The only real way to stop piracy is access for a fair price. If people think you are squeezing them then they will vote with their mice — or finger on a touch screen.

Not saying that is right, just the way it works.

But with this and the Harry Potter site, which seems to have a few…um…teething troubles, it looks like there is more disruption on the way.

I can certainly see entrepreneurial writers experimenting with this sort of model too. It would be a guaranteed revenue stream, so long as you keep your readers happy.

It might even work in fiction, if hypertext stories can be made to work without the intrusive hyperlinks cluttering up the page. Because one thing about hypertext is that the writer can keep on adding value by expanding the world, the background information, the POVs covered, year on year.

Pick the right subscription price, and create something that people want to read, and that might work, because no subscription equals no updates. Even a shared world type of fiction would work for a particular brand. You could even have moderated fan-fic of a sort — to keep the quality up and the world consistent.

Still a paywall though, so pricing is crucial. Though there is a lot of very good free fiction out there on the net, but still my initial rather jaundiced view on this might have been a little hasty

A subscription model where you get the books for free while you are signed up (and keep them after your subscription lapses) seems a more logical step. A bit like being in a book-club where you don’t have to pay any extra for each book.

This seems to be treating books as journals/newspapers. Your subscription lapses and you lose access to the books. Not sure that would appeal to people. Books aren’t articles.

Still worth a punt by the publisher; you never know, it might work.