It’s interesting to see a few dynamics here. 1) Sanderson already delivered a huge shot across the bow with the secret novel kickstarter. TOR had to have been livid with the kickstarter - it’s 41 million of revenue from their top line, but more importantly It kick started a whole ton of other authors. The kickstarters started because a loophole in their contract, and Brandon has very successfully exploited it as much as his characters exploit magic systems. 2) Dragonsteel is basically growing to the point that it is a publishing house. Others should keep this in mind - Brandon knows how to scale a business. I think of other creative battles - think comic Bill Waterson who won creative rights to Calvin and Hobbes, only to stop publishing a few years later because of how difficult the format changes he insisted on were. This path is not sustainable for a ton of people. 3) TOR has also got to be livid in that they basically handed the keys to the kingdom w/ Brandon by asking him to finish WoT (technically Harriet, Jordan’s wife did) 4) Now he is trying to do the same thing to Audible.

Having met Sanderson before he started on WoT - Ut’s incredible how far he’s gone… but somehow he keeps going.