Scholars aren't supported by sales of their published work, but by teaching/research salaries, much of the money for which comes from the public via government grants.
Musicians by and large aren't supported by record sales, especially in the streaming era, but by concert tickets, merch, etc., or often by other income sources like paid lessons, session work, one-off commissions for specific customers, etc.
Very few fiction authors make a living at it, and most of those who do are barely scraping by.
Journalism is in a very sorry state in the 2020s; its long-time essential income source – classified ads – collapsed a couple decades ago under pressure from free or cheap online substitutes and the industry still hasn't figured out a viable alternative at scale. There has been a 75% drop in local journalists since 2000, most important local news now goes unreported (in many places there is no local reporting whatsoever) and regional/national scale journalism has been increasingly co-opted by the super-wealthy and turned to propaganda. Independent industry leaders with integrity are, over time, replaced by shills and the ethics of industry culture is degenerating.
Big budget TV/movies is probably closest to matching your argument, since these require large-scale coordination by hundreds of people to produce, but here too there are significant complications.
In all of these industries, the people making most of the profit are businesspeople rather than creators, though a trivial number of celebrity creators make good money.
Much of the published culture you mention is done entirely as a hobby, and our current copyright regime actually stands in the way of creation as much as supports it.