Secret Project now availablr on Kindle and Audible

Good ol BrandoSando has screwed the community again. First, he announces the secret project and promises us new stories. Then, he “boycotts” amazon with JUST THESE COMMUNITY FUNDED STORIES. Now, he’s making money on books we bought without letting us utilize the accessibility features we’ve come to expect from his other work unless we pay him again.

Tl;Dr Brandon Sanderson is an exploitative greed monster that swallowed 43 million dollars and is hungry for more. Do not buy Brandon Sanderson products until this betrayal is addressed.

jeeva,

Yeah, I’m confused. I bought the books on Kindle roughly at release. What’s your issue?

LordGimp,

The books were entirely unavailable on Kindle “on release”. Did you actually back the secret project on kickstarter?

authorinthedark,

i thought there were some errors with Kindle that got fixed, but it wasn’t an intentional delay

LordGimp,

The secret project books were purposefully withheld from kindle and audible as a “boycott” by Brandon. The problem is that the community already paid for these books to be written and should not be charged more simply to access these books in the format we prefer. Specifically, some readers have accessibility needs that were simply not met on the kickstarter release for these titles. These accessibility features are available on kindle and audible, as with virtually every other Brandon sanderson release. Taking the kickstarter money and then charging people who already paid for the books more just to access these features is a gross money grab move.

authorinthedark, (edited )

Kindle is definitely not withheld, i have it as part of my backerkit reward with no additional purchase

EDIT: also why do you keep putting boycott in quotation marks? he explicitly stated the problems that he had with audibles platform, they backed down on them specifically because of his boycott, and he didn’t put the books on audible until after they made the change. that’s not a fake boycott that’s an effective one

LordGimp,

Idk if you’re being deliberately misleading, but the ebooks were specifically withheld from the Kindle platform during the backer kit release. It was possible to import the .epub file into Kindle, but doing so restricted certain accessibility features due to the file being imported rather than natively available in the store. This was the entire issue for some readers.

Further, Brandon actually folded his boycott without achieving any of his stated goals except to get audible at the table at all. That’s not a victory, that’s taking the first plea deal they put on the table. It’s pathetic and it shows the publisher that shit talks when money walks. A tiny improvement is insignificant in the face of true change. Brandon didn’t change anything. He just screwed everyone who backed him on the project.

TheRealKuni,

Further, Brandon actually folded his boycott without achieving any of his stated goals except to get audible at the table at all. That’s not a victory, that’s taking the first plea deal they put on the table. It’s pathetic and it shows the publisher that shit talks when money walks. A tiny improvement is insignificant in the face of true change. Brandon didn’t change anything. He just screwed everyone who backed him on the project.

I personally think he did an adequate job explaining his position.

Change is often incremental. Sanderson didn’t get everything he wanted, but he moved the needle. That’s meaningful. Allowing perfection to be the enemy of progress is an immature position, in my view.

As for not working with Kindle, using Send to Kindle with the Kindle EPUBs (specifically labeled as “EPUB for Kindle” and formatted to work properly on the Kindle) from the Secret Projects uploaded them just fine to my Kindle and the Kindle app. Progress, highlights, and notes sync just fine between devices. Fonts can be changed and resized. Justification options are all there.

Obviously we don’t get syncing between the ebook and the audiobook, but as far as I know that use of Whispersync is the only thing we miss out on without official Audible and Kindle purchased versions, but that’s a minor annoyance and not something worth being angry about if you ask me.

Maybe there are other accessibility features I don’t use that are missing, I don’t know.

keyez,

I also use a kindle and try to buy most books away from Amazon so I imported the epubs from backerkit and read all the way through those without issue. Didn’t hear about anyone having issues

jeeva,

For what it’s worth, people don’t generally gift Amazon copies of books when they can send out epubs. A previous Kickstarter campaign for Dragonsteel also fulfilled in this way, I suspect they all have. Have you seen it working differently elsewhere? Why did you think it would work like that here?

