{"id":1854,"date":"2014-06-20T10:35:06","date_gmt":"2014-06-20T17:35:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/?p=1854"},"modified":"2014-06-20T12:40:11","modified_gmt":"2014-06-20T19:40:11","slug":"the-false-promise-of-digital-publishing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2014\/06\/the-false-promise-of-digital-publishing.html","title":{"rendered":"The False Promise of Digital Publishing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[contextly_auto_sidebar id=&#8221;qUIajYbX9hto2gQVHqpXSXAzUoXDE0A8&#8243;]<\/p>\n<p>WHAT does it mean to be a digital bestseller? We continue to hear that removing the middleman and getting rid of the expenses of print will be good for readers and writers. The experience of Tony Horwitz, a first-rate writer of narrative nonfiction like Confederates in the Attic, shows it doesn&#8217;t always work out that way. He calls his <a title=\"Tony Horwitz\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/06\/20\/opinion\/i-was-a-digital-best-seller.html?hp&amp;action=click&amp;pgtype=Homepage&amp;module=c-column-top-span-region&amp;region=c-column-top-span-region&amp;WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region\" target=\"_blank\">story<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Confederate_in_the_attic.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-1855\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Confederate_in_the_attic-196x300.jpg\" alt=\"Confederate_in_the_attic\" width=\"196\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Confederate_in_the_attic-196x300.jpg 196w, https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Confederate_in_the_attic.jpg 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 196px) 100vw, 196px\" \/><\/a>, &#8220;a cautionary farce about the new media and technology we\u2019re so often told is the bright shining future for writers and readers.&#8221; Horwitz continues:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>As recently as the 1980s and \u201990s, writers like me could reasonably aspire to a career and a living wage. I was dispatched to costly and difficult places like Iraq, to work for months on a single story. Later, as a full-time book author, I received advances large enough to fund years of research.How many young writers can realistically dream of that now? Online journalism pays little or nothing and demands round-the-clock feeds. Very few writers or outlets can chase long investigative stories. I also question whether there\u2019s an audience large enough to sustain long-form digital nonfiction, in a world where we\u2019re drowning in bite-size content that\u2019s mostly free and easy to consume.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>To the digital utopians, remember, we live in the best of all cultural worlds.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[contextly_auto_sidebar id=&#8221;qUIajYbX9hto2gQVHqpXSXAzUoXDE0A8&#8243;] WHAT does it mean to be a digital bestseller? We continue to hear that removing the middleman and getting rid of the expenses of print will be good for readers and writers. The experience of Tony Horwitz, a first-rate writer of narrative nonfiction like Confederates in the Attic, shows it doesn&#8217;t always work [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35,39,27,34,86],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1854","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-books","7":"category-creative-class","8":"category-journalism","9":"category-literary","10":"category-technology","11":"entry","12":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1854\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}