Best of luck indeed, but other news media outlets have tried paid subscription before with little success.
http://www.observer.com/2010/media/after-three-months-only-35-subscriptions-newsdays-web-site

An iPhone app would be very welcome indeed!

I am looking forward to buying my iPad very soon and I would be more than willing to pay for the Irish Times if it were available for this form factor. I think that good journalism (which is usually evident from the Irish Times) is well worth paying for. However to convince other you are going to have to supply more than just a transcribed version of an online edition. Headlines and short RSS feeds should be available online for free. But a full, complete end-to-end product that I can start and finish is worth paying for.

Will more people buy the paper now and less visit the website without an increase in hardcopy sales?

I’m not thrilled to hear more of the paper will be hard to read – the culture, life and society sections leave me wondering every week where the columns I want to read are, and I’m never sure if I’ve see the whole thing. As someone who doesn’t buy newspapers from a green perspective, this doesn’t sound like a good move.

Looks like the old argument about cannibalism in the print/online media is raising its head again. The advertiser supported model is good for a high traffic site but with a print publication supplying the content, it can have people switching to the online version. It will be very interesting to see if this new model works as a value added service. The initial move to a subscription model by the IT was badly timed. This one seems to have had more thought put into it.

Will the supplements also be available in ereader form?

I’m particularly interested in the Ticket.

basically you are now charging for something which was free

my prediction is that revenue will be minimal especially after paying the 3rd party to host

I subscribe to the Irish Times on Kindle. Will I also be charged to avail of this service?

I have been subscribing to the IT for years and the last time I paid in April, it went free in June and you advised me that my fee would be taken into account for the crossword. Last year I paid for the crossword and now you are expecting me to pay the full fee again!!!……

I have tested out the new e-paper and they won’t le me read it nor will they accept my subscriber’s login!…

Congratulations for confusing us all…..

I usually enjoy reading the irish Times online, but slowly, slowly the anti-clerical bias is becoming too much for me; too many journalists with axes to grind. So no, I will not be subscribing.

It’s an interesting development, and doubtless you’ll be monitoring who’s reading which version, where, and how. I take it there will now, in effect, be three versions – hard copy, epaper, and irishtimes.com, and umpteen methods of delivery of the latter two.

I hope you can manage to offer the ‘paper’ electronically at a cost that’s competitive with the hard copy – since, presumably, the newsagent gets a whack of that and you have no physical production/distribution costs.

The fear must be that you may lose hard copy buyers in your core market, but maybe you’ve seen and calculated that loss already.

As a consumer, who would have an eight mile round trip in a car to buy the hard copy, the issue price will have a bearing on the frequency of purchase.

The model I’d hope to see would be a customer account (off debit card) with a per issue price, and a discount kicking in as more and more issues are purchased over the course of a twelve month cycle.

Best of luck with it.

I agree with mos@22. Count me out.
Brian P O Cinneide

Hmmm! We’ll just wait and see I suppose although not all of us have a great deal of time to sit in front of the computer to read the Irish Times – we’re not all employed in jobs where we have little else to do! I use the site for a quick glance and won’t be paying a subscription to do so! Don’t think its a clever move.

I’m not sure that I quote get this.

As I understand it, the new epaper will be available in addition to the current content and formatting? No? Yes?

If sois, I can’t imagine that there will be much of a take-up on the epaper.

Maybe I’m wrong.

‘The Irish Times on the web for free’ is the only reason you are anywhere as successful as you have been in this medium since you decided to open up to the Internet a few years ago.

The niftiest feature you can ever imagine for a newspaper is to get the full printed edition on one page of article headings, and above all, in unencumbered text format so that search engines pick it up.

After march 18, I am heading on to ‘Day in a Page’, available from:

http://www.independent.ie/day-in-page/

I think this brings into focus the essential nature and value of the print format in communicating the news of the moment: allocation of position and space (print wins), and timeliness (web wins). For my part, I have given up on trying to figure out what is new in print version features coverage (life, culture, art, whatever). Ireland, Business and Sports are just about manageable (i.e. scroll down to the untimed items). Still don’t think IT has cracked that indispensable web format model and hope it does so before the print format becomes little more than a pricey comfort blanket (which is what the NYT printed version has become, at least for me, at $2.

On another not unrelated matter – I joined the readers panel over a month ago. When might I expect to answer some surveys?

I was surveyed recently by a competitor newspaper, and I indicated that I would be willing to pay something for privilege of reading paper online, as I live in USA. I understand difficulties of print media staying in business (unlike misunderstanding by some segments of population of difficulties of Ireland Inc. staying afloat). I hope I will be able to access Letters, and Analysis columns at the very least.
It is an historical time in Irish history there – 100 years on from 1916 – and I am fascinated to watch events unfold.

@39 phrage frenta
Too many cooks spoil the consommé
Too many comments spoil the consonancy
IT website should retain its own creative independence and develop organically — not slavishly ride in the online slipstream of a u.k. broadsheet.

The argument about the ‘other’ sites that charge for content does not wash. There are enough free sites out there that you just don’t need to subscribe to any site for news.
Just as I did the last time the IT charged for content, it’s back to the Indo online for me.

