There is the serialization model. You produce whatever small part of your work you can afford to on couch change, pizza favors and family support and sell it.

There is the serialization model. You produce whatever small part of your work you can afford to on couch change, pizza favors and family support and sell it. Fund the next part from the proceeds of the first. It lives on today in webisodes and patreonage, or, hell, TV shows, but some of what we now consider great literature was produced as serialized chapters in magazines, and only after the fact bundled together as a single volume novel. Maybe box-office blockbusters funded as multi-million dollar investments and released all at once were just a temporary aberration, like the "album".