Edit for examples.
Cyan, creator of Myst and Riven, had two very successful Kickstarter to fund new works. First, they raised $1,321,306 to make Obduction, then $1,433,161 for Firmament.
Elite: Dangerous raised £1,578,316 for a modern remake.
Yes, it works for books, too: https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/advanced?category_id=18...
So once again: you seriously think that J.K. Rowling, a completely unknown author with a manuscript repeatedly rejected by publishing houses, is going to be able to raise sufficient funding on Kickstarter for her first work?
They were only able to make up the rest because they knew copyright meant they'd get paid more when they shipped via sales where as without copyright it would just be copied.
Here's an article on Elite:Dangerous saying the actual budget was 8m
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-09-11-elite-dangerou...
Both Obduction and Firmament are for sale. They aren't free games.
As to revenue Patrons, Trademark, etc also work. Shakespeare for example had zero copyright protection and still wrote quite a bit.
PS: If anything the massive sums she received from the HP series discouraged her to write more.
But she owned the copyright to it, and could trade that copyright for a contract on the book. That is, she had a viable monetization mechanism if her work was good.
So once again: absent this, provide a plausible way Rowling could have made money on her first book.
He created an ebook version of The Martian, freely downloadable at the time. People did give him donations though. He only added it to Kindle for $0.99, because Amazon wouldn't let him distribute it for free. It look off from there.
When people would rather give the author $0.99 to make it easy to access on Kindle, than download it for free, and it becomes a bestseller, then that is a plausible way for an author to make money.
