So how do authors make money? Going on concert tours? The copyright system needs reform (Mickey Mouse for example) — but the system protects creators.

If there were no copyrights, no author would make any money.

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WalterBright 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Put it another way - how many authors are making money off of books they wrote >10 years ago?

And how many actually make a living off of writing books? The authors I know all have jobs.

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HeinzStuckeIt 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

More and more authors of nonfiction today make money from a number of channels other than actual book sales. The book only serves as a promotional tool for their personal brand, and is only a collection of previously published blog posts or magazine pieces. This already started due to changing consumer behaviors and declining interest in books, so by the time piracy has come on the scene, the shift had already largely occurred.

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eikenberry 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> If there were no copyrights, no author would make any money.

Cory Doctorow showed that this isn't true.

	▲	EvanAnderson 15 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Cory Doctorow's works that were released under more permissive licensing still reserved some rights for the author. I believe he used some flavor of a Creative Commons non-commercial license, if memory serves. Point being that the method of licensing his works was still fundamentally based on copyright. (I think the US copyright system is hugely broken and the social contract needs to be re-negotiated, but I comment here in the interests of facts, not in support of the broken system.)
	▲	criddell 14 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Are Cory Doctorow's newest books permissively licensed? I thought he stopped doing that.