Brandon Sanderson is one of the world's most popular and successful fantasy authors, and he's something of a mould-breaker too. Sanderson isn't just prolific but, having faced multiple rejections early in his career, a writer who's pursued any and every avenue he can to sell his books: And for him, success has begat success to an enormous scale. Last year Sanderson (most of whose books are available from major publishers) launched a Kickstarter to self-publish "four secret novels" and 185,341 backers pledged just under $42 million to buy them.
Esquire's run an excellent profile of Sanderson during which he talks about some of his beefs with the book publishing industry, how he's dealt with them, and amazingly enough the inspiration he takes from something like Elden Ring. Sanderson goes through his frustrations with, essentially, that old-school book publishing model where you do a swish hardback which sells at a premium for a year alongside the ebook then (if it does well enough) a cheaper paperback and… well, that's pretty much it.
