I absolutely agree, this is literally the food on their table, and even with “bigger” publishers, they’re reinvesting that money in R&D, doing prolonged and often destabilising pathworkings to bring US material that no ordinary person with a 9-to-5 could produce in the same way.
Good article from an author’s point of view:
I know that people often see a content-creator being spoken about a lot in our small niche world and assume they have it made, their name in lights and money flooding in so they can take the hit, but just think for a moment about YOUR weekly living expenses, food, rent/mortgage, insurances, taxes, car expenses & fuel, plus the steady drain on money for repairs, clothes, upgrades, new software (no boss/umbrella corp sending an IT guy to fix their PC or phone, and upgrade the programs), then figure out how many copies of a $20 or even $40 book, after taxes and expenses, they’d have to sell each and every week without exception just to cover a week’s groceries, let alone the rest - you get the picture!
And, the argument that people who pirate are not people who BUY was roundly disproven recently by a small author, outside the occult field but subject to the same income loss through theft, and hearing the same justifications given for it:
Most of us probably have a dodgy download or two, if not magick something else, but there are many free resources available that are perfectly legit and able to get us to the point where we can actually buy things in a simple manner, so, think twice…