I don't know of his situation either, but instead of buying a copy for yourself, it'd be even wiser to gift a copy to good friends or simply spread the word of his great work here and elsewhere.
I guess what I'm getting at is if he can't pay the electric bill today, if I finally get around to reading his 5th culture novel in 2015 that's unfortunately going to be a bit too late to help him out. So he's better off if I buy a copy today even if I don't read it for awhile. On the other hand if he's very "comfortable" then there's little point in my accelerating my purchase. I'm enough of a fan to have read and liked some books but not enough of a fan to have crawled up into his financial life, for all I know he's the richest author in the UK. I just don't want him to have to eat canned dogfood like PKD supposedly had to.
