Dragonsteel Says the Eye of the World Leatherbound Is Fixed, But The Reddit Thread Says Otherwise.
Brandon Sanderson’s Dragonsteel Books sent an email to Eye of the World leatherbound customers this week announcing that Isaac Stewart and his team have approved new cover samples and production is resuming. The message is warm, communicative, and characteristically transparent about what went wrong. It is also significantly narrower than the actual problem.
The email reads: “We’re thrilled to share an exciting update: Isaac and his team have approved the most recent cover samples, and we’ll be resuming production shortly. We deeply appreciate your patience while we worked closely with the bindery to get this right.”
Customers who have already received copies are offered a replacement or a refund with return. Customers still waiting are told their copies will ship once production resumes, with timing still to be determined. No shipping date. No revised window. No estimated month.
That lack of a timeline is the first problem. The second is what the email does not say.
Dragonsteel stopped production in early March after customers began reporting a “concerning and much higher than average” number of manufacturer defects. Sanderson said in his weekly YouTube update at the time: “We spent a really long time making sure that the binder was able to do these books the way we wanted. This time something is odd. 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 flew to the bindery to investigate in person. Everything stopped — printing, binding, shipping.
The email this week frames the resolution around cover samples and embossing approval. The megathread on Reddit, which has run for months and documents virtually every defect that customers have found, tells a different story about what actually broke.
The cover issues were real. Embossing on the spine was nearly invisible on many copies. The foil was cracked, misaligned, and uneven. The sunburst detail around the wheel logo was absent on numerous copies. One user comparing two copies side by side found the difference between a good copy and a defective copy was night and day: “The left looks crisp, the right looks like the press was misaligned and produced double thickness.” Hundreds of customers only realized their copy was defective after seeing the comparison.
But the cover was not the whole problem. Not by a long distance.
Multiple customers reported gaps between binding signatures, the internal sections of pages that make up a bound book. This is a structural failure, not a cosmetic one. One user described the backing material separating from the signatures and noted it “will eventually lead to failure with reading.” Another found the binding cracked in multiple locations on the second page. One copy arrived with the binding already broken in several places. A user who ordered two copies found binding gaps in both. The gaps were described as “unforgivable” and “getting worse the more I opened it.” One customer found separation at three separate points in the spine.
Art pages were glued together incorrectly, with several customers reporting art pages adhered three to four centimeters onto the surrounding pages. End papers were stressed and creased from poor gluing and placement. One user received a book full of loose glitter that came off on their hands with every touch. At least one customer received an entirely empty box.
The front matter of every copy contains two errors that no replacement program addresses. The Shadow Rising, the fourth book in The Wheel of Time series, is missing entirely from the series listing. A Crown of Swords is misspelled as “A Crown of Thorns” on the same page. These errors are in the text block of every copy printed. A replacement cover does not fix them. A new stamping process does not fix them. They are in the book itself.
There is also a typo on page 120 of every copy, a text error not present in the ebook or in prior print editions, apparently introduced when line breaks were reformatted for the leatherbound edition.
One customer whose patience ran out posted a detailed account in the megathread. A teacher who spent two months carefully budgeting to afford the $185 price tag, she described receiving a delay notice in February citing cover stamping issues, then two months of silence before a vague update in April, then nothing further until she found information on Reddit: “Why did I have to come to Reddit, a third-party website that has nothing to do with Dragonsteel, to be told that Mr. Sanderson’s weekly updates have information about my product?” Her birthday came and went while she waited. “I think when I eventually hold the book in my hands I’ll just feel relief instead of anything positive.”
Another customer, still waiting as of this week, posted simply: “Does anyone know if these are still coming, in any capacity? Am I the only one still waiting for any version of this, error-riddled or otherwise?”
As of this week’s email, there is still no shipping date for outstanding orders.
Dragonsteel’s reputation is built on premium collector’s editions, and Sanderson’s direct communication with fans throughout this process has been genuine and consistent. The company has offered replacements. The customer support team has been responsive. None of that changes what the Reddit thread documents: this is a production failure that goes well past embossing, and the fix being announced addresses the most visible symptom while leaving structural binding failures, missing text, and typographical errors in the existing print run.
Customers who receive replacements under the new program will get better covers. Whether they will get books without signature gaps, correctly printed front matter, and properly bound pages is not addressed in the email.
The Eye of the World leatherbound was announced at Dragonsteel Nexus in December 2024 as the beginning of a landmark series — one premium Wheel of Time leatherbound per year until the fourteen-book series is complete. The first entry has been in production limbo since March. No shipping date exists for the majority of orders. The problems documented in the Reddit thread span cover, binding, text, and fulfilment. The email this week covers the cover.
Six books. One unforgettable world. The Adventures of Baron Von Monocle is steampunk adventure with the kind of worldbuilding and heart that made you fall in love with fantasy in the first place. Start the series on Amazon.
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