When I first started writing, my goal was to publish traditionally with one of the big fantasy publishing houses like TOR or Orbit. Independent publishing never crossed my mind because I had never read any independently published books. I thought that the majority of them were terrible and I’ve never been a very fast reader, so I decided that the gatekeepers within traditional publishing houses would guarantee a better read.

Now, this isn’t always the case.

In my opinion, the best gatekeepers...