Tom Doherty and The Wheel of Time

Late one winter afternoon in 1989, Tom Doherty’s phone rang in his New York office. On the line was Harriet McDougal—editor, longtime colleague, and the wife of author James O. “Jim” Rigney Jr. McDougal had just finished editing Rigney’s new manuscript and was practically bursting with excitement. 

Tom recalled the conversation fondly: “She called me up when she had the manuscript. I’d read the Fallon books [The Michael Fallon trilogy] and thought they were great. She said: ‘I don’t know, Tom, you’ve got to read this right away. I don’t know if I’ve got the wife thing or if this is as good as I think it is—but I think this is a truly great book.’” Doherty didn’t need much convincing. As the founder and publisher of Tor Books, he trusted McDougal’s instincts implicitly. If Harriet believed her husband had written something special, Doherty was going to drop everything to see for himself. In the end, he said: “I read it and I agreed with her.” 

That manuscript was The Eye of the World, the opening volume of what would become The Wheel of Time—an epic fantasy series that now spans 14 door-stopping novels and has sold over 90 million copies. But on that day, it was still an unproven draft by an author using a new pen name, Robert Jordan. 

Doherty could not have predicted the phenomenon it would become. Yet from the outset, he sensed potential. Reading those early chapters late into the night, he felt the familiar tingle of discovery. He cites it as the same feeling he’d had years before, as a young salesman, when an obscure manuscript called Dune crossed his desk (yes, really). Back then, Doherty was a sales manager pushing other people’s books; this time, as Tor’s publisher, he was in a position to act on his vision

And Doherty’s vision was clear: It was the kind of story one might dare to call an heir to Middle-earth if nurtured with the right care and vision.

He was right, because later, the New York Times would publish an article that said: “Robert Jordan has come to dominate the world that Tolkien began to reveal.”

Tom Doherty and Robert Jordan (2003) Photo by David Hartwell

The Gambler

Tom Doherty is no stranger to unlikely success stories. Now 90 years old, with a gentle demeanor and an easy laugh, he has built a career on taking chances in publishing. In conversation he cheerfully recounts a lifetime of gambles, including some that paid off, and some that became lessons. 

In the 1960s, as a freshly minted sales rep for Pocket Books, he hustled paperback classics to drugstores and newsstands. He was ambitious and bookish, a chemical engineer by degree who realized, after a two-year Army stint, that his real passion was books. “I always loved to read,” he says simply of his decision to break into publishing. Starting at the bottom, he drove across New England selling magazines and paperbacks to wholesalers, learning the gritty logistics of distribution. “I moved up very rapidly and I was enjoying what I was doing,” Doherty recalls of those early years, “but one day I got a call… ‘Hey Tom, how’d you like to be a publisher?’ I couldn’t resist.”

That call, in 1975, came from a colleague luring him to head a new imprint at Grosset & Dunlap. Doherty leapt at the chance. At Grosset, he proved his knack for spotting talent and for trusting people who might be overlooked by others. One of the first people he hired was an incisive young editor named Harriet McDougal. Together, they published an eclectic mix: children’s books, genre fiction, even reprints of old comic strips. The imprint thrived. In 1979, with a successful track record and boundless credibility, Doherty felt ready to strike out on his own. He borrowed money, left Grosset & Dunlap, and in 1980, founded his own publishing house: Tor Books.

Tor was a risky venture—a small startup in a field dominated by conglomerates—but Doherty built it into a powerhouse by focusing on what he loved most: science fiction and fantasy. He cultivated relationships with authors and editors who shared his passion, giving them creative freedom and unwavering support. Tor means “a high rock or peak,” and under Doherty’s leadership the imprint quickly rose to towering heights in the genre world. Still, even with successes in science fiction, nothing quite prepared Doherty for the gamble he was about to take on an epic fantasy by an author with modest name recognition.

When Harriet McDougal handed him The Eye of the World, Doherty was very familiar with James Rigney. Rigney had published a few historical novels in the 1980s under the name Reagan O’Neal, but he wasn’t yet a household name. In fact, Jordan’s choice of pseudonym was itself part of the strategy. “For his historicals, he picked Reagan O’Neal,” Doherty explains, referring to Rigney’s earlier books. “He didn’t want his historical brand name being used for fantasy. It was an entirely different kind of book, and he wanted people to know right away what it was.” In other words, the author had created Robert Jordan as a separate persona specifically for fantasy, leaving any previous fame behind. “What it meant was we had this guy who had been a paperback bestseller, and we couldn’t even use that [track record],” Doherty says with a chuckle. Jordan would have to prove himself to a new audience from scratch.

