Copyright not required.
The majority of published authors don't really make much money at all. it's not uncommon to make less than $10k for a book that took over a year to write. Clearly they're not all in it for the money.
Maybe you wouldn't have as many mega successes, but are the current mega success really anything more than a product of the artificial scarcity caused by the publishing house gatekeepers. Again, who knows?
People have their priorities all wrong. You can get brilliant art/music/whatever for negligable prices. Or at least as much of it as is healthy to consume.
Removing copyright places a draconian burden on creativity, while only providing a slight real gain in accessability.
The basic structure of copyright-based business is this: the creator expends effort up front, then hopes buyers will pay later. The information flow, or rather lack of it, introduces a large risk of producing what is not wanted. Also the copy restrictions necessarily raise prices far above the real marginal costs of near zero. That means there is a large potential value the public is prevented from getting.
Such a structure consumes a scarce resource -- creative effort -- wastefully, and restricts an abundant resource -- copyability of information -- needlessly.
That seems very much the opposite of economically efficient.