The book industry's got a lot to learn from Elden Ring, says one of the world's top fantasy authors (no, not George R.R. Martin)

pcgamer.com:

Brandon Sanderson is one of the world's most popular and successful fantasy authors, and he's something of a mould-breaker too. Sanderson isn't just prolific but, having faced multiple rejections early in his career, a writer who's pursued any and every avenue he can to sell his books: And for him, success has begat success to an enormous scale. Last year Sanderson (most of whose books are available from major publishers) launched a Kickstarter to self-publish "four secret novels(opens in new tab)" and 185,341 backers pledged just under $42 million to buy them.

Esquire's run an excellent profile of Sanderson(opens in new tab) during which he talks about some of his beefs with the book publishing industry, how he's dealt with them, and amazingly enough the inspiration he takes from something like Elden Ring. Sanderson goes through his frustrations with, essentially, that old-school book publishing model where you do a swish hardback which sells at a premium for a year alongside the ebook then (if it does well enough) a cheaper paperback and… well, that's pretty much it.

Sanderson's daily schedule includes two «discretionary hours» at the end of every day where he can do what he wants, and turns out what he wanted to do for a lot of 2022 was play Elden Ring with what he calls a "glass cannon build(opens in new tab)," and the following two paragraphs are from Esquire:

«And no pants,» his wife adds. Sanderson nods: «I started as the wretch with no clothes on, and I got all the way through the first boss before I found pants.» It took him 14 hours to beat Malenia. «She’s the toughest boss I’ve ever fought.»

In some ways, Sanderson thinks the videogame industry is light-years ahead of book publishing. «They let you