Doherty wasn’t daunted. If anything, he viewed the blank slate as an opportunity. After reading The Eye of the World, he was convinced that with the right approach, the series could build a dedicated readership over time. However, one big question loomed: how to launch such a massive saga in a way that bookstores—and readers—would embrace. In 1990, fantasy epics of this length were not often published straight to hardcover by unknown authors. A 700-page debut novel represented a considerable investment for any publisher, and a potential risk for booksellers wary of unsold inventory.

Doherty’s solution was both bold and savvy. Rather than releasing The Eye of the World in hardcover (the traditional route for a major new novel), Tor published it as a large-format trade paperback original, priced accessibly and designed to entice a wide range of readers. “We started out with a trade paperback,” Doherty says, “because we figured a fat first novel—and it was the first original novel under the Robert Jordan name—it’s going to be hard to get enough copies out to make a real splash.” By launching in paperback, Doherty could distribute the book more broadly and lower the barrier to entry for curious readers. It was a calculated gamble: sacrifice the short-term prestige of a hardcover release in hopes of long-term word-of-mouth growth.

The plan worked just as Doherty envisioned. The Eye of the World hit bookstore shelves in January 1990, and without much fanfare it began to sell. And sell. “We sold just over 40,000 copies in the first year,” Doherty notes, “which for a trade paperback launch of an unknown author was darn good.” Encouraged, Doherty pushed ahead with the second volume, The Great Hunt, released in November 1990. This time the momentum was even greater: the sequel more than doubled the first book’s sales, topping 80,000 copies within a year. 

The Wheel of Time was picking up speed with each turn.

“Time for Cloth.”

By the time Robert Jordan delivered his third installment, The Dragon Reborn (1991), Tom Doherty knew he had something truly extraordinary on his hands. 

"When I was selling Tolkien, I thought, boy, this is unique—I’ve never seen a book take off like this. But by The Dragon Reborn, I realized we had another special event," recalled Doherty.

The series’ growing readership was no longer a happy accident; it was an undeniable force. To sustain that energy—and to bring Jordan the larger recognition he now deserved—Doherty decided it was time to change strategy. 

The third book, he believed, should be published in hardcover, even though the first two had been paperbacks. It was a bold break from convention. In those days, series that started in paperback usually stayed in paperback for several books, if not for their entire run. Jumping to hardcover risked alienating fans who were accustomed to a lower price point, and it demanded more confidence from booksellers.

Not everyone at Tor was immediately on board with Doherty’s plan. “I had a terrible time with our sales department,” he recalls. Tor’s corporate partner, Macmillan, handled distribution, and their sales team worried Doherty was making a mistake. “They said, ‘Are you crazy? You’ve more than doubled the sales from the first book to the second in trade paperback—why on earth do you want to change and upset your readers?’” To the numbers people, it seemed foolhardy to fix what wasn’t broken. Readers were clearly devouring the series in paperback; switching formats might slow the momentum or even drive fans away.

Doherty listened to the advice, but his instincts told him otherwise. He felt The Wheel of Time was ready to ascend to the next level—to hardcover bestseller status—and he was willing to stake Tor’s resources and reputation on that belief. 

So he gave his sales reps a characteristically blunt directive. “I said, ‘Time for cloth.’” 

He uses the industry slang for a hardcover binding (“cloth”) as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. In hindsight, it was: The Dragon Reborn debuted in hardcover in Fall 1991, and despite the doubters, it performed spectacularly. “We hit the New York Times list,” Doherty says. “Not very high—I think number seven or something—but we hit the list with the third book. And from there on, it was always on the list.”

Indeed, The Dragon Reborn marked The Wheel of Time’s first appearance on bestseller rankings, and it would not be the last. The mass-market paperback editions of the early books continued selling briskly even as new hardcover volumes drew ever larger audiences. With each release, Jordan’s following grew from a fervent niche into a mainstream phenomenon. A Times article published in 1998 said of the hype: 

“[The Wheel of Time] demands an almost religious attention from its readers and seems to get it… The younger devotees of the series, who seem to be legion, have a habit of dutifully rereading the complete gospel before each addition.”

Book four, The Shadow Rising (1992), climbed higher on the charts; by book five, The Fires of Heaven (1993), the series was a regular feature in the top slots. “The last seven were number one,” Doherty notes proudly, referring to the string of Jordan’s books (and later their concluding volumes) that hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. What had begun as a slow-build gamble was now an entrenched success story. In bookstore windows, Robert Jordan’s name was printed in lettering as large as the titles of his novels, a sign that a true brand had been born.

Jordan did indeed continue to conquer the imaginations of fantasy readers across the nation.

Through it all, Doherty maintained a close partnership with Jordan and McDougal. They were comrades embarking on a grand creative journey. Doherty had given Jordan free rein to tell his epic tale over as many volumes as it required, and Jordan in turn rewarded that trust by delivering books on a regular yearly schedule, each bigger and more ambitious than the last. 

