100% agreed. Cable followed by streaming, social media, video games - there is so much more content for the relatively same number of human beings these days. Back when I was first developing my reading habits in the 1970's, I had three TV channels, the occasional movie theater experience and books, period. Well, and playing with other children, but I was never much into that. Even though I encouraged it strongly throughout her growing up, my 23 year old daughter doesn't read fiction. She's intelligent, college-educated and pretty well rounded, but books are not really part of her life as an adult.
Its also partly because in the trad sphere the amount trad publishers pay in advances has dropped dramatically... stephen king got a quarter of a mil on his third book... these days he'd be lucky to get a tenth of that... also the amount they pay in percentage has gone down, even for big names... its why a number of trad authors - Michael Ridpath and Barry Eisler spring immediately to mind, have gone to self... it is common to get about 10% of print and 25% of E, but you also have to pay your agent percentage out of that. In the self sphere - ignoring the huge number of people not doing it properly - for proper self publisher advertising costs more now than it did even two or three years ago making it very hard to make a profit on a single book, the cost of running a mailing list has gone up, and so have editing costs... meanwhile the KENP for those in kindle unlimited has gone down, and print costs have risen - its still viable with good product but its not the organic walk in the park that it once was
