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?

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 I used to be a fan myself but have withdrawn from the community over the treatment we have recieved when asking for accommodation.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.

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.

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.

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.

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