Brandon Sanderson’s Dragonsteel and Lit Escalates’ Joe Abercrombie First Law Kickstarter are generating nearly identical waves of collector complaints in 2026 — scratched dust jackets, ripped endpapers, damaged slipcases, non-acid-free paper, and glued rather than sewn bindings in editions priced at $200 and marketed as heirloom quality. The pattern reveals a fundamental tension in the premium book Kickstarter boom: leatherbound and deluxe hardcover production is genuinely difficult to execute at scale, very few facilities do it consistently well, and the market is growing faster than production infrastructure can follow. Jon Del Arroz, who runs leatherbound crowdfunding campaigns for his own Valiant Frontiers series, breaks down what’s going wrong and what standards collectors should hold publishers to before backing another campaign.
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