For fantasy fans, Patrick Rothfuss is a man who needs no introduction. The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear have earned the Wisconsin author praise from critics and fans alike for his sophisticated storytelling and unique worldbuilding. Recently, Rothfuss was kind enough to take part in an email interview with Toonari Post in which he shared his views on everything from the perils of querying to his disdain for the Badger State’s controversial governor.

Toonari Post (TP): What helps you get into the ‘writing zone?’ For example, do you listen to a particular piece of music or drink a certain drink?

Patrick Rothfuss (PR): Caffeine helps a lot. That and a certain amount of isolation. No music. Silence.

TP: Could you briefly describe your journey from aspiring writer to published author?

PR: Not briefly, no. It took 14 years, after all. It was tangled trail of broken hearts and empty promises.

Actually, that’s a lie. It’s just a pretty boring story. Especially if I do it briefly.

TP: How did you find your agent?

PR: After two years of sending out query letters and failing to get an agent, I made friends with an author, who was nice enough to introduce me to his agent. That got my foot in the door.

TP: Do you have any advice for writers struggling with the dreaded query letter?

PR: My best advice would be to ask someone else for advice. I suck at query letters.

I’m not being modest. I was really profoundly bad at it. Like I said, I sent letters out for more than two years, and failed resoundingly all the while. You don’t want me to help you with that.

It’s kind of a shame, really. Writing a good query letter has very little to do with writing a good novel. But if you can’t write the one, it makes it really hard to get the other published.

TP: Why did you choose to go with a traditional publisher?

PR: Because I wanted people to read my books.

TP: Were you ever tempted to self-publish?

PR: Not really. Because, as I mentioned, I wanted people to read my books.

I know there’s a lot of talk about self-publishing right now. Everyone’s giddy with the possibilities. And I’ll admit that it looks good on paper: sell your books directly and keep a bigger chunk of the profit for yourself. No rejection letters. No hassle with agents. Sounds good, right?

Except nobody knows who you are. And nobody really cares. And your book is mostly crap because you haven’t had a substance-level editor give you feedback and make you revise it a couple of times. And your book is full of typos because you didn’t have a copy-editor read it. And the layout is ugly because you don’t know anything about layout…I’m sure you get the picture.

It’s like the query letter problem that I just mentioned, magnified a hundredfold. You might be good at telling a story, but that doesn’t mean you know anything about marketing. Or layout. Or editing. Or publicity. Or selling your books for foreign markets.

Even if you’re surprisingly good at one of those things, you’re still not going to be as good as a professional. You don’t know the tricks of the trade. You don’t know the right people to call. You don’t know what mistakes to avoid….

Everyone can point to a few examples of people that have done very well for themselves self-publishing. But honestly, those folks are lucky as lottery winners. They’re statistical anomalies. You want to publish with a publisher because a publisher knows how to publish a book. And you don’t. You really don’t.

TP: Reading your books, it’s hard not to be blown away by the amount of worldbuilding you’ve done. How do you keep all the details straight? Do you have any plans to release an official guide to the world of the Kingkiller Chronicles?

PR: I’ll probably do something like that eventually. Right now I have vague dreams of releasing it as a sourcebook for a table-top role-playing game.

TP: Music obviously plays a large role in Kvothe’s life, and you refer to (and occasionally quote from) various songs throughout the books. Have you ever thought about putting all those songs on a CD?

PR: That would be a ton of fun, but it would be a lot of work. I’d also need some serious musicians to help me pull it off. Real musicians with serious craft behind them. So far, nobody like that has dropped me an e-mail.

TP: The Cthaeh is one of the coolest creatures I’ve ever seen in a fantasy novel. What was the inspiration for it?

PR: I didn’t really base it off anything. I made it up. Y’know, out of my head.

That’s what I do. I make things up.

TP: If you could start the Kingkiller Chronicles anew, is there anything you’d do differently?

PR: Not really. The good thing about working on the books for 14 years before they hit the shelves is that I worked out most of the kinks long before they were published.

Barring a few tiny mistakes, I got everything pretty much exactly the way I wanted.

TP: If you were to study at the Arcanum, what would you study?

PR: Probably alchemy and naming. I think I’d make a better namer than Kvothe.

