Make your books available for free, and you won't have this problem. You can't expect people to pay for something that literally costs nothing once it has been created.
You may also sell paper versions. Some people like myself enjoy reading paper better and will pay for hard copy if they like the book enough or expect to refer to it often.
See these carrots! it doesn't cost anything to create them now, because they've already been created haven't they!
Once the oil has been extracted from the ground, and transported to the gas station and put in the tank, it doesn't cost anything to pump it!! Why are we paying for this stuff again!?!?
You can't expect people to pay for code you know, it doesn't cost anything!
If the same payment model that is applied to books and music were applied to carrots, it would be illegal to plant carrots. If you think about it like that it's obviously wrong.
The carrots in your example would be similar to the printed books the GP mentioned, not the text itself.
Of course I can agree that there are differences between these things, but the average writer earns less than the average programmer, and for this reason I often feel it is somewhat gauche that many programmers seem offended by how writers earn money and want it stopped, without any good suggestion as to how they should earn money otherwise. It's like when rich people complain that janitors get food stamps to survive, it motivates my sarcasm gland.
You expect every artist, actor, painter, and programmer to make zero $ from anything they create?
It may be hard to imagine, I don't think things would be massively different overall.
Apart from all the millions of people like me (an Indie software developer) that would suddenly have 0 income from their digital products?
Or are you just trolling for a reaction?
Apart from a few notables exceptions, artists have been poor and broken since the dawn of time.
Michelangelo, Mozart, Jeff Koons and Taylor Swift are the exception, not the rule.
There needs to be a transition from making money from unit sales to something else, and until that's sorted out I think having piracy being at least stigmatized for being wrong makes sense.
I think it's important for a creator to ensure that the experience for those who want to pay is as good as possible. Apart from that I don't think any amount of worry will help very much.
So how are software developers, authors and musicians supposed to make a living?
>As for software development, the open source model clearly shows that money can be made
Ok, so I sell data wrangling software for Windows and Mac for $99 per license. Mostly to people who aren't programmers. Kindly tell me how that would work with an open source model.
Even without copyright, nothing prevents your from selling software. Chances are people who don't want to pay for your software already don't. If paying for software adds value otherwise (such as access to updates and support), people will still pay for it.
Does it?
The marginal cost of production of a cheap paperback is marginal, the upfront cost is large.
The few pennies that are saved with digital distribution are not a huge game changer regarding the finances of publishing.
Otherwise printing and distributing 1000 copies of a book is surely vastly more expensive compared to having 1000 downloads of an epub file.
Most of the cost to publish a book is upfront. Editing, laying, cover art, diagrams, etc.
It costs less than $2 to print a book in bulk quantities.
Margins suck. That is why publishers go out of business all the time. Margins aren't any better on ebooks. It costs money to maintain a digital store front.
For an example of the costs of digital distribution in another field, look at Good Old Games. They are a digital distribution platform and they barely break even / turn a profit. (A bit more complicated since they also do some of the porting work)
Digital distribution has super low per unit costs but huge upfront costs.
Newspapers subscription prices only ever covered a small % of the overall costs.
Spotify is a complicated racket, there are some very good video essays exploring who is making money off of Spotify (it isn't Spotify and it isn't the artists!), a but the rabbit hole there goes deep.
bounties, commissions, live concerts, patronage.
Software devs are a fairly new concept but traditionally artists aren't expected to make a living of their work, more like barely surviving.
Even if he offers it for free others may still try to collect money for his work. If he sells paper copies other printers could undercut him.