Robert, (rjnagle)
When have authors *ever* made tons of money off of their novels? No, I'm not talking about the 'next great "Bridges of Madison County"' here. I mean, the average mid-list novelist? If novelists wanted to make money, they'd give up the dream of writing and become publishers - or found Google! And there are *thousands* of novels being published each year. I bet if we went back to the 'good old days' of Dickens and Dumas, we'd find that fewer than a hundred authors managed to get their works into print on any given year.
Stop bemoaning the 'death of the novel' and get yourself outside - it's raining soup!
As for ebooks, I prefer to buy my ebooks for the very reason that I *WANT* my favorite authors to keep getting paid! If they don't get paid, they might not write any more! (Of course, I have Mobipocket, eReader, Fictionwise and Baen accounts set up. I can't afford to limit myself to just one author or just one genre.
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Furthermore, despite what some professors of literature might claim, the best novel out there isn't one which causes the reader to pause and ponder the human 'condition' - it's the one which entertains the reader the most and causes the reader to buy another. And maybe you hang out with authors who 'gestate' their novels for more than two years, but most authors I hang with kick their babies out of the nest into the 'maybe never' files after 12 to 15 months.
Derek