They did the Kickstarter to crowdfund money to publish the books under his own company Dragonsteel instead of likely using Macmillan/Tor. They didn’t set out to

They did the Kickstarter to crowdfund money to publish the books under his own company Dragonsteel instead of likely using Macmillan/Tor. They didn’t set out to collect so much money, the initial goal was to raise $1M. Fwiw, Sanderson took some of that money and backed every single publishing Kickstarter that wasn’t against the TOS or NSFW.