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Consider also that bestselling hardcovers are often discounted, sometimes heavily discounted, by bookstores as loss leaders.
With pbooks, the retailers have the choice to do that if they want. With cabal-published ebooks, that has been taken from the retailers. I don't like cartels.
And for every bestselling hardcover that makes a ton of money, there are at least a dozen that make a brief stop in the bookstore on the way to the remainder bin. That's a risk, by the way, that publishers don't take with ebooks: their "shelf life" is eternal, and there's no cost for production and, especially, returns.
A typical hardcover is a couple of inches taller, and about twice as thick, as the equivalent MM paperback. So in the horizontal space of one hardcover, the bookstore can pack two paperbacks; in the vertical space of four hardcovers (or fewer, if there are a few of those tall ones messing things up) he can pack at least five paperbacks. So if your typical MM paperback sells for $8, then the equivalent HC has to sell for $19.20 -- and sell as may copies -- just to make the same amount of money, assuming costs also track with space consumption. And that's selling just as many copies; people who buy two MM paperbacks for the same money aren't buying that HC, nor are people like me who long ago ran out of shelf space. The HC is often discounted; many stores advertise "10% off all hardcover fiction" or more. And it still doesn't sell as many copies as the MM paperback, whether because of cost, or size, or because people see fiction as disposable and don't want to pay high prices for it.
In a typical fiction section in a typical large chain bookstore, maybe 20% of any given area's fiction will be hardcovers. Why not 100%, if hardcovers are where the money is and paperbacks and their readers don't matter? Are bookstores so unaware of where the profits are? Are publishers deliberately publishing books they know are unprofitable?
Or ... just maybe ... is it just that only other artists care about "supporting the art" and the rest of us merely want a book to read?
By the way, over the years I've known many photographers. I've known a fair number of commercial photographers -- the kind who do senior photos, pictures for family greeting cards, and ordinary wedding pictures -- who made a very good living, sometimes even an exceptional one, from their work. I've never known an "art" photographer who didn't have to have another job (or a spouse with one) to make ends meet. The stereotype of the starving artist exists for a reason.
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