But signing on with the show means taking what for many was a side gig and making it their full-time commitment. Jim Ludwig, the founder of Dark Sword Miniatures, which makes figurines based on characters from Martin’s books, first got in touch with the author in early 2005.

“I got an email from this guy raving about the miniatures, and he signed it George R.R. Martin,” Ludwig says. He was “an admirer,” Ludwig says, and they eventually became buddies. The company now holds the the license to Song of Ice and Fire, the book series Game of Thrones is based on.

Ludwig’s hand-crafted miniatures are intricate works of art built up from a putty underneath a microscope. Not just anyone can do it, and Ludwig insists on working with the best. One of the main sculptors is Tom Meier, who Hasbro used to call upon to ensure actor likenesses were dialed in on Star Wars action figure faces, Ludwig says. That’s what we’re talking about here.

“I got an email from this guy raving about the miniatures, and he signed it George R.R. Martin,” Ludwig says. He was “an admirer.”

Ludwig balked at the opportunity to partner with HBO, but he’s still cashing in on the series’ success. He says the show definitely drives interest, even though he gets complaints from people who wonder why the faces on the minis don’t match the ones they see on their TV screens on Sunday nights. And he recently partnered with the popular gaming company CMON on a board game using his miniatures. The project raised almost $1.7 million on Kickstarter.

Many of the companies in Martin’s universe, like Dark Sword Miniatures, haven’t been able, or were hesitant, to work out the same sort of deal Valyrian Steel did. These companies are small and care about authenticity above all else; they don’t typically have the money or workforce standing by to make it work. Family-owned Badali Jewelry, for example, had the chance to make accessories based on HBO’s Game of Thrones. However, founder Janelle Badali says the “understandably large upfront guarantee to secure the license” was too much for her. Even Beasley says he needed $125,000 up front to produce his first full run of swords and every partner he asked turned him down—an obstacle at the time, but something Beasley is now grateful for since he retains full ownership of the company.

For the deals that do work out, though, it’s not hard to see why. These companies essentially get a free 60-minute commercial every Sunday that’s watched obsessively by millions of people. Game of Thrones is also a show perfectly formulated for Dark Sword and Valyrian Steel’s potential customers. Beasley says that he bet big on Valyrian Steel for a couple reasons. The first is that the swords in the show and books have names. And to be sure, the blades have a rich and compelling backstory of their own. I sat enthralled, along with two million-plus other viewers, and watched an 18-minute video breaking down what Valyrian steel is, how it’s made, and which characters have swords made out of it. One commenter writes, “By the middle of [the] video, I started to think that these are part of actual human history.” The blades really feel like their own characters.

Of course, the market is exactly right: “People who buy swords tend to read books,” says Beasley. A sprinkling of luck is involved, too: “It's helpful that Kit Harington is not a tall man,” Beasley adds. “He wears [the sword] on his hip but because he's not a tall man, the pommel of the sword sits at about his sternum in every scene he's in, more or less. So, it gets a ton of screen time.”

Lastly, this is a crowd that craves authenticity, and Martin works closely with each of these companies to design the items and gives a final sign-off on everything. HBO is a prestige television network and it asks the same quality from its partners. “This is a product category that requires a highly skilled licensee, and the resulting collection of replica weapons and armor gives fans a way to own beautiful and faithful copies of what they have seen on air,” Jeff Peters, HBO’s vice president of licensing and retail says over email.

None of this would have been possible if not for Martin’s fierce loyalty towards his licensees. When he signed on with HBO, the author ensured that the companies he worked with as part of the books got right of first refusal and served as a sounding board for those on the fence about licensing with HBO. It didn’t work out on a large scale for everyone, but in creating a cult show, Martin also created a tiny industry for his friends.

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