American Eyes

So I don’t see why he can’t have done without a publisher’s advance (and the contractual obligation that an advance entails to sell a book in order to pay it back) and just written it in his spare time and posted the e-book on his website. That would at least have been intellectually honest, given that he foresees and, in one of the extracts Gladwell quotes, seems to look forward to an age in which journalism (and, by extension, book-writing) will be something people do for free as a hobby. He says he’ll soon be announcing how the electronic editions of the book will be distributed for free - but it seems likely there will, at very least, be a delay between that happening, and the print publication of the paid-for book on July 7….

He positions himself safely (his Wired job, with its salary and its book leave; his Hyperion deal, which allows him time to research and write his books) while calling for the whole edifice that supports him to be brought crashing down. He’s at the back, throwing bricks, letting others soak up the blows that follow - all the while positioning himself as a leader, a radical, a seer. Like a cult leader who’ll encourage others to take a vow of poverty while living the high life on their donations, Anderson encourages people to think of their intellectual production as inherently, inevitably valueless, while building his own brand out of the very opposite reality.