Rebecca Giblin on chokepoint capitalism

It's the classic risk/reward trade-off. People working for a salary get paid a fixed amount and carry no risk. On the other hand, authors apparently prefer to take the risk themselves. So there's a good chance they earn almost nothing, but maybe they'll become a millionaire. And publishing houses offer to take some of the risk in exchange for some of the royalties.

Before the existance of copyright there were creative works, but they were often work-for-hire, usually rich patrons. Even now, I suspect the majority of code is written as work-for-hire.

I think there's also a stigma against work-for-hire books. As if they're not as creative or something.