Is Novel Writing Really Just a Pyramid Scheme?

I guess it shouldn't be odd that such a high percentage of the people who buy books are people who want to be writers. After all, there must be a pretty big percentage of video game players who think it'd be a lot of fun to create video games. Loving an art form often means you're interested in creating it (not necessarily that you're any good at it, or understand the sweat involved, but love does lead one to dally in such thoughts).

While I was on vacation last week, another...