But he's not the one who pushes "minimally viable product."
Correct, but he does encourage "minimally viable talents" to have a go. Just "find a popular genre" and "write to market". Add a slick cover and voila... What I've noticed over time is some of his biggest fans aren't selling any books. But their books sure look pretty on the shelf.
Someone at that other place mentioned newbies should be arriving with a book or two finished hoping to learn how to publish. Instead, and more than not, newbies arrive having never written a book, and post "Can I make money writing books?" (they're the ones that run off to buy Fox's books). I wish they'd just go over to the Warrior Forum and learn how to make money blogging. Leave books to people with writing in their bones.
The bookshelves are VERY crowded! Everything is crammed. I started publishing in 2011, so I remember the ugly covers and the time that existed before New Adult, before Lit RPG, before witch cozies. (They existed, but you know what I mean). And before so much of the sexy romance! My goodness! Fifty Shades hit it big in the mainstream in, what, the summer of 2012? The literary world has changed so much.
As for the newbies... it sucks that they chew up shelf space, but I can't judge them too harshly, as I was one of them. I couldn't sell my sweet YA books to buy coffee, and I started writing sexy romance on a whim. I'd only read maybe 2 sexy romances at that point. Maybe just one. People loved the books. People hated the books. People bought the books. I like to think I brought some joy into the world. Maybe some babies, too.
I haven't even written under that name in over 5 years, and people still buy / hate / love those books.
It just happened that I started writing books before the whole indie author revolution. I'm not sure that makes me a better person or a better writer than anyone who started later, after the cat was out of the bag, and didn't want to write the 7 or 8 utterly useless books I had to write to start my career.