In a nutshell: Pebble's reign as the most-funded Kickstarter campaign in history has come to an end. It wasn't another innovative tech gadget that took the top spot, or even a hip new game, but rather a set of novels from a well-known writer.
Epic fantasy and sci-fi writer Brandon Sanderson launched a Kickstarter campaign for four new "secret novels" written over the past two years. Each book is about 400 pages long and is being offered in your choice of digital e-book, digital audiobook and unsigned premium hardcover book format.
The standalone novels require very little previous knowledge of Sanderson's work, he said, and the titles are being kept hidden for now for an added layer of intrigue.
Sanderson's campaign launched on March 1, skyrocketing up the charts to become the most-funded campaign of all time in less than four full days. As of this writing, more than 83,000 backers have collectively pledged north of $20.6 million and there are still 27 days remaining.
Pebble Time, a pioneer in the color e-paper smartwatch market, has held the top spot in Kickstarter's ranks for years with a total haul of $20,338,986. Pebble was purchased by Fitbit for $23 million in late 2016 after reportedly turning down an offer from Citizen a year earlier valued at $740 million.
Coolest Cooler, the ill-fated multi-function cooler from Ryan Grepper, is ranked as the third most-funded campaign with close to $13.3 million in pledges. Nearly a third of all original backers - or around 20,000 people - never received their cooler, making it one of the biggest failures in Kickstarter history. Greeper closed Coolest LLC in 2019.
Interested parties can back Sanderson's campaign and get the four books in e-book format starting at $40.