Neil Gaiman is pretty much the only author who writes anything remotely related to fantasy that I'm not embarrassed to admit I enjoy reading.

It's definitely a different ballpark but there's no doubt that piracy gives smaller authors a leg up in the publishing world. Smaller authors are even less likely to be discovered in the traditional world of book publication. The internet allows anyone to be discovered by fans, who could probably get a lot of new fans by giving away books.

The thing is most people can only afford to buy a few books, movies and CDs a month. The internet gives you the ability to try a much larger breadth of media than ever possible, and most people still buy close to what they would have bought anyway. But now you can just buy from content creators you really want to support and download whatever you were iffy on or would have just got at the library.

Let's not forget that the library has been giving away free books for a very long time and people still bought books.

I think people who have stopped buying entertainment and only download are by far the minority. Sagging book sales are more a product of the immense amount of entertainment options available today from books to phone apps. And if you really want to be discovered, it's much more likely online, for free, than in some corner of Borders, for 15 bucks.

I buy all books used, which is piracy of a socially acceptable sort.

Anybody remember when Garth Brooks said he wouldn't allow his music to be sold anywhere that sold used CDs? Not that it made a goddamned bit of difference to me.