Here, from Akin Ajayi in the Guardian. Jeez, people were talking years ago about e-book subscriptions, and Baen has been actually doing it. Old stuff.
But I like Ajayl’s idea of the use of themes, aka playlists, and of using the subscription model to give new life to backlist books. I just wonder if Jane Friedman at Open Read isn’t on to this stuff already. If not, she needs to be.
(Thanks, Gary.)
Actually, what Baen is doing with Webscriptions is not so much “subscriptions” as selling a single month’s worth of stuff at a time but letting you peek early. Now, Jim Baen’s Universe, that was a subscription.
What Ajayi is suggesting is actually a lot closer to the sort of e-libraries offered by Fictionwise and Overdrive, which I covered for TeleRead a while ago.
Many libraries already use Overdrive to circulate ebooks (and other media) but as with print books, you can only borrow what your library owns. As far as I know there is no system yet for interlibrary loan of ebooks. Smaller publishers that don’t get much notice from libraries might possibly be able to use the subscription model successfully.