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Originally Posted by Moejoe
I think we have to expect, and your experiment proves it to an extent, that the money is just not there any longer in fiction.
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When was there ever Big Money in midlist or genre fiction?
Seriously, the most surprising element of this experiment to me is that there is a public impression that authors are millionaires.
And I assume he did not mean that everyone thinks that writers have trust funds....
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Originally Posted by MoeJoe
The mid list was destroyed a long time ago in print, and it has zero chance of surviving in the digital age.
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I concur that the midlist titles are getting slammed. But that is also the pool from which the blockbusters arise, so I suspect it will continue in some form or another.
Also, while I do think it would be great if more good authors could earn a living exclusively from their creative pursuits, that is a rare occurrence in almost every creative profession. Lots of painters, for example, spend years teaching or assisting other artists -- even ones who are routinely showing their work in galleries. Dancers, musicians, poets (!), actors (!!!), the overwhelming majority earn a pittance from their art. A huge percentage of photographers earn their living from commercial assignments, which may or may not satisfy them creatively. E.g. a lot of Richard Avedon's best work was made for commercial purposes, while other works were done as personal projects; he probably could not get access to certain subjects, let alone afford to run his studio to his exacting standards, exclusively from print and book sales. Many professional artists merely recognize the need to supplement their incomes, and find ways to do so without compromising their aesthetic goals.
And yet, people keep plugging away at it, and other people do continue to buy books. Things might get worse for authors, they might get better. Prophesies of doom for a specific medium or artform are not always realized.
Ergo, I don't think we can determine, based on this experiment, that "professional fiction is dead." Only that the donation model -- particularly in its current iterations -- is not viable, at least for writers.