Brandon Sanderson’s Dragonsteel Books has temporarily halted all production, binding, and shipping of The Eye of the World leatherbound edition following a concerning number of manufacturer defects reported by customers who’ve already received their copies.
The announcement came in Sanderson’s weekly YouTube update, where he addressed the situation directly and at length. For a company that has built its reputation on premium collector’s editions, the news is significant. These books retail at $185 each, and customers expect a product that matches that price point.
“As I tweeted last week, we’ve noticed that there’s a concerning number of manufacturer defects coming in the copies people are getting,” Sanderson said. “And this is very concerning to us. I love this book. I love the version of Eye of the World we made. And we spent a really long time—you’ll remember how long it took us to get to even pre-orders—making sure that the binder was able to do these books the way we wanted to.”
What’s Going Wrong
Reports on Reddit’s r/brandonsanderson community have documented several specific defects appearing in copies already delivered. Known issues include cover quality problems, art pages glued together incorrectly, and gaps between binding signatures—the sections of pages that make up a bound book.
These aren’t minor cosmetic issues. Gaps between binding signatures suggest structural problems with the binding itself. Art pages glued together incorrectly means customers are receiving damaged interior content. Cover quality problems on a $185 premium leatherbound edition represent a fundamental failure to deliver the product customers paid for.
The scope of the problem is what’s most alarming. Every manufacturing run produces occasional defects. What Sanderson is dealing with appears to be a systemic issue affecting a significant portion of the print run.
“Normally, you expect a few defects when you’re working with a good you’re manufacturing,” Sanderson acknowledged. “It just happens. Some things slip through and we expect these occasionally to happen. What we need to know now is: is this happening like twice as much as normal, or is this happening like five times as much as normal? We need to assess all of that and find out, and that’ll determine how we go about making this right.”
How This Happened
Dragonsteel’s quality control process relies on spot-checking rather than inspecting every copy. Sanderson explained the reasoning behind this approach:
“What normally happens with these books is we get them to where we want them, they do a printing, we approve a certain printing, and then the binder quality controls themselves, which has never really been a problem for us. The idea is that we want as few people handling them as possible. We will introduce more defects if we open, unwrap, and look at every one of them. So we only spot look at when they come in—open a few of them, make sure they’re looking right. Otherwise, they come from the warehouse to you.”
This system has worked for previous Dragonsteel leatherbound editions. Something went wrong this time, and the company doesn’t yet know what.
“This time something is odd,” Sanderson said. “This time we’re seeing just an unusual number of problems crop up and we are not yet sure what’s going on.”
Isaac Stewart Flying to the Bindery
Dragonsteel’s creative director Isaac Stewart is flying out to the bindery to investigate the problem firsthand. This is a significant step—sending a senior executive to physically inspect the production facility suggests the company is taking the situation seriously and isn’t satisfied with remote communication.
“Next week, Isaac is flying out to the binder to look at the problem firsthand,” Sanderson confirmed in his video. The March 10 Reddit megathread update confirmed Stewart was making the trip.
In the meantime, everything has stopped. “We have frozen printing and we’ve frozen shipping,” Sanderson said. “If your pro copy hasn’t arrived yet, that’s good, right? Because that means that we now know that the problem is here and you are not going to get a bad one. We’re going to find out what’s going on first.”
What Customers Should Do
Sanderson’s message to customers who’ve already received defective copies is to wait.
“If you have received your copy and it looks great, wonderful. We do know that some of them are great because we were there when the first ones came off of the printer and those ones looked great. We sent some of those to Harriet and things like that. And so we do know that there are some great-looking ones that we’re very pleased with out there.”
For those with defective copies: “For now, we’re asking you to sit tight. This is because for the next couple weeks, we’re going to assess this. We’re going to look at the weekly update and we will send emails to everybody who ordered them to keep them in the loop.”
The Reddit megathread confirms Dragonsteel is requesting that impacted customers submit a ticket for tracking purposes, even while asking them to hold off on expecting immediate resolution.
No Timetable for Resolution
There is currently no timetable for when production will resume or when customers will receive replacement copies or refunds. The investigation is ongoing. Until Isaac Stewart completes his on-site assessment and Dragonsteel understands the full scope of the problem, no timeline can be given.
Pre-orders have been temporarily closed. Customers waiting for copies that haven’t shipped yet are in a holding pattern with no clear end date.
The worst-case scenario, Sanderson acknowledged, is a full refund for everyone. But he doesn’t expect it to come to that.
“We are going to make this right. So don’t worry. One of the nice things that we have with Dragonsteel is our whole team is right here. If you submit a ticket or if you have a problem, you’re going to some nice people right around the corner. We aren’t—we don’t offload that to another company. You’re not going to some random AI chatbot. You are going to human beings who are looking over your problem.”
He continued: “This lets us be able to fix these orders. It will take us a little longer than sometimes it takes other companies because they do tend to use AI chatbots or offload it onto another company somewhere. But we get to have the personal connection where we will make sure that everybody—everyone’s going to get their books—and they’re going to be great. If for some reason we can’t, then we will refund. So don’t worry. Worst case is we refund.”
The Stakes
For Dragonsteel, this is a major hurdle. The company has built its entire business model on delivering premium collector’s editions that justify their price points. The Eye of the World leatherbound is the most ambitious project in Dragonsteel’s history, with the first volume in a planned 14-book series covering all of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time novels.
If the quality control problems are severe and widespread, the reputational damage could affect not just this edition but the entire planned series. Collectors who pre-order premium editions are investing trust as much as money. They’re betting that the company will deliver what it promises. A failure on the first volume of a 14-year project is a serious problem.
Sanderson seemed aware of this, striking a tone that balanced transparency with reassurance throughout his video.
“It’s good that people are letting us know that they’re getting defects,” he said. “And it just gets us more experience in figuring out how to navigate using binderies and printers and all of this sort of stuff. So it’s going to turn out all right. Don’t worry.”
He added: “I will update you each week in the weekly update as we find out more. We just have to figure out the scope of it first. Thanks for sitting tight with us on this. We will take care of you. So don’t stress.”
The Wheel of Time leatherbound series was always going to be a 14-year commitment. This is the first major obstacle. How Dragonsteel handles it will say a lot about whether that commitment can be sustained.
What do you think? Does Dragonsteel’s transparent handling of this situation increase or decrease your confidence in their ability to deliver the complete Wheel of Time leatherbound series?
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That picture of the customer showing off his copy is worthy of being turned into a soyjack.
Transparency is great to have, for problems in a binding run. This is a huge potential setback for The Wheel of Time series. The varied quality problems make me think that a visit is the starting point, but that a full systems review and analysis is needed to find the places in the processes where things went wrong, and decide how to fix them (iterative factors or all at once). Failure review and analysis always takes longer than expected, so the customers should submit tickets and be patient.