I'm just starting my writing career and as such I have not sold many copies of my short story that I have published now.
The larger problem is not Google or Disney. It is the culture of free or close to free material that has been created in the past few years. The $0,99 books are good example of this. While people still have to pay for things in real life they have to get income. This applies to writers as it does to anyone else. People now have unrealistic expectation of what items cost when they are digital. It is not the cost of distribution that is the issue. It's the cost of living for the writer in question. This is also why many old time writers (and other types of artists) are having hard time adjusting to new times and the digital age.
The digital publishing is not without it's problem. It's only at certain price range that I can get 70% of the sale price. Where I sell my e-books if I go over 12,99€ (or local equal) I only get 45% (still better then the physical copy returns) of the price directly in my pocket and this out before I pay local taxes of that income. If I sell paper version of my book, the e-book has to be 20% cheaper then the paper copy. If I want to make a decent living from writing I have to sell a lot of copies. I might one day do so, but so far it has not happened.
Let's be clear on copyright. Today it's set-up to service the corporations. Not the actual content creators, regardless if that are writers, visual artist or music creators. That is why it's so long and that is why it's always getting extended. There is nothing complex about this issue and never has been. DMCA type laws are also good example of this. I am not sure if they help people like me, a lone writer with no lawyers or the financial resources to stop anything if an book gets torrented (in fact, that might actually help me I guess). Since DRM lock are no good since they get stripped away from the e-book. People who did not buy the e-book in the first place are also the people how are unlikely to do so at later stage.
At last. The shameless plug of my first published short story. It's DRM free.
Link: http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook...