I wrote about the idea of subscribers in my 2010 scifi book Too Bright the Sun. In the story, Army officers during wartime were required to create video podcasts for subscribers, as a way of raising income for the army. Somebody in the Tom Winton Authors Helping Authors group on Facebook recently posted an idea of a group of writers offering a subscription deal to read a chapter of their work each week in magazine form.

While the subscription services idea sounded great to me at first, I spent some time thinking on it and thought that while it is probably fine for non-creative industries and occupations like soldiering and construction, there are potential problems for creative industries.

The idea of publishing a chapter a week sounds great. I am very productive and just published 4 novels in 8 weeks but even I need a break now and then. I don’t foresee me doing anything but editing for the next few months (yes I have 2 more completed works). Nobody is going to want to subscribe to that! I think such a service would have to be either pay-as-you-go or you would need a large number of writers to guarantee that there is always content and if you did that, you would need admin staff running the thing, hence putting up the overheads. Continue reading “Would a subscription for magazine delivery of fiction work?” →