Introduction
steemit is a social platform, where people share their original contents and get rewarded for them according to the strength of the upvotes gotten from other users. Thanks to the help of some users, it is now possible for us to share our videos (via @dtube), songs (via @dsound), live events (via @dlive), memes (via @dmania) and many more. These applications opened my eyes to the endless possibilities of the STEEM blockchain. As a book and story lover (though I can't write stories, but I do enjoy reading them), I got the idea to create a platform that will help authors on steemit solely focus on book publishing . So I spoke with the developer @feekayo at length about creating a platform where people get to publish their books and still get rewarded through upvotes, and it has taken about a month to achieve what we have now. Big kudos to him for developing the site himself with help of some open source libraries
We introduce
DBooks! Ladies and Gentlemen.
DBooks offers you the opportunity to organize your posts into chapters in a book format and publish it as soon as you are through writing all the chapters/episodes/series. You get to upload a cover image for the book, organize and name your chapters as you like and can also break down a chapter into the number of posts you want. You also get to create your 'Pen name'.
What is DBooks?
DBooks is an application fully written in Javascript, which runs in the browser. It allows you to publish books (which could be a combination of series of posts) on the STEEM blockchain and enables earning of rewards from your publications. Whilst the application cannot be said to be fully decentralized, as even a partly decentralized system is innately non-decentralized, DBooks is implemented on a distributed MongoDB server to ensure scalability and a very small data footprint.
The Frontend was developed with AngularJS 2 with emphasis on Material Design, while the Backend was built with NodeJS on top of the aforementioned MongoDB. So yeah, it's a MEAN stack project.
At no point do we handle your keys. We do not even provide the option to login in on our site. We strictly use SteemConnect at all times, which is a reliable Steem Inc project. This product is basically an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) of what can become the platform of reference for authors to publish their books and be rewarded for their work immediately without any publishing and/or distribution involved, so expect a lot of features to be rolled out in the coming weeks/months.
Just like most Steem based apps, @dbooks.org will collect 20% of the rewards of users of our platform. These rewards will be used to fund further development which we actively plan on doing as we are still in the alpha stage and also cover the cost for hosting. We have plans to request for delegations from the community in order to help support authors that will use our platform to publish their original quality contents.
In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.
–Oscar Wilde
Book Libraries can be described as a sea of knowledge for lifetime learners. Little by little, our reading culture is fading away; we now read less and starve our minds of knowledge. I’m not just talking about academic books, but also good fictional literature's. There are so many talented fiction writers on this platform who on a daily basis post their quality contents. DBooks provides you the opportunity to publish these literature's and in the near future, we are looking at the possibility of developing the ‘book rental’ feature which will allow authors set the amount for rental for a particular amount of time.
When I first joined this platform in early 2017, there were so many tips written for minnows like myself by the more established users on how to settle down and create a following on steemit. Those posts were gold to me then as I was very eager to kick start my steemit career. But those series of posts are now lost deep in the blockchain, thus making it difficult for minnows these days to access. DBooks provides the opportunity for writers to resurrect these lost articles by publishing them on our site. The issue of duplicate posts on steemit has been taken care of. We have introduced a ticker that gives the option to either publish the article on steemit or not. So if you are going to publish articles you have already posted on steemit, I advise you click the ticker to indicate that the article shouldn’t be published on steemit to avoid being flagged.
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.
–Oscar Wilde
The scope of steemit is ever expanding; we can now see various schools being created on the blockchain. These schools can utilize our service to create instructional books for their students. We will like you to see us as your main library where you can store up books and reference them at any point.
We strongly believe in this project and we also believe that there are endless ways this platform can be of importance to the community; it will be interesting to see how the community decides to utilize this great service. We therefore will like to challenge our users and potential users to explore the many possibilities of this wonderful project.
We will always be looking to improve our service and with the help of the community; through suggestions and open criticisms, we can only get better.
How DBooks Work
1. Go to https://www.dbooks.org
2. Click 'login with steemconnect'
3. You will be directed to the steemconnect login page where you will input your username and private posting key.
You can find your private posting key in your steemit wallet under permissions, you then click show private key:
Dbooks does not at any time store your keys as logins are done using Steemconnect.
4. The first thing you will want to do is to create a pen name which will appear as the author of your books. You can change the name at any time, but it's better you stick to one. To do this, click on your avatar at the top right of the site as shown in the image below and follow the steps.
5. Let us now delve in to the main part; creating a book. First, you click on the 'create book' icon on the top right corner below the avatar as shown below.
This brings up a 'Publish Your Book' popup, and you will be required to fill in details of the book. A link to canva is provided to help in creating book covers. You will also be required to write a Book Synopsis, maximum of 180 characters. Click 'next' when you are done giving the details.
You can now begin to add chapters to your book, as many as you require.
Below, you can see the option to publish the post on steemit or not. There is also the favourite option (You can add a book to your favourite list). The favourite is represented 'the red love sign' at the top right.
Upcoming Features
DBooks is still in its early alpha stage and we are working really hard to constantly update it till we have the beta version and go on and on from that. A lot of features are still missing. We also plan on improving our UI/UX to make the user experience better. We have created this site in such a way that it is easy to interact with. Right now, we have just one developer who is shuffling schooling with running this site. Though he is in his final semester, the success of this project will help him focus on DBooks full time and wave bye to the white collar jobs till we’re able to hire more developers.
The Features we plan on implementing include:
1. Book Rentals
To create a feature where authors put up their books for rent. This will serve as an added incentive to authors that publish original and quality contents. The authors also get to decide on the amount their books go for.
2. Book Reviews
Reviews will help potential readers determine the quality of the publication. We intend to introduce a star rating system, where readers can rate the quality of books published using 5-stars. Additional reviews can also be written to critic the book.
3. True Decentralization
At the moment, the books are still being hosted on a distributed MongoDB server. We will try to make dbooks fully decentralized in the near future.
4. Profile Management
Creating a user profile page that shows the avatar, number of followers and following, bio, reputation and voting power of the user.
5. Improved Book Management
Being in the alpha stage, the book management can be better than it is and we plan on improving to provide the best quality service.
6. Custom Tags
At the moment, we are yet to implement the custom tag feature. All posts are automatically tagged, with the main tag being dbooks and
the other tag being the category of the book published.
7. dbooks App
We intend to develop an android app and also an ios app to further improve the user experience.
8. Multi-User Login
We intend to develop this amazing feature that allows a user to easily have multiple libraries linked to your account and switch between them easily.
Amongst a phletora of other possible upgrades.
We hope to be open source soon, and would be pushing the code to a bitbucket Repository in the coming days once we have guaranteed code stability and proper documentation of the current version.
Pictures are currently not allowed to be attached to articles as we currently want to focus on intense and serious writing first and foremost; However we are open to adding this functionality further down the line if the community demands for it.
Just in case you like what we are doing, and are interested in supporting us; be it through mentions, donations or delegations, our user account is @dbooks.org and not @dbooks
“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
― Jorge Luis Borges
You can contact me on steem.chat @timoshey
And the developer on steem.chat @feekayo
You can join our Discord Channel
