I disagree, it’s not all they have. And to back that up, I give you Patreon. One author I follow has over 1,500 patrons, most giving upwards of $3 a month.

Is this viable for all authors? Perhaps not, but between the new self-publishing market, Patreon, and pay-by-what’s-read models like KU, there’s more options than the shitty ebook racket that the publishers have created.

Business models like self-publishing and Kindle Unlimited have worked really well for romance and fantasy novelists who can publish six books a year and have fans who plough through two books a week. They absolutely have not worked for literary novelists, let alone historians, biographers etc. If the "sell copies of books to readers" model dies, it will change the kinds of books that get written. For people who see books as a fungible commodity – any book is about as good as any other – that's fine. For the rest of us, it isn't.

You make an assumption that people aren’t willing to pay to support the creation of non-fiction books. I think this is bunk.

An extremely relevant example: Veritasium. He creates well researched and scientific videos on YouTube (at a rate of maybe 3-4 a year), and has almost 5,000 patrons.

Again, can every author survive this way? No, but there are other options; please don’t get hung up on the familiar and call it the only way.

What are your options if your book is going to take years of work and you don't already have a following?

All of the authors I currently follow did exactly this. Word of mouth, some basic marketing, utilizing their contacts and their followers. The internet doesn't only support zeitgeists, they also support niche communities which spring up out of nowhere.

Start with something smaller or find an interested wealthy patron. Same options as if I wanted to start a business that will take years of development to achieve traction.

How does anyone get a following? You build it over time.

I can assure you there are a lot of great books that would not have been written if the authors first had to either 1. become beloved enough on the internet that they could crowdfund their income for five years or 2. somehow secure a "wealthy patron" who wanted to finance it (I can imagine a pretty fierce competition for that pretty rare beast).

How does copyright help with that scenario?

I don't want to "take their livelihood from them with no replacement." That has already happened. File sharing is widespread and unstoppable. Legalizing it merely legitimizes the reality we're already living with.

Wait, I thought the argument from the anti-copyright people was supposed to be that piracy doesn't hurt sales, not that piracy takes away livelihoods?

I'm not anti-copyright. I'm very much in favor of commercial infringement remaining illegal.

The argument that piracy doesn't hurt sales is reductive and unhelpful.

Of course it hurts sales in the sense that if you could somehow invent a perfect DRM that is unbreakable, more people would buy things. But it's also true that not all pirates are lost sales. Some people if stopped by DRM just won't consume the content at all.

But more importantly, since piracy can't be stopped, the debate is moot. We have to accept it as widespread and inevitable rather than debate what would happen if we could stop it.