[pointlessone]

How much money? I mean, the natural answer is full price but that’s not the amount the author gets from a regular sale. There’s a whole range where it’s cheaper to freebooters and still more profitable to the author.

I’ve seen an argument that buying an album from a musician (or a physical media or merch) and pirating the rest of their library in most cases more profitable to the musician than streaming.

I suppose there’s a similar dynamic in publishing where the overhead created by all the intermediaries is significant compared to the actual work done by the author, editor, designers, and so on.

[InsideOutSanta]

If you send the author half of what the book costs, there's an almost 100% chance this is more than they would have made if you had bought the book. If you send the author 20%, that's roughly what most authors earn per book sale. It can be substantially higher or lower depending on a bunch of factors, but I think it's a reasonable rule of thumb.

> I’ve seen an argument that buying an album from a musician (or a physical media or merch) and pirating the rest of their library in most cases more profitable to the musician than streaming.

Streaming is a particularly brutal example for musicians. Book authors make quite a bit more per book sale than musicians make per stream.

[__MatrixMan__]

Wouldn't it be cool if we could get to the point where authors (and artists generally) are making more from voluntary direct payments than they are from the platforms?

It would be a great way to demonstrate how broken the funding model is, and all of that money would be money that didn't contribute to the surveillance/censorship tech that copyright is used to justify.