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If I ever run into New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson (unlikely as it might be) I will sure as hell let her know that she is absolutely right to be excited about what her paper did with Snow Fall, which in my opinion was one of the first truly post-tablet storytelling experiences. At the Wired Business conference in New York earlier this week, Abramson said:

“Snow Fall” is now a verb.  “Everyone wants to snowfall now, every day, all desks,” she said. Reporters are waiting for time to “Snow Fall” their bigger story.  She said that the story originated from the sports desk — and took “months and months and months” of time —  but Snow Fall-type projects can come from anywhere.

Snow Fall, in case you missed it, was a multimedia project that included a gripping six-part story by John Branch, one of the Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning writers who was intrigued by the growing number of skiing fatalities. The stories were presented with interactive graphics, videos and bios of various snowboarders and skiers. It is brilliance personified and was rewarded with 2.9 million visits and 3.5 million page views within the first six days after publication. (The Times doesn’t reveal the total traffic it received since its release in December 2012.)

Snow Fall (and other such attempts) represent a great opportunity and the future for news organizations like The New York Times, especially as they are right now in a losing battle for attention with upstart competitors that include everyone from BuzzFeed to The Huffington Post. If you are the New York Times management, it is time to take a gamble: spend $25 million on creating 100 Snow Fall-like projects.

Money for something and clicks for free

In fact, it is important that our media brethren at the Times think even bigger than that, eventhough it would also mean taking a more prosaic, mercantile and business-like perspective to what they do.

They need to NOT think about Snow Fall as an add-on — as something that makes traditional content more web- or mobile/tablet-friendly — and instead treat it as a brand-new kind of media product that is created especially for the multiple device/many-screen world.

I have been involved with online publishing for a very long time — 18 years to be exact. And in that time I have seen the incumbent media make the same mistake again and again. They’ve often tried to adapt the content they’ve created for newspapers and magazines to the online world. And when they did embrace online, even then the online reporters were asked to do the same thing they did for the newspapers or the magazines.  (The Times, to its credit, published Snow Fall first online, and then in print three days later, which suggests it had a pretty clear understanding of the digital potential of a project like this.)

Yes Dorothy, the Internet is different

The internet is and will always be an immersive, interactive and communal platform. Many publishers continue to treat it like the old two-dimensional medium. Every time we have some major news events, such as the recent Boston tragedy, the social web brings the consumers of content into our newsrooms and makes them part of the process. It is one of the reasons why most of the big media still don’t get blogs. Sure, some writers like David Carr or Paul Krugman are an exception, but look at some of the Times blogs and you see they are just news stories (or features) retrofitted for the blog medium.

Federal agents descend on the home of a suspect-at-large in the Boston Marathon bombing. Getty Images

Blogging is a way of editing the world and presenting it to my community, and that means everything from photos, links, tweets and videos, in addition to sharing my raw thoughts and fully packaged features, scoops and even basic news. Every act of sharing tells you what I am interested in and what I am willing to learn and talk about.

There is a failure in the media business to understand that the medium and the content are intertwined much like those lovers on the walls of Ajanta and Ellora caves. It was one of the many reasons why Rupert Murdoch’s The Daily failed to impress me. It didn’t really invent a new form of storytelling for the tablet.

Now take all of that as context and then understand why I keep harping on the point that Snow Fall-type products are a brand new media, a whole new style of storytelling and a model for 21st-century journalism — one that doesn’t sacrifice the best of our profession, but takes it by the scruff of its neck, and drags its bloated, aging body into the new world and revives it with a shot of adrenaline.

Mr. Excel meets Ms. Editor

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However, that is only part of the story. The trick is not to get married to just the oohs-and-aahs of the Snow Fall, but to think of it as a business opportunity, much like the way Hollywood studios creatively monetize their blockbusters. My question is why can’t newspapers and magazine companies take the same approach and build a business model that actually factors in various opportunities that something like Snow Fall can offer?

So instead of starting with a newspaper story and adapting it to different formats, the Times should start with the Snow Fall. If you look at Snow Fall closely, you can see a cohesive approach to content, one that adapts and morphs to not only the medium of access, but to diverse business models — much like the movies.

From my own experience at magazines, I can tell you producing features isn’t cheap and can easily cost tens of thousand dollars, depending on the publication. The longer the lead time and higher the profile of the story, the bigger the costs. So from that perspective, spending some more on the post-tablet version of the feature shouldn’t break the bank.

The current editorial effort is to create something for a day or two of attention in the newspaper and hopefully for tens of thousands of pageviews. Why not start with the apps and e-readers (both paid), then follow up with the web version and then get to the newspaper. While apps and selling e-reader-oriented content might involve the Times learning new tricks, the company doesn’t need to change much for the latter two channels.

Blame my enteprenurial tendencies, but when I was experiencing Snow Fall, all I could see was stunning brand-advertising opportunities, that went beyond the dumb, commoditized advertising the Times is forced to put on its website. Why not embed a tasteful Land Rover ad or throw in one for Moncler? That is native advertising that actually allows organziations like the Times to live by their ethos and maintain the fidelity of their brand.

