How to optimize Steemit to promote Independent Authors

I would like to explain how authors without corporate backing market their works on the internet. I am naming this the Independent Author System for reference purposes. I think the steemit coders need to understand the Independent Author System to optimize their design for independent authors. If steemit is the worst place for independent authors to make money it will have the fewest independent authors, obviously. Just as obvious if its the best place for independent authors to make money it have the most independent authors. I would like to see steemit have the most, I would like to see it be the place where independent authors can make the most money. The internet has tremendous untapped potential to break the corporate stranglehold on content and I would like to see this potential fulfilled. That takes someone who understands how to code internet systems and how independent authors market their content. So I can learn how to code or I can try to teach the coders. I am taking the easy way out, I am going to try and teach the coders and let them do the hard work of making steemit the best place for independent authors to make money and find readers.

The single most important idea behind what I am calling the Independent Author System is that One Click Exposes You To All Content. This is the single most important idea. You click on one link and this exposes you to all the content written by that author. This is the single most important part of the Independent Author System. The exposure is usually done by a More By This Author link, but it can be done in other ways. The key here is that one single click by a potential reader exposes the reader to all the content written by the author. Without this independent authors couldn’t survive because this reduces the cost of marketing. Pay for an advertisement for your latest work, the potential reader clicks on the link in the ad, the page they land on has a More By This Author link and now the reader is exposed to everything that independent author has ever written. This is key. For the price of one advertisement you have exposed the reader to everything you have ever written. If you have to pay to expose potential readers to your content one piece at a time you will never make it. One Click Exposes You To All Content reduces the marketing cost of being independent. It allows independent authors to make it without corporate sponsorship. The importance of this to independent authors cannot be overstated. This is why being an independent author only works for prolific writers. You need a vast library of written work for being independent to work financially. The more you have written the more you expose to the reader for the cost of one single advertisement. One Click Exposes You To All Content favors the prolific writer with a vast library of content. If you are on a one masterpiece a decade schedule you better have corporate backing because otherwise you will starve to death. Independent authors need to be prolific to leverage One Click Exposes You To All Writing. This is the only way to make it without corporate backing.

One Click Exposes You To All Content isn’t just for paid advertisements, it is for all forms of marketing. This includes begging or paying influential twitter accounts to link to your work. And that link to your work exposes all the content you have ever written. You can pay or beg for a review from an influential blogger, the link on the review will expose the reader to all the content you have written. You can spend time engaging with readers and they can develop a connection with the author and become superfans who promote your work to their social circle. And each link the superfan sends to a friend exposes the friend to all the content the independent author has written. This is the fundamental method for surviving without corporate sponsorship. You pay, beg, encourage, and sometimes even deserve on merit a link from a social media account, a blogger, or a superfan and this One Click Exposes You To All Content you have written. This is the basis of the Independent Author System. Of course you need to write well. In a perfect world that would be enough. In this world I doubt that is even half the struggle. But if you do have good writing you still need to get people to know you have good writing. That isn’t easy. Well, it is if you have corporate sponsorship. It’s just not easy for the rest of us. To survive at all you need the Independent Author System and leverage technology to make up for lack of resources. The most important part of this is One Click Exposes You To All Content. Independent authors can’t afford, both in time and money, to get individual links to all their content. They need to be able to put their time and money into promoting their latest writing and then any potential reader who clicks on that link is exposed to all their writing. The more you write the better this works. If you have written one hundred great writings and an important twitter account links to just one of them you want that one link to expose the potential reader to all one hundred writings. If you’ve only written one thing ever then this system won’t work. If you want to to succeed as an independent author you need to fall on the Joyce Carol Oates side of the spectrum and not on the Thomas Pynchon side. A Pynchon could never make it without corporate backing. This is just the harsh reality of how things work when you are independent.

The second most important part of the Independent Author System is Serialization. This is just a child rule of the parent rule of One Click Exposes You To All Content. In today’s world only authors with corporate backing can get away with standalone works. Good for them. I don’t wish they were less successful, I just wish the selection process of who gets corporate backing and who doesn’t was more open and fair. But I love standalone books, I prefer them to serials and they wouldn’t exist without corporate backing. Because in today’s world you need corporate backing to make a living writing standalone books. If you are an independent author you must use Serialization as part of the Independent Author System. It is a necessary child rule to the first rule I have described.

