You know what's not exciting? Clicking on an interesting title to be pay walled. Why is this crap allowed on HN?
They can keep their paywall and paid content, just get it off HN.
It's like if Ubuntu's package manager started selling the ability to read reviews of the different packages. Canonical has already built a company around giving away an entire operating system for free.
So assuming that Doctorow makes a living off of royalties of printed books, as well as speaking engagement fees, I don't think that this model is widely replicable, especially when it comes to currently paywalled content (like from Substack, WSJ, the Economist, NYT, etc), right?
[0] http://www.locusmag.com/Features/2007/11/cory-doctorow-creat...
[1] http://www.locusmag.com/Features/2008/11/cory-doctorow-why-i...