One of this year's Abitur assignments was the analysis of anarticle written by Bodo Kirchhoff (in German), where he talks about the current state of the literature market.

The number of copies sold by many colleagues that could manage to live off their writing did not just halve, but dwindled down to about one third.

You have to give him credit for being honest enough to admit that even as a somewhat well-known author, it is not easy at all to make a living off writing. However, I find his idea of creating something like a luxury market for literature neither conclusive nor very promising – and I hope that writers will come up with better business plans in these Internet times. But I do like the idea of letting the reader be more a part of the whole process of creating a book.

But still, the article is an interesting read and the basic problem applies to music as well. In the music industry, only few can live off publishing albums. Especially for those not part of the mainstream, they shouldn't assume they can finance themselves just by selling CDs.