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It's probably innocuous, but now I'm wondering if Dragonsteel Entertainment was created as his backup plan.
For those who don't know, Dragonsteel Entertainment is Sanderson's company. It has ~60 employees, including a few of his friends and family, spread out over editorial, continuity, merchandising/publicity, and administrative roles. It has almost exclusively been for Sanderson, but he's starting to publish a couple of others as well. It was the main force behind his "Secret Project" set of novels coming out this year, so it's made at least $40 million in sales already (approx. 5% of one of the "big five" American publishers, or about 0.05% of all books everywhere).
Combine that with his opposition to Amazon's monopolistic audiobook practices, and he might become largely unCancellable. Regardless of whether it was his goal, I wish him the best of luck.
Interesting. Honestly Mormons seem like one of the groups that are effectively uncancellable because they’ll pull stuff like that(how’s Orson Scott Card BTW?).
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That's utterly genius in any event.
He knows he's got fans willing to plunk down literal millions for his stuff, the vast majority of whom will follow him where-ever he goes and don't care who publishes him.
And because he's got many fans with cash, he'll always have someone willing to sell his books.
Merely having the option to walk away makes his position that much more secure since TOR has much less leverage.
Honestly I'd recommend he walk away anyway on his own terms, but not to burn bridges, just as a pre-emptive action to minimize drama later.
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