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Take Michael McCollum for example. He has self published via his website for many years now after leaving his mainstream publisher due to dissatisfaction with the publishing industry as a whole.
He is not a prolific or as popular an SF author such as David Weber or John Ringo and writes in his spare time. His published works are inexpensive and multiformat.
I would hate to see authors such as him hurt by piracy.
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That is so right. There is also an English author, Richard Herley (
http://www.richardherley.com/), who takes an even more radical approach: he offers his books for free download. You can pay by donation later if you liked the book. Well, it worked with me: I did donate. Try his book "Refuge", it is extremely well written.
Generally speaking, I am much more likely to donate to open source projects and the likes than to pay for commercial software, for example.
That is exactly the road that musicians, artists and authors should go. Get rid of these publishers and distributors who take such an huge cut, to the detriment of both the authors and the public. Gather into non profit cooperative societies, who would do the publishing and distribution work at cost. Imagine an Amazon.com or iTunes owed by the authors. Authors can get increased royalties and the public gets better prices, and less incentive to go the illegal route, plus the public knows that the money goes straight to the artists.