Quote:
Originally Posted by stonetools
Er, a writer can't make a living under either scenario. That's the point. How many writer can make a living if only a tiny percentage of his books that are downloaded and read are actual sales? You are truly living in la-la land if you think that's a viable business model for writers and publishers
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Those figures are wildly exagerated, even extremely popular books are only downloaded in their hundreds rather than thousands. You're also forgetting about the positive impacts of file sharing. Research has proven that file sharers spend more on legitimate downloads than non-file sharers. So far there has been no research on how many extra sales are generated through their recommendations to others. But eliminate file sharing and you also eliminate all of those extra sales.
The major drain on any writer's income is publishers who take a 90% cut of their income in return for a few one-off services. If writers just paid a one-off fee for those one-off services and kept 100% of their income they could charge a tiny fraction of their current price for ebooks and still make more money. Who's going to waste time looking for free copies of something they can buy for less than the price of a coffee?