TP: Why do you think so many people in Academia turn up their noses at genre fiction?

PR: I think it’s mostly because they have sad little lives, and one of the rare tawdry joys they possess is looking down on other people. It’s sad, really.

TP: Do you see that changing eventually?

PR: Oh, sure. There’s a lot of folks in academia that don’t have their heads up their asses. You can take classes on the Lord of the Rings, Gaiman’s Sandman, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The smart folks are realizing that if you ignore modern culture, modern culture is going to ignore you right back. And when that happens, you’re going to have to sit all by your lonely self and wallow in your own obsolescence.

But if you open the door and realize things like the fact that Batman is occupying the same narrative space that Robin Hood used to fill 400 years ago, then you have the freedom to ignore the pointless “what is literature” discussion and just talk about stories.

That’s all that really matters in the end. Stories.

TP: What are three books that you think everyone should read?

PR: All Quiet on the Western Front. 1984. The Last Unicorn.

TP: What are the top three things on your ‘bucket list?’

PR: I’d love to get a chance to talk shop with Joss Whedon. That’s pretty high up there on the list.

The other two, well, they’re not the sort of thing you mention in polite conversation.

TP: What do you find most challenging about being an author?

PR: Coming to grips with being a bit of a celebrity. That’s not anything I ever expected to have to deal with in my life.

I mean, if you’re an actor, you know people are going to recognize you in a restaurant. If you’re a rock star, you know people are going to stop you on the street and ask you for your autograph. But as an author? That’s not something I was ready for.

TP: If you couldn’t be an author, what would you do?

PR: I’d be an unpublished author. Also probably a teacher.

TP: You’ve made no secret of your admiration for Joss Whedon. Have you read the comic continuations of Buffy the Vampire Slayer? What do you think of them?

PR: They’re good. Joss is an excellent storyteller. It really doesn’t matter what medium he’s working in.

TP: Speaking as a native Badger, what is your favorite thing about Wisconsin?

PR: Right now my favorite thing is working to recall our absolute shitbag of a governor. He’s been screwing up my state for more than a year. I want him out.

For more information about Pat Rothfuss, check out his website.

Image Courtesy of   Patrick Rothfuss

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About the author

Jason Loch
Originally from the east coast, I now live among the Cheeseheads of the Badger State. I came here for a PhD in history but I loved it so much here that I decided to stay even after I realized that a career in academia wasn't for me. I'm passionate about history (especially ancient history) and politics (both British and American). During the few months of the year that we don't have several feet of snow on the ground, I love to get outdoors and enjoy the fresh air. I also love to write and I'm currently working on a historical fantasy novel set in ancient Egypt.

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15 Comments for Patrick Rothfuss in Interview

Jamison Stone

Best hygapean interview I have read all morning

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Aaron

I love Pat Rothfuss. I love his work.

…but some of his interview responses are the most flippant, passive-aggressive responses I’ve ever seen. Seriously. I get that you’re witty, but you don’t have to be a borderline asshole, too.

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Louise

I get your feeling. I love him and his stuff too, and reading his blog really entertains me, but quite often I get this hard-kind-of-witty sense about him too. Makes me a little sad.

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bangbangteng

I feel that if I did as many interviews, appearances, child rearing, and book writing as the Roth-topus, I’d be kinda dick-ish on paper sometimes too.

Thanks Pat, for putting yourself out there so much and letting fans in on who you are, and what you do. Feel free to let us know our welcome is overstayed occasionally.

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Indiana Jim

Jamison, I find your comment rather hygapean, as do I find my own.

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Andrew

When I stop my wife in the grocery store to show her how cool it looks when I turn the salad dressing bottle upside down, that’s hypagean.

As for the interview itself, I think the comments Pat made on self publication were pretty interesting.. I’ve read some articles that make it seem like self publishing is the answering to big publishers going out of business, but I hadn’t thought of the points that Pat brought up.

And yeah, Pat would absolutely make a better namer than Kvothe hahaha

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Andrew

Oh no I spelled hygapean wrong! A brand new word and I already screwed it up..

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Alex

Aaron, I found your response flippant and passive-agressive.

