For popular authors, why not have a Donation Button?
It could be either a one time donation or a monthly Donation like Patreon?
That way, fans can support the authors and some of the most popular authors can write full time if the donation reach a high enough amount.
For example, this author is making $2057 per month from fan donation so she can write full-time. Her writing is available for all the read for free.
https://www.patreon.com/leeandmiller?ty=h
or this author: $2,057.38
https://www.patreon.com/mikebennett?ty=h
Hundreds (maybe thousands) of Chinese web novelists are writing full-time thank to such a system in China. Top Chinese web authors are earnings millions of USD each year.
The most popular Chinese web novel site (Qidian) was purchased by Tencent for $800 million earlier this year because web novels in China is now huge business.
Hundreds of millions of smartphone. Free reading on the web. Donation to support the authors. Authors get 70% of the donation money while the novel web site takes 30%.
In China, web novel websites are like Kindle in the West. They dominate the digital reading market in term of readers and revenue.