Is It Harder to Sell Books Today?

A writer I know recently did a reading tour by raft, down the Mississippi River, to promote his new novel, Canaan's Tongue, which is set in the Mississippi river valley. His publisher, Knopf, footed the bill, which came to $5,200 (the guy at the Home Depot in New Jersey gave him a 15% "crazy discount"), but he and a friend did undertake a pretty outrageous stunt for the sake of book sales. He was open about his reasons for doing it: "We came out here because it is not enough to write a good book and get reviewed well. I want to write fiction the rest of my life, and to do that you have to sell books." The move got him into The New York Times, at least, and it got me to wondering, not for the first time, if he's right. Do we have to go to extremes to sell books? Is it harder to make a living as a writer today than in the past, and if so, why? If you have any thoughts on the matter, meet me in the forum. I'd love to hear what you think.