Discover the newest tool for writers on Steemit!
Have you fallen in love with some of the amazing stories being written on the Steemit platform? If not you clearly haven’t checked out some of these writers @feekayo @ntowl @unstitched @dreemit @vincentleroy (or his translator @vcelier).
Unbeknownst to many average day Steemit users, Steemit has become a place for many aspiring authors to self-publish their works.
The Writer's Dilemma
If you’re a writer then you already know that getting your work seen on the internet is a headache in itself, after hours of work it just gets buried under all the garbage that is on the internet. Whether you publish your stories on your own blog or you’re trying to get a story published on Amazon, the competition is fierce and the marketing is expensive.
And although having it engrained on the Steem blockchain seems like an ideal way to do it, especially with the reward system in place, Steemit comes with a few headaches of its own.
How many of us have over 20 links linking to previous chapters (but not to the next chapter) under their posts?
I can hear all the disgruntled Steemians authors across the internet sighing in unison at this image.
This isn’t the only issue that writers face on Steemit, after hours and hours of writing and finally hitting that submit button, seven days pass and you’ve earned 20 cents. I think a lot of Steemians can relate to this but for authors where this is their life’s work, it’s really soul-crushing.
The worst thing is, the story and fiction tag are spammed with random things that have nothing to do with storytelling! So again, your writing is buried deep within the internet again.
This is the story that your fellow author @feekayo shared with me and it’s quite disheartening.
Well... I once published a novel on Steemit, 22 chapters... And the experience was very bad. First of all, I had to manually provide links to old chapters with each new post, and then, there was no means for me to provide links to new chapters in old posts that had paid out. Also, even though I had quite a number of people who successfully followed the series from the beginning to the end. I believe they were the exception rather than the rule.
So basically. Self-publishing serious work is not part of the use case of Steemit. Especially when you consider the 7-day payout system.
It took me about 3 months to write 22 chapters and I made little above $200 and that was it.
So DBooks tries to extend Steemit's capabilities and fix these obvious gaps that stop Steemit from being a proper publishing platform
The DBooks Solution
So you're probably wondering, what is this DBooks he’s talking about? Well, @timoshey and @feekayo, cousins and fellow authors have created a space on the Steem blockchain just for writers and readers alike.
Their vision is to create opportunities for authors to get noticed, to have their works appreciated, and give them the ability to self-publish their own stories.
DBooks is a self-publishing platform on the Steem blockchain, it allows readers to access their favorite author’s work all in one place. For writers, there’s no more struggling to link to all of your chapters and for readers, you’ll no longer need to surf through all of an author's posts just to find the next chapter of a particular story.
DBooks will also be asking for a small fee from readers in order to give authors the chance to make more than a few cents for their writing. It hasn’t been decided yet whether this will be a one time purchase for each book or a rental or a subscription fee. As for the readers, think of it as donating to your favorite writers’ ramen budget. ;)
And lastly those pesky spammers. DBooks is also in the talks about building a bot that’ll help clean up the Story and Fiction tag. That’s a forewarning for all of you misusing those tags, you’re going to get flagged!
Thank the universe, your religious deity, or whatever you believe or not believe in, because DBooks just made it a lot easier to be an author on Steemit.
How you can help build this project
@DBooks.org is still in its early stages, however, and needs support for their platform’s development and the development of that bot! If you’d like to learn more about their developments, visit their blog or website. They will also be launching a campaign on @hyperfundit.com to fundraise for development very soon. So keep an eye out for it!
They’re currently looking for influencers who’d like to work with them on their campaign to help promote their project while earning 20% of the project's funding in the process.
For all you lovers of the literary arts out there, if you’d like to help promote this amazing new platform for the Steemit writing community get in contact with us here!
What do you think about this new project? Do you have any suggestions for the Dbooks’ founders about DBooks or their bot? Let them know in the comments below!
*****
Iris Lee (@allsthefoods), Co-Founder
"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere." - Albert Einstein