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Michael J. Sullivan

Being fairly new on the traditionally publishing scene, Orbit released the last book in my Riyria Revelations series in January, it’s probably a colossal mistake to do what I’m about to, but here goes anyway. I want to take issue with Pat on the subject of self-publishing…but only because he offers advice for something he has neither done, nor really has a clear picture of.
I would never second guess an author’s choice in publishing, and if Pat has no designs on self-publishing that is his prerogative. But having been both traditionally published and self-published I would like to offer up some of my firsthand insights.

Yes, when you start out, no one knows who you are, but most authors, particularly those in the midlist, are in the exact same boat as a self-published author. I’ve seen many authors who have books published through Tor, Orbit, Ace, Harper Voyager, Daw, who fail to find an audience and fade into oblivion. If you are a new author, receiving the “standard advance” you responsibility to build an audience is the same regardless of publishing path. Now, if you are fortunate enough to “hit the lottery” and get a substantial advance, then yes you’ll have the advantage of significant marketing resources, but for most this is not the case.

Not all self-published books are crap. When my books were self published I received thousands of reviews on goodreads and Amazon with 4 and 5 stars. Hugh Howey has 406 4 and 5 star reviews for Wool #1 and 986 4 and 5 star reviews for the Wool Omnibus. Anthony Ryan has 109 4 and 5 star reviews for Blood Song. I respectfully submit that Pat, is just not “tuned” into the indie authors in the genre but if you look at the Amazon Top 100 Epic Fantasy kindle titles you’ll see 52 from self-published authors and 48 from traditional. Obviously each are writing books “good enough” to find substantial audiences.

As to editing, professional self-published authors don’t forgo editors, they approach the release of their books like a publisher, because guess what, they are publishers. They hire copy editors, and in some cases developmental editors. There are many people who were once working for the big-six that now do freelance. Betsy Mitchell, was editor and chief at Del Rey for over a decade, offers her services freelance.

As to layout, ebook formatting is remarkably easy, and if you don’t want to do it yourself can be purchased extremely cost effectively. In fact, talk to most heavy ebook readers and you’ll find that the layout and formatting of books from traditional presses have a much worse reputation than that of self-published books, because they work at it harder. There have been many cases where books have been scanned and have OCR errors but released from the big-six and the author has no recourse to get them corrected, when you do it yourself you can ensure it is correct.

As to foreign sales, I had several overseas deals sown up long before being picked up by Orbit, many from the same publishers that put out Name of the Wind. Of course this isn’t something I did on my own, I hired a foreign rights agent that knows that market. (Interesting enough she represented Pat’s and Dan Brown’s foreign sales in the past). But many new authors are forced to sign contracts with “world rights” meaning that half of each deal goes directly into the pockets of the publisher. Because I already had success overseas it was easy for me to demand an English only contract, and as such I’ve been able to keep several hundred thousand dollars BECAUSE of my self-publishing not IN SPITE of it.

Years ago self-publishing was the last resort of writers who couldn’t be published anyway else. Today, some are choosing to self-publish because they have an entrepreneur spirit and new distribution channels have leveled the playing field such that they can be profitable.
I mean no disrespect to Pat, he doesn’t want to self-publish, which is fine, but I do object to someone who has never tried, and therefore has no success, make statements about the nature of that paradigm without any real facts or firsthand experience.

TL:DR – When considering whether self-publishing is something to look into, ask the opinion of someone who has done both and can get objective data on the pluses and minuses of each.

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J-Rod

TLDR

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Kevin

Relax. You’re very defensive about self-publishing. Rothfuss’s advice is his to give; it reflects poorly on you to tell him he doesn’t know anything about self-publishing and should shut up. You can give your own advice without attack him personally and let readers decide for themselves.

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Fleer

i agree with Kevin, you need to lay off with the strike at Patrick. and for another you have experience in dealing with publishers and what they are looking for. but what about someone who has no contacts like you do? or can’t afford to hire editors? someone who is just now thinking about publishing? they can’t do what you just described. so how about you lay off and think about what people with less experience than you have to work with.

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Milo

Well I think you two Fleer and Kevin, should read again what J. Sullivan wrote. Cause he is giving a really interesting and intelligent insight on self publishing because he has DONE IT. So you shouldn’t mistreat the man is he gives you factual advice.

And again Pat and Sullivan are great writers so refrain from being so passionate about their different opinions. All have a shard of truth.

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