Hollywood, Baby

Now, let me explain why the Times can do it. And for that I will point to Hollywood again. One of the reasons why Hollywood studios succeed with the multi-tier approach to their “product” is because they do their best to ensure that they create an optimum experience. And they can do that with the right story, the right stars, the right production values and, most importantly, they have distribution. And gobs of money.

The Times and other big media companies have a lot of those same capabilities. They have great stars (real people, for god sake, are better stars than anything Hollywood can produce — see the Cleveland samaritan), they have great storytellers (editors and reporters, whose Pulitzers are testimony enough) and they have the ability to create the right production values (photographers, visual artists and designers). The Times also has a big audience – 35 million monthly visitors to their website in the U.S. alone, according to comScore – which means it has a lot of attention, which can be channeled effectively to promote new concepts.

Distribution Matters

Just as blockbuster movies get a lot of attention from media, Snow Fall got a lot of attention from the rest of the media community. Those millions of monthly visitors and lots of advertising space on print means distribution isn’t really a problem. And despite the financial headwinds, many of them — including the Times — still have a lot of money to try and finance a few dozen Snow Falls.

It isn’t clear how much money the Times spent on Snow Fall, but let’s just assume it was a small fortune. (Yes, I asked them and got this response: “We can’t disclose details about costs. Really, this is a newsroom effort. The business side works with the newsroom, of course, to provide the infrastructure and technology they need to tell stories in innovative ways.”)

And in exchange, it got a few million page views, but I am guessing they also built a nice backend infrastructure to create more such projects. As a result, the next Snow Fall is going to cost less, with most future spending going to the creative: words, photos, other multimedia elements and design.

So what will the Times (or someone like them) need to get it done? Simply put, a departure from the incumbent thinking, embracing today’s reality and re-imagining the work flow of a big city newspaper. In other words:

• Re-imagining its business model to factor in the reality of today’s world and forget the legacy of newsprint.
• Create a new breed of “producer” who can switch between Excel and content.
• Create a whole new breed of a journalist — one who has old-school values but also the ability to tell a story that works in many mediums of today.
• Build an editorial creative machine that works differently from a print-centric editorial group.

Now, if they can actually overcome their angst — and it hurts me to say this — they can change the conversation in the media business away from the increasingly shallow content and instead bring the focus back to quality and in-depth journalism, which is their stock in trade. If the New York Times management were feeling bold, it would put $25 million to work on creating 100 other Snow Falls and basically change the reader’s expectations of what long-form digital content and journalism are in the new century.

So if you want to fight BuzzFeed and HuffPo, there you go, Jill!

This weekend I sat on my in-laws’ living room couch and read “Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek,” a longform story in the New York Times , on my iPad. “Snow Fall” marks the launch of a new publishing effort at the Times. The paper is partnering with Byliner, the e-singles startup run by former magazine folk and based in San Francisco, to publish around a dozen e-singles in 2013. (Working definition of e-single: A story somewhere between 5,000 and 30,000 words — shorter than most books, longer than most magazine articles — usually nonfiction, and sold as an inexpensive ebook.) Byliner is selling an expanded version of “Snow Fall,” for $2.99, at digital bookstores.

The Times partnership is the latest in a string of such deals for Byliner. The company also recently launched an experimental subscription program and a partnership with Esquire.

Meanwhile, Atavist is pushing ahead with in-app subscriptions. And Atavist has a bunch of money coming in from Barry Diller and Scott Rudin, who are working with the company to launch their own publisher, Brightline, which will focus on e-singles and other works.

Amazon’s U.S. Kindle Singles store now contains 283 singles. In February, I reported that the company had sold two million Kindle Singles; as of September, that number was up to 3.5 million, and Amazon just expanded the program to the U.K., where it will include new entries by bestselling British authors as well as most of the American Kindle Singles. Many Byliner Originals are available through Kindle Singles, and they’ll be crossing the Atlantic for the first time with the program’s U.K. expansion.

How are e-singles actually selling? Several of them hit the New York Times ebook bestseller list this year. A few of Amazon’s Kindle Singles authors have done quite well. That’s a lot for an individual, but not so much for a company. E-singles are cheap, a couple bucks a pop, so they are not likely to drive major revenue for publishers: With most Kindle Singles priced at $1.99, that’s only $7 million or so — and Amazon only takes 30 percent of it, making the revenue basically a rounding error. Smaller companies have it tougher: How Byliner makes money is something of a mystery. Atavist has a two-pronged business model, and the profitable part is selling its app platform to other publishers. The ebooks themselves could become more profitable with the launch of Brightside, but that hasn’t been the case yet.