Readers often compare The Wheel of Time to Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, and indeed by the mid-1990s Jordan’s saga was being hailed as a modern successor to Tolkien’s work. For Doherty, who had championed Jordan from the start, these accolades were gratifying but never the end goal. His focus was always on the next step forward: the next book, the next innovation to reach new readers, the next way to broaden the series’ impact.

A Million Free Books

Some of Doherty’s promotional ideas became legend in publishing circles. Perhaps the most famous was his decision, before the release of the series’ seventh volume, to literally give away a huge number of free books. 

In 1996, anticipating a surge of interest in Jordan’s upcoming A Crown of Swords, Doherty devised a bold marketing stunt. Tor printed hundreds of thousands of free sample copies of the first book, The Eye of the World, and sent them to bookstores across the country. These weren’t skimpy pamphlets or excerpts—they were the full first 100 pages of the novel bound as a slim paperback. “Ten chapters,” Doherty specifies. “Maybe 140 pages out of an 800-page book. It told a great story all by itself… and I thought, we’ll give this away and nobody’s going to stop there. If they read this, they’re going to want the whole book.”

It was a massive undertaking: Doherty’s team shipped out nearly a million of these free preview books, stacking them in eye-catching cardboard displays at mall chain stores and independent bookstores alike. Waldenbooks, B. Dalton, Borders, Barnes & Noble, and even big-box retailers like Walmart and Target all received giant “dumps” of the free Wheel of Time samplers. “We put out almost a million samples,” Doherty says, still amazed at the audacity of it. The result was exactly as he predicted. “It was a huge success… It was easy to get these floor displays placed. You give them 100 books to give to their customers—why not?”

In droves, new readers picked up the free taste of Jordan’s world and found themselves hooked, returning to buy the full novels. By the time A Crown of Swords hit shelves, the built-in audience had grown even larger, propelling that seventh volume (and every installment thereafter) to #1 bestseller status.

Looking back on those years, Doherty frames it simply: it was all about faith in the author, in the story, and in the readers. “I said to him, hey, we’re going to build this, we’re going to make this a real success,” Doherty recalls telling Robert Jordan early on. “But I didn’t promise him anything like the final success.” 

No one could have foreseen that final success: that the series would one day encompass millions of words, that fans would line up at midnight release parties dressed as Aes Sedai and Aiel warriors, that the books would be translated into dozens of languages and inspire conventions of their own. Doherty didn’t promise it, but through steady support, he helped make it possible. Jordan, for his part, remained remarkably grounded amid the swelling hype. He continued writing diligently, book after book, as if trying to outrace the turn of the wheel itself.

An Unfinished Epic and a New Beginning

In 2006, with eleven volumes of The Wheel of Time published and the grand conclusion on the horizon, time finally caught up with Robert Jordan. He was diagnosed with a rare cardiac illness, and as his condition worsened he shared an urgent wish with his wife and editor, Harriet McDougal: that no matter what happened to him, the story would be seen through to its end. 

Jordan spent his final months furiously organizing his notes and writing as many key scenes as he could, determined to leave behind the blueprint for the series’ finale, which he had provisionally titled A Memory of Light. He told everyone that, naturally, this last chapter of the saga would be “one big fat book.”

Jim Rigney passed away on September 16, 2007, before he could complete that final volume. He was 58. The task of fulfilling his wish fell to Harriet McDougal. Amid her own grief, McDougal gathered Jordan’s extensive notes, draft chapters, and dictations. There was no question that Tor Books would honor their author’s request to finish the series, the only question was who could possibly pick up the pen that Robert Jordan had laid down.

Behind the scenes, Doherty had already begun contemplating that question, even as Jordan’s health declined. He knew it would take a writer of great talent and empathy to step into Jordan’s shoes. Luckily, Doherty had a candidate in mind. 

In early 2007, a young fantasy novelist named Brandon Sanderson had published a novel with Tor called Mistborn: The Final Empire, the first in a trilogy. Sanderson was then in his early 30s, an avid reader of Jordan’s work who had long idolized the Wheel of Time series. Doherty had read Mistborn and been struck by its inventiveness and confident storytelling. “When the manuscript for Mistborn came in, I read that right away,” he says. “And I thought, Holy cow, this could be the guy.” By “the guy,” Doherty meant something very specific: the writer capable of taking up Robert Jordan’s mantle.

As it happened, Harriet McDougal had also taken notice of Brandon Sanderson, though in a different way. Shortly after Jordan’s death, someone forwarded her a eulogy that Sanderson wrote on his personal blog. It was a heartfelt tribute to Robert Jordan’s life and legacy. Sanderson’s words moved her deeply. So when Doherty came to Harriet with Mistborn in hand and a passionate recommendation that this was the author to finish The Wheel of Time, she felt a certain poetic alignment. 

