Which Sanderson works are part of the Cosmere and which aren't?

Question

According to Wikipedia:

The Cosmere is the name of the universe in which many of Sanderson's books exist. This idea came from his desire to create an epic length series without requiring readers to buy a ridiculous number of books. Because of that, he hides connections to his other works within each book, creating this "hidden epic". In the end, the Cosmere Cycle will include between 32-36 books.

But Wikipedia doesn't specify precisely which of Sanderson's books are part of the Cosmere. It's certainly not all of them, but I'm not sure exactly which ones are the exceptions.

Sanderson's own website, as well as this SFF.SE question, both mention various books which are part of the Cosmere, but they don't state whether this is all the Cosmere books published so far, nor do they give proper lists of non-Cosmere Sanderson books.

I'm looking for an exhaustive list of Sanderson's works, clearly split into Cosmere and non-Cosmere books/series.

_{The motivation for this question is this meta post - before starting to retag, I want to be sure which brandon-sanderson} ^{questions are actually cosmere questions. But you don't need to worry about meta and tagging to answer this.}

Answer 1

List of Cosmere works

The Cosmere series is on-going, so the works that are part of it will grow. However, the more recent works set in the Cosmere have been more clearly part of a shared universe, with crossover characters (like Hoid) and concepts (like Shards and Adonalsium itself, how magic works in general). It should be pretty easy to decide if a novel is Cosmere or not based on this.

At this point, these works are part of the Cosmere; everything else published as of February 2023 is not a Cosmere work:

The Mistborn series (set on Scadrial):

Era 1

• The Final Empire
• The Well of Ascension
• The Hero of Ages
• The Eleventh Metal
• Mistborn: Secret History (novella)

Era 2

• The Alloy of Law
• Shadows of Self
• The Bands of Mourning
• The Lost Metal
• Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Eltania (short story)

The Stormlight Archive (set on Roshar):

• The Way of Kings
• Words of Radiance
• Edgedancer (novella)
• Oathbringer
• Dawnshard (novella)
• Rhythm of War

The Elantris series (set on Sel):

• Elantris
• The Emperor's Soul (novella)
• The Hope of Elantris (short story)

The White Sand series (set on Taldain):

• White Sand vol 1.
• White Sand vol 2.
• White Sand vol 3.
• White Sand Omnibus (volumes 1-3 with some additional content)

Standalone/single works:

• Warbreaker (set on Nalthis)
• Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell (set on Threnody)
• Sixth of the Dusk (set on First of the Sun)
• Tress of the Emerald Sea (set on Lumar)
• Yumi and the Nightmare Painter (set on Komashi)
• The Sunlit Man (set on Canticle)

List of non-Cosmere works

Any other work by Sanderson would be considered a non-Cosmere work. There's a lot of short stories published in anthologies that don't really have their own series name or title, and wouldn't really have tags to begin with. There's a list on Wikipedia but I have no idea how complete it is. The main novels/novellas he has published include:

The Wheel of Time (collaborative):

• The Gathering Storm
• Towers of Midnight
• A Memory of Light

The Reckoners series:

• Steelheart
• Mitosis (novella)
• Firefight
• Calamity
• Lux (audibook)

The Rithmatist series:

• The Rithmatist
• The Aztlanian

The Alcatraz series:

• Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians
• The Scrivener's Bones
• The Knights of Crystallia
• The Shattered Lens
• The Dark Talent

Infinity Blade series (based on the video game):

• Infinity Blade: Awakening
• Infinity Blade: Redemption

Legion series:

• Legion
• Legion: Skin Deep
• Legion: Lies of the Beholder

Skyward Series:

• Defending Elysium (novella)
• Skyward
• Starsight
• Cytonic
• Defiant

Standalone books:

• Perfect State
• The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England