists.
01:34And then, The Wheel of Time happened.
01:36And so, all of a sudden, I was drawing a lot of attention.
01:40And all of a sudden, my books were selling very well.
01:43I say all of a sudden.
01:44It was a pretty slow and steady thing, but I started hitting the bestseller lists.
01:47And the way that publishing works is very similar to the way that a lot of entertainment works, where your top-selling titles do tend to form the bulk of your income, which you use to fund releasing the rest of your books, hoping to get more and more top-selling titles.
02:05Tor started to realize, hey, Sanderson turned in a book two and a half years ago, and that's worth a lot of money to us.
02:14If we release that in 18 months, we hit this milestone and have a Sanderson book out for that quarter, and it improves then all of our sales metrics.
02:24And then, they started to realize, why wait 18 months?
02:29Why not wait 12 months?
02:31And then, it eventually got so bad that I would turn in a book, and the book would be out six months later.
02:37This, you might have noticed this with the middle two Wax and Wayne books, where one of them came out, I believe, in September or August.
02:45The next one came out, like, January, February.
02:47So, this has been detrimental, I believe, to the way that our business works.
02:55People still take a lot of time on the projects, but they feel rushed.
03:00And I feel rushed.
03:02And it's just not a good place to be in.
03:05And so, now that I'm in the position where I have the power to determine when my release dates are, I'm like, for years, we've been saying, we need to get this, claw this time back.
03:14And this is the time to claw it back.
03:17I want to finish Ghostbloods 1 this year.
03:21I guess it wasn't 2025, it was 2024, when Stormlight 5 came out.
03:27I'm writing Ghostbloods 1 in 2025.
03:30And then, it will have three years until it needs to come out, because it will be scheduled for fall of 2026.
03:37And I will have this done by the end of this year.
03:39And so, I'll make sure that there is one in the finished each year.
03:46And that just gives that time back to us.
03:49And I think we're really going to appreciate it going forward.
03:52So, I am sorry about this wait.
03:55But, it is the best way to make sure that this is all sustainable going forward.
04:01So, that's why it's taking us three years.
04:03It will also have the advantage of, theoretically, I will have the third one, first draft done, before the first one actually has to come out.
04:10And so, I can make sure the continuity all works through all three books.
04:14It's something I did on the first trilogy that I want to try again with this one.
04:17So, there's your reason.
04:20We'll see how it actually plays out.
04:25Thank you.
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