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

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.

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.

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

…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.