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Interview #1017: Talking With Tom: A Conversation Between Tom Doherty and Brandon Sanderson, Entry #5
Brandon Sanderson
I remember those little half books of The Eye of the World . I was already a fan by then, but those became collectors’ items among the fans.
Tom Doherty
We gave away over a million of them. I figured anybody who read that couldn’t stop.
Brandon Sanderson
Wow. A million of them? Really. That’s a lot.
Tom Doherty
It was. It wasn’t quite half of the novel. It was a natural break that Harriet agreed on.
Brandon Sanderson
It was Shadar Logoth, I seem to recall. Wow. A million. That’s crazy. I mean, most authors don’t have a million books in print, and Robert Jordan had a million of his promo books in print. That’s just crazy. You did that right around the third book, wasn’t it?
Tom Doherty
Yeah. The first book sold 40,000 trade paperbacks. We launched it as a trade paperback, because not many people were doing major promotions on trade paperbacks in those days. We ended up selling 40,000 of the trade.
Brandon Sanderson
Which is really good.
Tom Doherty
Which was very good, yeah. I had the hardest time with the sales force when, on the third book, I wanted to make the major promotion in hardcover. They said, “Well, you’ve got such a winner. Why would you want to change?”
Brandon Sanderson
See, as a reader, when I picked up The Eye of the World , I picked it up in mass market paperback. My bookstore first got it in mass market. I was just a new reader, and all the books that I had read up to that point had been series in progress that people handed to me, like David Eddings. Fantastic stuff, particularly for a teen boy. And Tad Williams, and Terry Brooks. I found the Dragonriders on my own and loved those, but it was already done. I was on the lookout for something to discover then. I didn’t want to always just be handed something that everyone else loves. “Where’s my series?”
When I saw The Eye of the World , I was on the lookout for big, thick books, because you got more bang for your buck. As a kid who didn’t have a lot of pocket change, that was an important thing. So I bought The Eye of the World , and I read it, and I said, “There’s something really special here. I think this is going to be mine.”
Then my bookstore got the second one in trade paperback, and I said, “A‑ha! I’ve spotted it!” Because as a kid, that told me that this book was popular enough that my little bookstore was willing to order in the trade paperback. Then, when the third one came out in hardcover, I thought “He’s made it, and I called it.” I was like the Wheel of Time hipster, right? “From the get‑go, this is my series and I found it, and all you other people didn’t see it in the beginning.” Even still, I’ll go on signings and ask, “Who picked it up in 1990?” and we’ll get a cheer for those of us who waited 23 years for the series to end.
Tom Doherty
That’s great.
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