It seems like a pretty logical conclusion that if you removed copyright, then book manufacturers would just copy author's books and sell them without paying the author. Or ebook services would just distribute their books for free.

Author's could potentially get a couple months of sales by working with manufacturers themselves and being the first to sell their books. But as soon as untrusted parties can get their hands on the book, someone will start selling their own copies of it.

Personally I strongly detest ip law, but I see it as problematic for its implementation rather than its intent. So much so that I would rather it be abolished than hold its current form. I feel this from the perspective of a creator and a consumer because I so often see works that are unfairly removed or have their profits stolen as a result of the guilty until proven innocent style enforcement. This makes me fearful of publishing works that build upon previous work (which many creative fields naturally do). The most blatant abuse I've seen recently was the Gamer's Nexus documentary being taken down by Bloomberg. However, IP is arguably more problematic in industries like medicine where patents are renewed ad infinitum by evergreening to milk a protected monopoly.