“Harriet really liked it,” Doherty says of Sanderson’s tribute, “and she thought it was kind of neat that I was sending her Mistborn, that this was the guy who was recommended.” In December 2007, McDougal, with Doherty’s enthusiastic backing, met Brandon Sanderson in person. Over dinner at a small restaurant in Charleston, South Carolina, Harriet formally asked Sanderson if he would do the honor of completing her late husband’s magnum opus. 

Sanderson said yes.

What neither McDougal nor Doherty fully realized that evening was just how massive the “final” book would become. Once Sanderson began examining Jordan's notes, it became clear that he could not possibly contain A Memory of Light in a single volume—not without sacrificing huge swaths of the story or publishing a book so large it would break its binding. 

After several weeks of careful assessment, Sanderson proposed publishing the last movement of The Wheel of Time as three volumes. When Sanderson presented this plan to Tom Doherty, it might have sounded like heresy to some publishers. Splitting one book into three could appear a mercenary ploy or an unnecessary extension. But Doherty understood that this was a practical and creative decision, made in service of Jordan’s story. Far from being alarmed, he welcomed it. 

“No, I wasn’t surprised,” he says of Sanderson’s recommendation. “I thought there was plenty there for three. And, you know, I was kind of happy about it. I’d rather have three books than two books.” In other words, Doherty and Tor were prepared to give the finale all the room it needed to breathe.

With that, they set the course. Brandon Sanderson, guided closely by Harriet McDougal as editor, wrote three concluding novels: The Gathering Storm (2009), Towers of Midnight (2010), and A Memory of Light (2013). When the first of these was released—now 20 years after The Eye of the World—fans waited overnight in lines that wrapped around bookstores, clutching old dog-eared Jordan paperbacks and buzzing with both excitement and anxiety. Could the ending possibly live up to expectations? 

The answer, judging by the reception, was a resounding yes. Each of Sanderson’s volumes debuted at #1 on the bestseller list, and readers ultimately voted The Wheel of Time the “Greatest Fantasy Series of All Time” in a poll run by Tor’s own website. For Doherty, seeing the saga through to completion was a deeply personal triumph. It meant fulfilling the promise he had made, implicitly, the day he first agreed to publish Jordan’s work: the promise that readers would get to experience this epic in full, from the humble Two Rivers to the Last Battle and beyond.

A Legacy of Faith in Storytelling

Today, Tom Doherty still telecommutes to meetings at the Tor Books office regularly, though the company he founded has long since become part of a larger publishing group. His title has evolved—he’s now Chairman Emeritus—but in practice he remains what he has always been at heart: a champion of authors and stories he believes in. 

Colleagues describe him as unfailingly supportive, a leader who defers to creative talent and takes pride in setting the stage for them to shine. Over the decades, Doherty has launched the careers of countless science fiction and fantasy authors, from breakout newcomers to established legends. Yet ask him about his proudest accomplishment, and he’s likely to bring up a certain sprawling fantasy series that nearly wasn’t, by a man who sadly didn’t live to see its completion.

In conversation, Doherty often returns to the idea of trust—trust between a publisher and a writer, between an editor and a story, between a book and its readers. In the saga of The Wheel of Time, trust was the invisible hand guiding many of the pivotal moments. Harriet McDougal trusted her gut when she urged Doherty to read that hefty manuscript. Doherty trusted the audience to embrace a huge, multifaceted story world if given the chance. Robert Jordan trusted his publisher to complete his work with integrity after his death. And ultimately, millions of readers trusted the series to carry them through a rich and rewarding adventure over the course of decades.

Even now, new generations of readers continue to discover The Wheel of Time. A streaming television adaptation has brought fresh attention to Jordan’s universe (to mixed reactions, as adaptations often garner), but Doherty believes the real magic still lies in the books themselves, waiting on the shelf to ignite a sense of wonder in someone who picks up volume one. 

He recounts how he often encourages the uninitiated to give the series a try. “Well,” he says, “I say to them, I guess: read the first ten chapters. Read them during one of those free previews, or in the bookstore. I’m pretty sure if you’ll take an hour or two, you’ll want to read the whole 14 books.” 

It’s a wager he’s made many times before, and it’s paid off for more than three decades. After all, if there’s one thing Tom Doherty’s career has shown, it’s that a little faith in a good story can go an extraordinarily long way. “You’ll have an awful lot of fun,” he adds with a grin, speaking as much to the reader as to his younger self all those years ago. And he should know better than anyone—he bet his company on a great book, and it turned into the adventure of a lifetime.

To continue following along with Dragonsteel's The Eye of the World leatherbound edition campaign, sign up for our mailing list!