Writing novels as a living is tough ... but writing for a living is certainly possible and lots of folks still do it. Sometimes they call themselves PR, speech writers, journalists, magazine writers ... and folks still "write" for radio, TV and movies.
My fantasy is to retire into writing novels. Believe me -- it's a fantasy, having never written a novel or published one word of fiction (though I have written a good deal of published non-fiction, all of it some decades ago). So, alas, that puts me in the hobbyist market, doesn't it?
My point about the holy grail of hard covers, some messages ago, was that a significant number of those copies do NOT generate a royalty for the author whereas every single e-book version does. I really don't see the resistance to selling e-books, at a reasonable price, and at a discount to hard covers, upon the initial release of a title. They are somewhat different audiences and tapping the wave of interest at release seems much more profitable all round than waiting six months or a year till the title has been submerged in hundreds of other releases taking the spotlight away.
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