How much money? I mean, the natural answer is full price but that’s not the amount the author gets from a regular sale. There’s a whole range where it’s cheaper to freebooters and still more profitable to the author.

I’ve seen an argument that buying an album from a musician (or a physical media or merch) and pirating the rest of their library in most cases more profitable to the musician than streaming.

I suppose there’s a similar dynamic in publishing where the overhead created by all the intermediaries is significant compared to the actual work done by the author, editor, designers, and so on.