John Green got an astronomical following from his books. What came next? 'I'm still competing for clicks'

By his mid-30s, John Green had done pretty well for himself. His debut novel, Looking for Alaska, had won a prestigious award for young adult literature. He and his brother, Hank, had launched a popular YouTube channel, where they regularly posted videos about their lives. With their combined incomes, Green and his wife were able to cobble together a living, buying a house and starting a family in Indianapolis.

And then, in 2012, he published The Fault In Our Stars.

"The week that book came out, it sold more copies than all of my previous books had sold in hardcover combined," Green recalled in a recent interview with the Guardian podcast Stateside with Kai and Carter...