I'm going to take the risk of getting down voted to oblivion, but here's my .02.
I think Neil Gaimans article is rubbish. It's thrown around all the time on Reddit and i hate it. Everything about it, I hate.
Neil's main point is that we are supposed to believe authors are working on there books and wait patiently, but we know that some authors completely neglect their book.
I don't believe that any person, unless people who love an author, would support an author by buying their first book if they knew the series wouldn't be released on any set of schedule.
Patrick Rothfuss main selling point when he was trying to gather readers for TNoTW was that they were all done and should be published in 3 years. If I knew he was going to completely neglect book 3 and invest all his time into worldbuilders I never would have bought his books until they were out. Before people say something, I'm not saying that him doing charity is wrong, it's great that he started a charity, good for him but he was only capable of doing that because of his writing.
I'm so sick of the "they owe us nothing" mentality. GRRM owes me nothing because I never bought his books because I have no clue when they will be released. The readers who did buy his books, who have supported him and who he has promised multiple times that a book is coming he owes them a book.
Authors would be nothing without their fans, it's complete rubbish to think they don't owe their fans a finished series.
Could you imagine the outrage if JK Rowling would have taken this long between Harry Potter books?
So many authors publish on schedules and are reliable and get pushed aside. Those should be the authors who are recommended more, those should be the authors who garnish the attention, not people who are lazy and show no professionalism. PRs attitude is embarrassing, I regret buying his books if I knew he would start treating his fans this way and would seemingly stop caring about his book.
P.s this has nothing to do with authors who have medical concerns, such as Lynch with his medical concerns that have slowed him down.
Sorry, vent over.