Other than selling mail order everyone had to go via a publisher and a retail outlet who were keen to maximise shelf space to profit. This weeded out a lot of people who just were not good enough to compete. Those who were and there are some here producing content who would have been good enough. Made good money through licensing content. We rarely sold it exclusive.
The major markets were US and EU, Japan, Australia were small markets but had to be sold to. Also, there was Second Rights, so after a set period, the producer could sell again in the same country. For video producers, there was a chance of Cable and Hotels, these were for the best quality producers, but worth a lot of money.
Even my amateur readers wives photos had 3 markets. Mail order, UK and US magazines. Shoot three sets on three different rolls of film and magazine sales paid the costs of the shoot and the first run of photos.
During the 80s, I started to shoot for magazines. UK sale $600 and US $2000 and Europe for $400 per set for 1-year publishing rights. And I could still sell them online in the 2000s and today. This was the norm, not the exception. These sales were for all content producers who made the grade. People like Suze Randall, Viv Thomas, and us, etc. Couldn't have survived on what the Internet paid for exclusive.
This applied also to companies like Hustler, Vivid, etc. They were told by the retail outlets that if their work started to appear on the Internet, the shops would sell less and less and then take them off the shelves. It wasn't that they didn't know how to go online, it was that they dare not.
Magazine shooters never had the same problem.
