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For a moment let's leave aside the issue of dollars and cents. Imagine all books and novels were free. (And essentially I regard all novels as free these days ("free" is < $5).
do you read as many full length novels as you did 20 years ago? Do people today read as many books as they did 50 or 100 years ago?
In the 19th century there was a modest number of writers, but insatiable demand for reading material. It roughly parallels what is happening in the DVD market today.
As for "human condition" novels, the novel assume different functions in different time periods. Honestly, I don't want to sound as though I'm putting down "story for story's sake". In literature the story is the thing..the only thing! It's just that print books are less likely to reach a wider audience than a DVD or TV show. These days, a movie is the genre more likely to attract media attention and commercial attention. Of course, the ebook revolution (and by implication the wider availability of content) may change that--but they can't add more reading time to a person's life.
The novel's raison d'etre is is to do and say what only the novel can do. What kind of story can you tell which you can't do in a DVD or TV series? The implication (as I see it) is a novel more intellectualized than what we had in previous centuries (whether you like it or not).
I have nothing against a nonmonetary system of publishing novels. My only point is that fewer financial rewards reduce the incentive for writers to continue producing for that genre. Writers go where the money (and audience size) is. A print book is considered a "success" if 5000 copies are sold; videos have far larger reach (especially as a result of Youtube).
But as I said, the INternet changes everything. My personal fiction site easily fetches 100,000 unique visitors per year, something I never would have envisioned under a print publishing system. And many others out there are receiving many times more traffic than I could dream of.
Perhaps just as many novels (if not more) being produced as there was 20 years ago. That's not the point. Aren't novelist's less likely to receive recognition than screenwriters? The novel is an intriguing form (and read Jane Smiley's 13 ways of looking at the novel for a nifty evaluation of it), but there's nothing sacrosanct about it. Genres come and go; but storytelling continues...
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