LordGimp,

The previous kickstarter campaigns aren’t really comparable here. First off, for the leather-bound books, those are already released titles being reprinted in higher quality binding. They’re commemorative or collectible editions of media already on the market. As for the new stormlight archive releases, they’re almost always bundled with audible products where desired. This is the first publishing campaign where Brandon had full control, and he used it to scam the community with an inferior, incomplete product when compared to his other releases. We were promised “full functionality” except we never recieved it. Now, that functionality is available for an additional cost. When you buy a video game, do you expect to pay more over time for patches and qol improvements? Ofc not. Why should the community continue to pay for products we’ve already purchased?

authorinthedark,

not deliberately misleading just not sure i understand what the big deal is between imported and native. i remember there being some formatting issues at launch and so they fixed those and made an epub specifically for Kindle to handle those issues. what accessibility features are missing with imported files?

jeeva,

No, I didn’t. If you read my post, I said I bought the books on Kindle.

I backed one of the previous leatherbounds, and, understanding from that that there was no Amazon gift code for the e-books, didn’t get that through this campaign - instead opting to buy it when it went up on Amazon.

I don’t think he actually delayed the release of the e-books, just Audible - though I may be wrong. Looking at Amazon, I see that Tress~ was available from 10th January 2023 - which is, admittedly, 9 days later than the release to backers - but that’s really not significant or “withheld” or “boycotting” at all IMO. Wikipedia backs this up.

Published January 1, 2023 (Dragonsteel; available to Kickstarters) 10 January 2023 (Dragonsteel; available to all) April 4, 2023 (Tor)

So, are you just annoyed about Audible not being available at the time? I see that’s apparently out as of April '24, so yeah, more of a delay, and you would have to re-buy access via Audible - but I’d assume you’d already listened to/read the book by now, if you were that into it / backed it.

Out of interest, what specific accessibility benefits are you looking for here? Genuinely a touch curious, having been trying to fill out a VPAT survey this week.

LordGimp,

Whispersync and infinite scroll on kindle are pretty important for my nephew, who I backed this project for. I used to be a fan myself but have withdrawn from the community over the treatment we have recieved when asking for accommodation. He has a moderate visual processing disability that makes it extremely difficult for him to read print. The infinite scroll available on most native kindle titles let’s him sort of fix his eyes on one line instead of trying to refocus repeatedly down the page, and he says that helps him. We had issues with the .epub importing into kindle disabling the infinite scroll feature. We reached out repeatedly to dragon steel and were told that we’d have to repurchase the titles on Amazon when they were released there. That on its own was shitty, but trying to explain to him why the book might never be on Audible was devastating. I showed him that he could get the books to play on a different program, but all he understood was that audible was broken and he must’ve done something wrong. Needless to say it’s soured our entire household on anything Brandon Sanderson where it used to bridge so many chasms.

authorinthedark,

I’m sorry to hear about all that, that sounds like a really frustrating experience

keyez,

Where is rhe bad portion? the title and post are conflicting and it’s difficult to follow any of this

LordGimp,

The problem is that the community is getting scammed. Brandon pulled his “boycott” with ONLY these crowd funded titles. Then, when his sales on other platforms didn’t do as well as he wanted, he canceled his boycott and finally allowed the titles on Amazon like everything else. The catch is that everyone who already bought the books, the backers, now have to pay for the books again to have them with the rest of the collection on Amazon platforms. It’s a shitty money grab by a fat greedy ass that’s already been paid $43 million and still wants more.

TheRealKuni,

the community is getting scammed

No we aren’t. That’s ridiculous.

Brandon pulled his “boycott” with ONLY these crowd funded titles.

Yes, because those are the titles over which he has control of publication.

When he writes a book for Tor, with a Tor editor and a Tor marketing department and Tor advances, Tor has publication rights and decides whether the audiobook is sold on Audible. Same with the other publishers he works with.

The secret projects were published by Dragonsteel, and then licensed out to other publishers for other printings. But that meant he got to control where it was sold, and by whom.

He doesn’t get to make that choice with the other books.

The catch is that everyone who already bought the books, the backers, now have to pay for the books again to have them with the rest of the collection on Amazon platforms.

The Kindle version from the Kickstarter works fine for me, I don’t really understand your complaint there. As for the Audible version, you got the audiobook in four formats from the Kickstarter. You got what you paid for. If you want it in the newly available Audible version, you can pay for the Audible version, but no one is forcing you to do so. You can just use Speechify Books or Spotify or anything that works with the M4B version to listen to those books.

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