How much of your- the way you interact with your fans and your process with us (?) is a reaction to being a Wheel of Time fan, and the thins that you wanted to happen…?
Right. I think a lot of it is, but it’s a mix of being a Wheel of Time fan and just a fantasy fan in general, wanting to know more about business, being an author, and just… wanting this transparency and… I don’t think that the authors before can really be blamed, they didn’t have the Internet, right? I mean, you couldn’t really have a thing like I have now on my website, or that most authors have a website, I mean, some authors tried newsletters, but those were huge productions, requiring, you know, actual paper, you know, that stuff they used to use, then sent through the actual mail, not email… the email’s named after it, kids. (laughing) These were huge productions, and so they were- It’s not like I sat one day and said “oh, those authors!”, but then… you see, my generation, when we broke in and were, the Internet was becoming the thing that it is, were like “ah, let’s use this!” I remember when Kevin James said to me “but so here’s Twitter”, and I’m like like, “eh, Twitter. Why would… they’re so short”, he said “No, but it’s like you can create your own newsfeed from all the people you’re following, and it’s like a little kind of newspaper about what’s going on in everyone’s life.” I’m like “oh, that’s a really useful thing as an author”, so I hopped on Twitter very early, I hopped on Reddit very early, I hopped on… eh, some of the other defunct places, but yeah, the idea was that… I’m gonna go off a tangent, you’ll get a lot of this. I have this view, as a writer - and again, don’t go say that to other writers, you shouldn’t do this - the way I feel is that I’m an artist and you are my patrons. In the old days, you used to… to be an artist, you used to have wealthy patrons, right? That’s how you made art, that some rich person came and said “here’s a bunch of money to live on, now go make this art and then, you know, mention that I’m your patron”. And a lot of great art we have, in fact almost all of it came from somebody paying so the artist can actually have food and a life while they’re making this art. In the modern society that’s changed to the kind of crowdsourcing, “you are my patron”. The crowd in general says “okay, we’re all going to be in (???) so that you don’t have to be one” - thank you - “You write these stories and then we’ll support you”. And so my philosophy is: in a lot of way, you are my boss, in more of a patronage sort of thing, you’re my patron, and so I should be accountable with what I’m doing. It doesn’t mean that I’m going to necessarily change what I’m doing, and it doesn’t mean that I’m always going to be writing the thing you want me to, but I will be clear about what I’m doing and when, just for that transparency, ‘cause we can do it now, when we’re not- we couldn’t before.
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