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.
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?
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?