The first time I went to one of your book signings, it was for your second book Mistborn and I was able to walk right up to the table and get my book signed. I think it took about two minutes total. The last time I made it to one of your signings it was for The Way of Kings , and it was a zoo at the bookstore. How much of the increase in your popularity do you attribute to your opportunity to finish Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series and how much is because your own books have increased in popularity?
First of all, thank you for coming to one of my signings in the early days where I had to try to convince people to come over and let me tell them about my books! I really appreciate people like you who stopped by. As for your question, it’s honestly hard to separate which sales come from my Wheel of Time involvement and which sales come from my other books.
However, I did get two huge boosts in sales. When the announcement was made that I would be finishing The Wheel of Time, all of my books jumped up to having ‘first week’ sales again. Most entertainment mediums follow the same slope. Huge first week sales, then a tapering off on a steady curve. (Sleeper hits and new books by first time authors don’t follow this.)
When The Gathering Storm came out, I got another big boost, which was again a kind of ‘First week’ sales thing—though in that case, the bigger boost came around Christmas. It seemed that people bought Gathering Storm , read it, thought about it, then asked for one of my books for Christmas.
In the long run, it’s going to be very hard—as I said—to separate how many readers tried me out because of the Wheel of Time. As books take on lives of their own (as Mistborn did) they gain a readership through word of mouth. However, how much of that ‘taking on a life of its own’ happened because of the initial WoT boosts?
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