Books matter. Making them is a combination of craft and insight. Publishing them is a generous act of faith. Adding to the corpus of shared knowledge is important. Books change the culture when people act on them, even if they don’t sell many copies. And sometimes the backlist surprises the accountants.

But the economics of new books have nothing to... See more

Wouldn’t it be great if you could pay $9.99 a month and read all of the books you want? Just like you get all the movies you want from Netflix? Or all the music you want from Spotify?

Technically, it does exist. Kindle Unlimited is the largest, followed by Scribd. Audible isn’t quite all-access, but then Spotify got into audiobooks and made them so.... See more