Who is Janci Patterson? — Intentionally Blank Ep. 279

Brandon Sanderson (0:04)

Hi, Janci.

Janci Patterson (0:05)

Hello.

Brandon Sanderson (0:06)

We are having guest star Janci Patterson. Yes, it's pen name, Janci Patterson.

Janci Patterson (0:12)

Yes.

Brandon Sanderson (0:13)

And we're going to talk to Janci today, because Dan is on another vacation.

This is a real one, we think. The last few times he hasn't been here, he hasn't actually been on vacation. He's been doing work things in other places, and this time he might actually be on vacation. That's at least what Donald thinks.

SPEAKER_3 (0:30)

I believe so, from what I've been told.

Janci Patterson (0:31)

Dan deserves a vacation.

Brandon Sanderson (0:33)

Janci is one of my oldest friends, and we just wrote a book together, so this is good timing for Dan to vanish since our book came out. We didn't get book scan yet, did we? Did Joshua not send that yesterday?

Janci Patterson (0:44)

I haven't seen it.

Brandon Sanderson (0:46)

We need to poke Joshua to get the book scan. We did hit number two on the New York Times list.

Janci Patterson (0:51)

Yes, yesterday. Very exciting.

Brandon Sanderson (0:54)

Is this our first appearance on the Times list?

Janci Patterson (0:56)

Well, the collection hit and Bastille did too, actually.

Brandon Sanderson (0:59)

Actually hit? That's on the middle grade. So now we've hit together two different.

Janci Patterson (1:05)

I think it's three different lists because the collection went on the series list and this one I thought would go on the series list, but it didn't. It's on just general hardcover because they didn't connect it to the Skyward series.

Brandon Sanderson (1:14)

Three different. Is number two our highest?

Janci Patterson (1:18)

I think so. I'm not 100 percent sure what the other numbers were. I know we haven't hit number one yet. I don't get the number one yet.

Brandon Sanderson (1:23)

Don't get the number one.

Janci Patterson (1:24)

Someday, I want to put that S like New York Times Bestselling Authors. Someday, we're going to get there.

Brandon Sanderson (1:30)

Right now, it can be New York Times bestselling authors if they don't put the number one on.

Janci Patterson (1:33)

They do put the number one though, of course.

Brandon Sanderson (1:34)

They put the number one on because there's lots of bestsellers. I did a whole thing on my channel recently. People on the Internet don't understand the bestseller list.

Janci Patterson (1:44)

Like what it is?

Brandon Sanderson (1:45)

Yeah, like the New York Times list. They think it is more shadowy cabal than it really is.

Janci Patterson (1:50)

They just can't tell the exact algorithm because as soon as they do, people try to game it. So if people wouldn't do that, we could have nice things.

Brandon Sanderson (1:57)

But theirs is always within a place or two of the raw sales.

Janci Patterson (2:03)

Oh yeah.

Brandon Sanderson (2:04)

It's just that they wait certain bookstores a little bit more. So something that's number five on the raw total sales might be number four on the times list. But people think they're just picking which ones go and they're not.

Janci Patterson (2:16)

No.

Brandon Sanderson (2:17)

They wait certain stores that are independent bookstores.

Janci Patterson (2:21)

Well, in USA Today used to use just the raw numbers and people were literally having buy-ins to get your book into like a collection and then using the money from the buy-in to buy gift cards to give to people, to buy the... It was not... It needs to be books that are actually selling to people.

Brandon Sanderson (2:34)

People know about those ones and that's part of why the gaming of the system just doesn't happen like it used to.

Janci Patterson (2:39)

And USA Today fixed that too. It doesn't happen there either anymore, which is good.

Brandon Sanderson (2:43)

But anyway, let's talk about Janci and how we met. Did we meet first at Leading Edge?

Janci Patterson (2:47)

No, it was... I actually went to Leading Edge because of your class. So it was first in your class. It was the first year you taught it, and Ilantris wasn't even out yet. So I had no idea who you were, and neither did anybody else in that class. There were like maybe 15 of us.

Brandon Sanderson (2:58)

There's a bunch of friends I met, like Isaac was the next year. But because I was a brand new grad student, a lot of my students were my age in the class. And so Bookstore Guy was in that class, Steve Diamond.

And Isaac was in the next class and things like this. And so the early classes were a lot of my peers. It's not that way necessarily anymore, though once in a while, not once in a while, I still regularly have people my age, but I don't have like my peers, which are other aspiring writers who were kind of in the same place as me.