A personal publishing house on Steem

I just realized that I hadn't posted about Steem today. Phew. I still have some time left in the day. I don't know about you, but I find it pretty amazing how compelling Steem is for me as a creative as I literally spend a large portion of my day thinking about it and always look forward to having the opportunity to sit down and get a post out.

It takes a lot of time out of my day of course, but have a look at all of those books laying down on the ground in that picture and realize that each one has had at least one person sit down and spend days, months and potentially years of their lives.

Oh, but they made their money when the book was published.

Yes, that may be true but, currently the estimate is that the average non-fiction book sells about 250 copies a year, and since the author gets about 10% of that, if the book is worth 20 dollars, they made a whopping 500 dollars for that year. Woohoo!

But, that is not the only thing to consider as while there are about 300,000 book titles estimated to be published each year by the publishing houses, up to 90% of the manuscripts never make it past the first rounds of consideration. Publishing is expensive and publishers don't want to print what they can't sell.

But they got self published of course.

Well, the estimate is that there are a total of bbetween 600,000 and 1,000,000 book titles in total published and that means that even at the outside, 70% of all manuscripts that someone poured themselves into for a longer period of time than most have worked at anything specific, never saw the light of day. Assuming that everyone that writes the book believes that what they are doing holds some value, consider what rejection at that level might feel like.

Oh, this isn't very Steemy yet, but I think most can understand where this might be heading considering that with very little effort at all, most people have been able to manage and earn Something on Steem, but the results are never going to be even, even if they are fair. I see "fair" a little differently than most though as I see it as us all having the same chance to do the best we can given the resources we have available.

The normal way is to think it is everyone having the same resources available, but that is never going to be possible due to variations that aren't even within our control, like the weather. A person who is raised in a cold climate is going to have skills and perspectives as well as drawbacks compared to someone raised in a warmer place. How do you make the weather "fair"?

Well, there are plenty of "fairweather" actors in this world, the types of people who can only perform when the conditions are suitable and if they are not good enough, they are unable to get moving.

“…a professional is someone who can do his best work when he doesn’t feel like it.”
— Alistair Cooke

One of the challenges that many people face on Steem is that while they always feel like earning, they don't always feel like doing the work necessary to earn. This makes the process very job-like and that isn't great for most non-professionals to produce and what is produced, seems hard. This "seeming hard" makes the creator feel that they have put in the effort and deserve some kind of reward and the sunk cost of creation often means a loss of discernment and reflection.

But I worked on this post for two hours!

Sure, you might have worked on it for 6 hours or three days, but it doesn't matter how hard you run 100 metres, you aren't likely to win an Olympic medal, a national, a state or probably even a place in your local town derby. the thing is that Steem is a competition and in order to do well as a creator, there are many more metrics than how long is spent creating.

The competition on Steem is of course for attention and while some take the easy path of drama creation, that rarely lasts long term as eventually it gets tired, passe or someone with a better brand of drama comes along. Like any Hollywood starlet, all candles will eventually burn low, but to have longevity, consistency is needed and attention through drama-filled emotional reaction is a fickle mistress. Emotion is of course important when it comes to engaging an audience as the most important person in this world is ourselves.

This is something that a lot of people who complain about Steem content don't realize as while they think it is only because the big stake supports it, what they don't recognize is that everyone who hopes that Steem will do well for them are interested in what people might say about Steem. OF course, Steem content likely gets a lot of votes (not much from curation initiatives of course) but this also means that there is a lot of competition in the Steem topics.

I am not a technical content creator, so what I spend my time on are the other aspects of Steem, the community, the content, the people and how things may come together long-term. Why I focus long is because that is where the value is for the real investors on the platform as that is the time frame necessary to realize real returns. Those who are looking short-term for Steem trading are going to meet a lot of volatility.

But, this is participation in the attention economy, because if one wants to be a consistent earner, one has to be able to attract attention consistently. And, it has to be the right kind of attention. It is no good writing the "great American novel" according to your mother, it has to be under review from peers, tested widely, questioned.

The Great American novel isn't written, it is created through reader evaluation.

Without attention, without a publisher, without sales, without review - it is nothing more than a manuscript that never saw the light of day. What is great about Steem is that no matter who the creator is, all get published and go into the draw of discovery. But, one, two, ten or a thousand posts might slip through the cracks of attention and perhaps, never get discovered.

The question is, even after all of the rejection, how many can keep going, how many can stay consistent, keep creating, keep delivering, keep learning and trying to one day have the discovery made. How many can keep building the body of their work infinitely?

This is the thing I find the most interesting when it comes to creation for Steem, because it never need end for as the ecosystem changes, it should change us also. As Steem evolves, we evolve and that means that a cycle forms that can keep driving evolution indefinitely in ways that we have not even come close to touching upon yet.

We are all publishers on Steem. Perhaps that no matter the effort we put into something, more of us should think about what we consider worthy from us or not - kill our darlings so to speak. Rather than posting to earn, we post what adds value to our own personal world beyond the payout amount, because if it doesn't have your heart in it, how do you expect to get the attention of another's?

You see, this is Steem content - but I think most will find something else in here too. What that is depends on the weather of our lives - and we each have the same opportunity to use our available resources the best we can.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]