[fmorel]

No upfront costs?

They have to get the books recorded and printed without overproducing and losing money while also not getting a worse deal with a smaller print + miss out on sales. Same thing for merchandise. All of it needs to be warehoused until it's ready for delivery. Plus probably other things I'm unaware of.

A major publisher already has all this infrastructure to take a gamble on new books while paying with current sales. Dragonsteel is still very small.