WEST TISBURY, Mass. FIVE months ago I published a short book called Boom. Commercially it was a bust. No news in that: Most books lose money and are quickly forgotten by all but their wounded authors.
But this experience wasnt just a predictable blow to whats left of my self-esteem. Its also a cautionary farce about the new media and technology were so often told is the bright shining future for writers and readers.
Last fall a new online publication called The Global Mail asked me to write about the Keystone XL pipeline, which may carry oil to the United States from the tar sands of Canada. The Global Mail promoted itself as a purveyor of independent long-form journalism, lavishly funded by a philanthropic entrepreneur in Australia. I was offered an initial fee of $15,000, plus $5,000 for expenses, to write at whatever length I felt the subject merited.
At the time I was researching a traditional print book, my seventh. But it was getting harder for me to feel optimistic about dead-tree publishing. Here was a chance to plant my flag in the online future and reach a younger and digitally savvy audience. The Global Mail would also be bankrolling the sort of long investigative journey Id often taken as a reporter, before budgets and print space shrank.... http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/20/opinion/i-was-a-digital-best-seller.html?smprod=opinion-ios&smid=opinion-ios-share&_r=0