I really don't understand why his editors don't just provide him a team, like a tv show writing room, and he can bounce ideas off them and have them mechanically churn out his ideas. He could knock it out in a few months and be a hero and put it all behind him cleanly then.
Honestly, at this point I'd just take a wiki page with a brain dump of any unrevealed lore along with his vague plans of how he was going to tie it all together and just let the community figure out the rest of the story, Elden Ring style.
I think what really made Rothfuss special was how he would slip into poetic prose without overtly signaling the reader, and that this would be hard to mimic.
Same with his parallel construction of lore using repetition of similar but distinct stories.
Simply saying "this is the truth" or "this is what happened" would not be the same, and I dont think many fanfic authors could pull it off convincingly.
This, a lot of people that don't read very deeply just assume there isn't much there and it's just a mary sue self insert story and don't really notice any of the other themes that are going on. There is a lot of good writing going on, but I suppose for the people that don't care anyway, a rough fan fiction would be good enough for them.
I suspect there are a number of very human reasons why an author wouldn't want to do that. I also suspect the output would be pretty different.
I find the idea kind of revolting, but I am also surprised that collaborative writing is so rare. I suppose it cuts to the question of what the point of writing the book is in the first place.
It is hard to think of a recent example aside from the expanse by "James S.A. Corey"
High quality artistic collaboration is hard and even harder in a capitalist model (this is coming from libertarian capitalist). Compelling art is definitionally outside the mainstream, as this is a pre-requisite for novel insight and creativity. This is why hundred million dollar movies and series can't simply hire good writers.
I really don't understand why his editors don't just provide him a team, like a tv show writing room, and he can bounce ideas off them and have them mechanically churn out his ideas. He could knock it out in a few months and be a hero and put it all behind him cleanly then.