Yep, this is the exact concern. People may think I'm fear mongering if I point to subscription fees, but surely this is the end goal. Perhaps it will start with saying, "It costs money to maintain your account and give you access to these books. Starting next month, we are introducing a small fee..."
Subscription services are standard, partly because they are way cheaper and partly because they are way more convenient than analogue systems. And by standard, I mean that the overwhelming majority of folks, young folks in particular but the entire population overall, get most of their entertainment from subscription services (for example, in the music industry cds, vinyl and even digital downloads like from iTunes are only about 10-20% of sales, mostly to old people and collectors; almost all music is currently consumed through subscriptions).
I recently got rid of thousands of CDs, books, and DVDs that represented many tens of thousands of dollars of investment and tons of storage space (mostly, I just donated them). I have Netflix, Apple, Crave, and Amazon Prime subscriptions, and a Kindle. My entertaining spending is a fraction of what it used to be, for way more content that I can access anywhere, anytime, and I'm wasting far fewer dead trees and plastics.
Yeah, technically these things are only rented or contracted. That's a feature, not a flaw. I don't need a bunch of stuff cluttering up my living spaces, and if someone pulls the plug on something ten years from now, chances are I already cancelled my subscription or moved on to the next thing. If I do need a physical copy of whatever, I can still get them. My kid collects vinyl records. I collect miniatures. The difference is that I'm not
required to shell out for wasteful physical copies of things that work better in digital anyway, and I'm not stuck with them when I'm done.
I was just perusing the
Book of Many Things. I got it through DDB for (I think) $24.99 as a pre-sale. I just saw the physical version in my FLGS for over $100. It's true that my digital one doesn't have the cards, but I bought a beautiful set years ago from an artist on Etsy for $25, helping to employ a 3PP.
So on that one product, I basically saved as much as my next year's master tier subscription to DnDBeyond. Which also currently supports more than a dozen
other players, giving them access to my
Book of Many Things, and all my other WotC (and several 3PP products) besides. At home, any time they need them.
Digital subscriptions are popular because they are
way better value than buying physical stuff, not to mention more convenient and less wasteful. But if you want the physical stuff, then that option is still there. It's the best of both worlds.
