[lacker]

how many people like me does it take to support one professional writer?

Back of the envelope, I would estimate authors get 1/4 of book sales as royalties, so you've sent $1000 to authors in your lifetime. I don't know how old you are, maybe that's $100/year since you were at book-buying age. If an author gets by on $30k/year then it takes 300 people like you to support a professional writer.

That's not bad, really. If you watch 120 movies a year then you're probably supporting the movie industry more than the book industry but it sounds like you prefer movies to books anyway so that's fair.

[whimsicalism]

Many problems with this analysis, I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to notice what they are.