At some stage will someone simplify the options for lesser mortals such as myself who use the IT website as a quick option on days when we can’t get a printed copy? Or who scan the headlines and breaking news in order to decide whether or not to buy a printed copy? How is an occasional reader (eg when out of the country) to know what to do and how to do it? In other words, will someone please make this clearer, soon?

On the other hand, anything that helps the IT to survive with its independence unscathed is a Very Good Thing.

At another level, this is also the e-reader versus printed books debate. Despite all its usefulness, planet-saving properties and all the rest, you can’t rattle an online version at your partner over the breakfast table…It’s a whole other experience, and surely there’s still room for real life as well as virtual existence.

At another level, this is like the

Am I alone in finding the epaper really tedious to read? And when I tried to send a link to Facebook, instead I created a bookmark…

This is an exercise in futility and a retrograde step. I suggest you start building an iPhone & iPad App if you want to generate revenue.

Ask yourself, why would anybody want to PAY to read the Irish Times online? Your readers either live in Ireland and you buy the print version, or live abroad and aren’t interested in the full paper.

Seriously, Hugh, you need to produce content worth paying for before you slap on this Ryanair-style “optional extra”

Look at online newspapers like the Huff Post for a successful model people want to read – hard-hitting opinion articles and interesting world news coverage.

Biggest improvement needed – get rid of those awful editorials which sit on the fence and tell us nothing. I want a newspaper that has a strong voice of its own.

Mnnnnn….people can get annoyed when freebies are confusingly rearranged to try to extract money. I suspect Linehan’s heart is not in this – but like all newspapermen he is facing an appaling vista – so I feel some sympathy. I will be amazed if it works out in financial terms. I think most IT writers are mediocre – the exceptions being Charlie Fell, Laura Marlowe, Michael Casey, Garret Fitzgerald. But would I pay to read them? Maybe 5c a piece if you could find a way to handle micro-payments.

@52
What is Mnnnnn… please?
Did you mean Hmmmmm …?
@ 53
Slàn????? Surely you mean SLÁN
This is a grave mistake. French grave, Irish fada.

I live abroad and visit the IT website every day to keep up with what’s happening at home. Just tried the epaper for the first time. It’s nice if you have lots of time and a big computer screen, but found it quite frustrating due to misclicks, difficulty of navigation on a small laptop screen and the time it takes for pages to download, articles to enlarge etc. My old habit was to take 10 minutes on a weekday morning in the office to scan through the “today’s paper” section and see if there was anything new and interesting in that day’s edition. Looks to me like it would take about 30mins just to scan through the epaper version. Might be nice to do at the weekend but won’t have time for that on an average weekday morning. Will miss the “today’s paper” section.

I liked the “today’s paper” presentation. It was easy to read and I logical the way it linked back to the place on the page from where you last clicked.
In contrast, I have a total aversion to your new e-version – portrait newspaper into landscape laptop just won’t fit! I won’t be reading it. And I predict that you will lose readers as a result.
The rest of your website is fantastic, keep it up and drop the epaper idea.

p.s. I seem to remember the early days of Ireland.com when one had to subscribe and pay for reading the news – it didn’t work then, why would it work now?

Echoing the comments of Maureen (20) and C Haris (51). I used to pay the online subscription, but IT stopped this sometime last year. I don’t recall that I got a refund of the ‘unused’ subscription balance. Will that be available to try out the new paid service without additional cost?

I think people are missing the point, I too don’t like the ePaper, it would only be of use to me if I wanted to see the ads in the IT or to see the back page. But with a little but of re-adjustment, its still possible to see all the content. News\Ireland has Irish news from todays paper, News\World world news, etc etc..

It’ll probably only be a matter of time before a 3rd party sets up a “todays’s paper” page with all the links on the one page again.

I’ll still be reading the IT, but agree with other posters, ePaper is retrograde step, too heavy and clunky, I don’t want to be reading pdf documents in a browser!

Newspaper owners have dealt with the internet very poorly in general. Like how can they be surprised if sales are falling when they’re giving away their product for free on the internet? If people can get something for free rather than paying for it, it’s a bit of a no brainer.
I doubt many will purchase this new service either, they’ll just read what’s available for free.

a retrograde step charging for archives as a regular dailyreader i often wish to refer back sometimes 10 or 20 years or even longer as a buyer off and on since the 1970’s to refresh memory.

‘Todays paper’-was simple to use and free but I can’t see people paying to manipulate such an unwieldy product as the e-paper. Only people abroad and techno snobs at home who love having a complicated relationship with their laptop maybe. Much easier just to buy the print version.

By the way Hugh it’s the first time I’ve seen the word ‘nifty’ in the Irish Times.

I’ve just subbed up a month’s worth of access. This is an excellent service I can tell already. The very fact you can get all the images normally only available in the dead tree version and it’s in that broadsheet format that means the eye can course up and down and across and diagonally, surfing in a way that can never be done on your traditional site but, which I missed all those years I had to rely on same (invaluable) traditional site because the I.T. isn’t sold in Asia. Excellent effort from what I’ve seen so far. Contents seems v. good and like the way you can either read the orig. newsprint layout or click to an article to bring it up in a more webby version. Good luck with this I’ve a feeling I’ll be taking out a year’s sub presently.