i don't know if it works the same with literary stuff as visual, but a press release can be your new friend. look online for formats and tweak it a bit since it is not an event, or line up a book release party with a local store and then you DO have an event - hit up bookstores, community centers, coffee houses that do reading series or possibly some other placement depending on what the topic of the novel is there might be a good place that may not make the most sense for other book releases. also maybe try picking the brains of the people at hugo house. maybe they have space in their reading series or know of other places that are hosting similar events. then send your press release to the papers so they have the important info about the book (and event if you found a place) if you can afford it send a copy to them as well in case someone on staff wants to read it and maybe review it.

if you cant afford to send copies out into the world put some sample chapters up on the internet. getting a website for the book is helpful too so people aren't emailing you directly but can just go to a link to the book. web addresses and hosting are pretty cheap, you can get them for around 40 a year, some times cheaper if you get several years in a row, which will help tremendiously with getting your book beyond the city (there are free hosting places as well, but its nice to have just the name of the book or your name as the url without alot of other stuff in the url which screams you're to cheap to properly care for your creation. some places even have simple templates you can use if you're not web savy and toss a pic up there and some sample pages. then if any one in the future gets interested and writes about your book they have a reference point to easily get more info AND you can post the links of their reviews on your page. while social media is great, having something other than a FB page shows you're serious (i know some galleries won't look at a person's work unless they send a real website, it depends on the place but it just shows that you're willing to do more than post something on FB and that you take your craft seriously)

know any bloggers? send them the release and a link to where the book info can be found online. maybe they're interested and will write about it, and if they do post a link to their article on your website as well.

its too late for entries but you might want to go to http://shortrun.org/ and go to the small press event on november 12th that is being hosted by the vera project. start to make contacts in the self publishing world face to face. the lovely ladies behind short run are planning on doing it yearly so it could help you get your foot in the door to the process next year. even if you're not interested in tabling there will be alot of other people there from many ends of the self publishing persuasion for you to pick their brains and pick up some tips from them. there will be alot of zine and comic people there, but i know they also have a few tables of the literary bent at the event. there are also some distribution peoples who will be tabling, you could talk to them about who would be a good distro in another city or who you should approach with your content. i only know a bit about this side of things from conversations with my sister, but there are alot of ins and outs and people who want to help people who are trying to get their stuff out into the world. also talking to people there who have been through the process will help tell you what NOT to do or places that are flakey on writing checks.

if youre looking for funding to try and promote the book check out http://miraslist.blogspot.com/ there are tons of listed grants and residencies there as well as a wealth of information on HOW to apply for grants.

since your WA resident check out http://artisttrust.org/index.php/for-artists maybe write a GAP (grants for artists projects) grant next year to get some money to promote the book, or hire a professional web designer or some other related project (or apply for funding/residency to start your NEXT project) artist trust's 2012 fellowship includes literary media, thats a pretty hefty grant and relatively painless to apply -no fee, and i think its all the basic info you'll need for most grants (resume, statement and your work sample) without a ton of extra writing. and while youre at it check out their EDGE program - it teaches business skills to artists. so you can learn all the things you're supposed to do to take control of your work in the world. they also offer lectures and workshops (theres an upcoming one on health care for artists, so its not always the business side but also how to survive as an artist) they are a fantastic local resource and should be on your digital version of speed dial (in addition to several of their own grants and listings of calls from many others, they have a reading room full of information on how to do things like what you're asking, they have contact for pro-bono lawyers for the arts, they have listings of emergency assistance grants if your writing room floods or burns down plus tons more stuff) and i'm gushing about them even though i just got my rejection letter for the most recent GAP grant which should give you an idea of how cool they are.

I think the short answer is "Nobody has made that model work just yet, but reasonable and knowledgeable minds may and do disagree about whether it ever will."

Longer answer:

With the notable exception of the Wall Street Journal, few if any print publications have successfully implemented a paywall. The New York Times has tried a couple of permutations but none of them follows the model you lay out.

