Writing an actually good novel can take a year or more, which translates to a significant amount of money. It also requires a lot of focus, which makes it hard

Writing an actually good novel can take a year or more, which translates to a significant amount of money. It also requires a lot of focus, which makes it hard to do with a "day job." This kind of out of touch "why do they not eat cake?" mentality is a big reason there's such a deep tech backlash right now. Yeah, we can just land six figure jobs no problem, but other fields? Yeah, they should just do it for the passion. They don't need to get paid. Of course authors have a passion for it. Nobody would get into that field without a passion, and people tend to not get good at anything unless they like it. That doesn't mean they don't deserve to earn anything. This is just gross.