You’re currently annotating Mistborn on your blog, providing “deleted scenes” and commentary on each chapter of the book. What are the advantages of this approach? How much time does it take? Why did you decide to start annotating?
Well, I do these things kind of for the same reasons I mentioned above. First and foremost, I want people to feel like they get their money’s worth from my novels. When they buy one—particularly in hardback—they’re investing quite a chunk of change to be entertained. I want to give them as much as I can, kind of like the bonus material on a DVD.
It takes between a half-hour and an hour a day, four days a week, to keep my blog updated and to provide this bonus material. A fairly big investment, but worth it, I think. I go a year between publishing novels. If I can keep people coming back to my website to read new and good material, they’ll be that much more likely to know when my next book comes out, then buy it!
The annotations came from my desire to do something like a DVD director’s commentary. I’d never seen anything like that done on a book website before, so I went for it. I hope people enjoy them!
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