The "why" part of your question is too huge to summarize well here. Very crudely, most newspapers rely so heavily on syndicated or wire content that users can get the same info for free from other sources. Since papers usually get most of their revenue from ads rather than subscriptions, they're more concerned--broadly speaking--with circulation and CPM than with the size and quality of their own newsrooms. Sad to say.

I'm not sure what you mean by "community paper"--do you mean something like the Times or something more local, like at a neighborhood level?

For some really interesting thinking and explanation, I would start reading Steve Yelvington and Clay Shirky:

http://www.yelvington.com

http://www.shirky.com/weblog/

Yelvington started in newspapers and was part of the first attempts to take papers online in the era of CompuServe and BBSs. He still works for a newspaper pubisher (Morris Publishing Group) that is trying out some interesting models combining professional investigative reporters, expert commentator, and user-generated content (www.blufftontoday.com).

Other people, like Steve Brill, are debating the merits of setting up a micropayment model--i.e. I want to read this Economist essay or this Krugman column so I'll configure my PayPal or some other account and then pay $0.25 to read it. Some people think this has potential, some don't:

http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/06/micropayments-steve-brill-is-not-optimistic/

So do some reading and form your own opinion. It's a really interesting space to watch, especially up here with all the post-PI efforts springing up (Post Post Intelligencer, seattlepi.com, Crosscut, et al.).

What separates Charles from being a hack is that he's intelligent and he's a good writer, regardless of if you agree with his opinions.

So, no. Goldy is actually a less talented, less intelligent, less witty version of Charles Mudede.

Read: Hack.

That does not negate the fact that Goldy is also lazy, and that Charles sometimes doesn't even watch the films that he's reviewed.

From what I understand (from a friend who is a book editor for a well-known sci-fi publishing house), the real core of editing happens once a book is written or mostly written. At the very least, a full outline of the book (including all of the various sub-plots) needs to be planned out.

What an editor can really help you with is making sure that your novel has a tight narrative flow, is consistent (ie, you don't have the same character described has having green eyes in one scene and blue eyes in another), and makes sense. Some editors have a *very* heavy hand and have as much an impact on the final product as the author does, especially when it comes to sharpening the tone and focus of a novel.

If you've never written a novel before (and have never published anything), you should probably wait until you've written the whole novel (or the majority of it) before engaging an editor, in large part because the editor frequently works with a publisher to get a book ready for publication.

Take a trip on Amtrack and pay the little extra for biz class. You'll get a ton done.

If the writing warrants it. However: It'd be received much better as a piece of journalism.

Why not sell it in installments to a major news outlet/paper/magazine? That would pass the "I'd wanna read it THEN" test, for a lot of people.

As a lesser ave, you could Blog it to provide 'true' Gonzo ala Thompson's ideal: instant, unedited, prankish reporting - ex: you could fictionalize the timeline and post the installments as if real-time, for example.

Last resort: don't fictionalize a thing, include the classified stuff, and send it to wikileaks!

True Gonzo is good, but damn hard to pull off if you're not Wolfe, Thompson, Plimpton, Bangs, et al (and/or arguably Robbins, Ellis, Mencken, Twain et al.)

Good luck.

A: 1. put out an ad. Do you have money to hire an artist? (If not, and please let me stop you if you're hoping for a volunteer/'you'll get paid when I do' collaborator - you'd be asking a lot; too much. )
2. take art classes so you might do it yourself.

Look up "The Drawing Board" online community -it is a good start. Lurk for a bit before jumping in with your sales pitch, please.

Denny O'Neil (a decent writer of considerable fame) has an excellent book on the subject called "the DC guide to writing comics" which nails your followup Q's on workload balance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Writeforcomics.png
The short answer is: every team is different, and the split entirely depends on the skills/desires of the players involved - if you are into cinematic camera-angle descriptions and high-detail, then find an artist who gets off on getting that info. On the flipside, Stan Lee used to just shout short bursts of 'oratory storyboard' at Steve Ditko and he'd just about run with it from there.