Still, I love this format. Here’s why:

byliner e-singles

E-singles are a true digital-native format

They don’t cannibalize other formats. It’s nearly impossible to find a magazine that will run a 10,000-word story these days (much less a magazine that will run your 10,000-word story — even if you’re a professional journalist). Many of these stories simply would not have been published in print, and that’s not because they’re not good enough. They just weren’t quite a fit for magazine or book publishers. Now the projects can come to light, and journalists who might once abandoned these stories because they weren’t sure how to pitch them can make a little money off them.

They may not drive a lot of revenue, but they’re also cheap to produce

Newspapers and magazines and individual authors can afford to experiment with these; if they already have the work done, why not try to sell it? That’s what the Minneapolis Star-Tribune did with “In the Footsteps of Little Crow,” which ran in the paper as a six-part series and was also released as an e-single for $2.99. It hit the NYT ebook bestseller list at #13, and the iBookstore’s history list at #8.

They’re the format for our time

Their rise has correlated with the rise of read-it-later services like Pocket and Instapaper, which allow users to save web content to consume later, at their leisure. E-singles fit perfectly with the curl-up-with-your-iPad phenomenon. They’re long enough that you don’t blow through them in ten minutes, but most can be read in under an hour.

What changes in 2013?

The number of gatekeepers

Anyone can publish a short ebook, but if you want it to be a Kindle Single — in a separate section of the Kindle Store, with extra marketing and promotional support from Amazon, and with a 70 percent royalty even on a work priced under $2.99 — you’ll have to submit it to the Kindle Singles editor. Most of the authors seeing success with this format are working either with Kindle Singles, or with a company like Byliner or Atavist. You can go it on your own, but your single may get lost in the shuffle.

That could change next year as other digital bookstores pay more attention to the format. Apple has a separate section of the iBookstore for shorter reads. Barnes & Noble launched Nook Snaps, a so-far unimpressive answer to Kindle Singles. Those efforts can give shorter works a promotional push. We could also see more companies, or individual authors, do a Kickstarter campaign to fund either a line of e-singles or just a single work. That’s what Matter did.

The digital-only part

Byliner just signed a deal with Ingram to distribute its titles in print. “We increasingly hear from our readers and writers that they would like our stories available in print as well as digital form,” Byliner CEO John Tayman said. That’s great as long as the price stays very low — ideally the print price should match the ebook price — and nobody tries to make print a big part of their business model. Otherwise, e-singles really will be replicating journalism’s extraordinary challenges in the same old place (paper), with not much upside.

The cost proposition, maybe

The NYT’s “Snow Fall” feature cost a lot to pull off, and people are already arguing that while the NYT could do it most other outlets won’t be able to afford it. But if you’re a newspaper already paying a journalist to do a story that will run in parts in the paper, there is no reason not to bundle it together and publish it (or publish it with a few extra components) and sell it separately. Of course, lots of outlets can’t afford to pay journalists to carry out that type of research in the first place, no matter where it eventually runs.

That’s been a problem for a long time now, though, and the best part of e-singles is that they’re not tied to any single old media company. They’re not a digital replica of anything so much as they are a format unto themselves.

Photo courtesy of Flickr / B_Zedan 

Through the partnership with Byliner, the NYT “will co-publish up to a dozen New York Times/Byliner Originals in the next year featuring narratives in areas in which The Times has reporting expertise including culture, sports, business, science and health.” They will be available for sale at Byliner, through ebook retailers and at NYTStore.com. The first is “Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek” by John Branch, which expands on an article that will run in the newspaper on Monday, December 17. The e-single will cost $2.99. Upcoming e-singles will be written by the NYT’s Washington bureau chief David Leonhardt and “Common Sense” columnist James B. Stewart.

Through the partnership with Vook, the New York Times will publish “TimesFiles” — “curated selections of articles” from the paper’s archives “assembled into compelling narratives about a particular topic or event.” 25 of them will be available on December 17 through Kindle, Nook, the iBookstore and NYTStore.com. They start at $1.99 and include “The Rise of Apple” (left), “The Fall of the Berlin Wall” and “The Life and Films of John Hughes.”

Byliner and Vook have both had a busy few weeks. Byliner announced Wednesday that Ingram will distribute its books in print. It also recently launched an experimental subscription program and a partnership with Esquire. Vook, meanwhile, has launched partnerships with Newsweek/Daily Beast and the Wall Street Journal .

While many other newspapers have started publishing original ebooks — including the Washington Post (through a partnership with Diversion Books), the Boston Globe and, as of Monday, USA Today, the NYT has been slower. This year, though, e-singles focused on longform journalism like the ones that the NYT will publish with Byliner have begun hitting the NYT’s own ebook bestseller list. In August, for example, the Minneapolis Star Tribune published “In the Footsteps of Little Crow,” a narrative of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, and it hit #13 on the NYT’s ebook nonfiction list. And a couple of Byliner titles, including “Lifeboat No. 8″ by Elizabeth Kaye “After Friday Night Lights” by Buzz Bissinger, also made the ebook nonfiction list at the same time in April, at spots #1 and #3. As the format has become more popular, the NYT has clearly decided that the time is right to enter the market.