The only Terry you need to be familiar with is Pratchett.
I've read both Goodkind and Brooks, back when I was about 14 (but still not a boy named Kevin). They were pretty good, but definitely in the Eddings oeuvre [1]. I can't remember how far I got with Goodkind - pretty sure at least the first 3 before I got bored with it. I did like Brooks' Shannara and Magic Kingdom, but wouldn't read them again.
[1] My classification for fantasy novels/series that seem good until you either grow up or read enough fantasy that you find much better stuff elsewhere.
With regards to ebooks not being available, we are still in fairly early days. I would say that publishers are more focussed on putting the newest stuff out first, and gradually working their way through the backlog of earlier stuff. Who knows how they're prioritising that order? THe easiest for them is to go backwards by year - and in a lot of ways that makes sense. The books are still fresh in people's minds, readers are still talking about them and wanting to buy. While this means that series books come out in reverse order, it's really a problem mostly affecting SFF. Other genres may have long-running series, but more often than not they are standalones with the same setting and recurring characters - you don't HAVE to read them in order as you do with SFF. And the last time I was in a B&M bookstore, the SFF section was pretty small.