Quote:
Originally Posted by conan50
Traditional publishers often give authors advances, so they would not be wholly at the mercy of book sales. Also ebooks are only a portion of the sales, print book, audio book, books sold at signings, movie rights for some books, and for some authors there are speaking engagements. I don't know if these will add up to live concerts for musicians, but some authors probably do quite well despite any potential ebook thefts.
I fully expect we will see a transition to ebook subscription services similar to the rise of music subscription services, on a much larger scale than current ebook subscription services. Ownership and DRM of ebooks will mean less over time. DRM has probably somewhat slowed the demise of print books, which may have been the ultimate goal of publishers, but change is upon them whether they want it or not.
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Authors have traditionally had quite a few different revenue streams - selling to magazines, scripts, etc. The vast majority of musicians typical realized much of their revenue from sources other than record/cd sales long before digital music and electronic piracy ever came about. You had to get past the first record contract to make the big bucks and that was pretty rare. There are a lot of parallels between the music industry and publishing industry.