It's kinda poetic that in the entire process, authors get screwed thrice. First, by the publishers and retailers, who keep 80% of the revenue. Then, by the hacker culture that enables widespread, institutionalized book piracy for the sake of "information wanting to be free". And finally, by the same hacker culture gone corporate, where "grown-up" geeks conclude that, since we already have all these pirated works out there, what's the harm of training LLMs on that.

Music is quite similar, and I've actually seen piracy justified by saying that "eh, the musicians are screwed either way". And of course, that piracy enabled suno.ai, which is now making sure that the musicians are really screwed.

Don't forget the 4th way they get screwed which that the AI trained on the books is spitting out a flood of new books that push the real authors out.

Too true, and with 1000's of new books added daily, new authors are lost in the noise. Writing is a lifestyle choice and a hobby, you will need to be very lucky, have a strong following or be pushed by a big publishing house to make any money from it, even successful indie authors will earn in a year what a good programmer earns in a day.