Fiction by subscription

What if you could pay £20 a year and get two good new books in return, with your name printed in the back of them?

It sounds good to me, which is why I’ve just subscribed to And Other Stories, a new independent publisher that operates in this collaborative, subscription-based manner. By essentially paying for your copy of a book before it’s printed, you help to enable the whole process. Brilliant for all involved.

This is an interesting model for And Other Stories to have chosen because, while it seems so revolutionary, in actual fact it’s surprisingly similar to publishing’s traditional set-up. The big publishing houses also operate on a subscription basis — known in the industry as ‘subs’ — but their subs are with booksellers rather than individual readers. And whereas the traditional system of subs seems to be in some ways very flawed, a similar system for And Other Stories seems to be nigh-on perfect.