"No offense to struggling vampire romance novel writers, but why is it important that people are able to earn a great living writing books like this?"
I think the point was how difficult it is to make a living writing. Period. This is a book that debuted on the New York Times best seller list and it provided its author a moderate income of well under $100,000. According to the NY Times, there are over 10,000 works of fiction published by major presses every year, a lot of them astonishingly well written and crafted. A lot of authors take well over a year to write a work of fiction. If a best seller writing for a well established series can barely rake in that amount of money, imagine how little the people who are producing original work are making.
Well, I agree with that, and I don't doubt that fiction which I would probably say is "better" or more worthwhile might well tend to sell even less.
I think the author is being a bit alarmist about her personal situation. I and other people in many fields do high-quality work for under $100,000 a year, too. But if, as she author suggests, the publishers are making a relative killing on these same books, I'd consider that unfortunate in general. (Although I wouldn't consider it surprising, since most creative industries seem to end up with the same balance of power between distributors and producers.)
Perhaps the Kindle and self-publishing will see it fixed someday.
I think the point was how difficult it is to make a living writing. Period. This is a book that debuted on the New York Times best seller list and it provided its author a moderate income of well under $100,000. According to the NY Times, there are over 10,000 works of fiction published by major presses every year, a lot of them astonishingly well written and crafted. A lot of authors take well over a year to write a work of fiction. If a best seller writing for a well established series can barely rake in that amount of money, imagine how little the people who are producing original work are making.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/18/books/the-last-word-how-ma... (sorry the link is old, I couldn't find more recent numbers)