The standard form for independent authors is to create a likable hero that the readers bond with and then follow Jack Handsome or Suzie Sweetheart through their many adventures spanning three to ten books. Three is the minimum for any sort of economic success. Anyone who has browsed the ebooks section at Amazon knows this is the pattern. Independent authors gravitate to ebooks and they use the Independent Author System and so they all use Serialization. The successful ebook authors are all writing serials about Jack Handsome and Suzie Sweetheart, the standalone books are reserved to the power elite that has corporate backing. Without that corporate backing you won’t pay the rent writing standalone books. Without corporate backing you have to use Serialization as part of the Independent Author System.

The reason for this is obvious, Serialization is a child rule to the parent rule of One Click Exposes You To All Content. You write a seven part series about Jack Handsome and his beautiful wife Suzie Sweetheart solving murder mysteries around the world. For the sake of argument we will say you are a good writer, these are likable characters and interesting books. Congratulations, you are at most halfway through to the goal of making money as a writer. Now that you have your seven part series you need to get people to read it. Serialization is the child rule to the parent rule of One Click Exposes You To All Content. The Jack Handsome and Suzie Sweetheart novel series comes out with a new book each year. With each book launch a marketing campaign will expose readers to the work, each potential reader will be exposed to the previous books with each click. Any reader who likes the first book they read will likely buy and read all seven Jack Handsome and Suzie Sweetheart novels. This is the Independent Author System. You pay or beg or even earn on merit a link to one part of the series from a social media account, blogger or superfan and that turns into seven different sales. If you wrote seven standalone novels you would have to pay, beg, or earn on merit seven different links from social media accounts, bloggers or superfans. With Serialization paying, begging or earning one single link sells seven different books to the reader. This is the Independent Author System. This is why Serialization dominates ebooks. It’s not because series are better than standalone. It’s not because readers like series more than standalones. It is because an independent author cannot earn a living writing standalones. Anyone lacking corporate backing needs to use the Independent Author System. This system is based on One Click Exposes You To All Writings and Serialization is a child of this rule.

Serialization has the second benefit of allowing an independent author to slowly build up to cracking the bestseller lists at web sellers like Amazon. Potential readers only look at the first page of search engine rankings, the first page of web portals, the first page of anything. Every reader you are trying to reach is only looking at the first page of anything. You have to get on that first page to reach them. This the main reason why being a talented writer is at most half the battle. The hard part is reaching the potential reader. The single best way to reach potential readers is to make a bestseller list. Nothing works better than this. The one thing potential readers look for in a book is many other potential readers have already bought it. Making the best seller lists is the key reason why in writing the rich get richer. With corporate backing you can make the best seller list through the marketing campaign of a giant and wealthy corporation. And independent author cannot. Serialization is your best chance of making the best seller lists as an independent author.

With each new book in the seven part series more and more readers become enamored of the story of Jack Handsome and Suzie Sweetheart. The audience grows with each release. And every time the audience grows the newest members go back and read the older books in the series and look forward to buying the upcoming books. The audience grows and grows and the author only has to put time and money into marketing the latest book and this time and money will expose potential readers to the rest of the series. And by book seven it finally happens, Jack Handsome and Suzie Sweetheart have finally reached the best seller list. It took seven years and seven books to do what a corporate promotional campaign could have done in one year and one book. But with the seventh and last installment of the Jack Handsome and Suzie Sweetheart series the independent author has finally made the best seller lists and can finally pay off his credit card bill. That seventh book in the series will make him more money than the other six because of the advantage of making the bestseller lists. But he only made the bestseller list by writing a seven part series whose audience grew with each new book. And by the seventh book the audience was large enough to make the best seller lists, and now the author finally has made enough money to have made all that work worthwhile.

Slowly growing an audience through Serialization helps the independent author through One Click Exposes All Content and through slowly building audience to finally crack the all important best seller list. Its that standard career problem. You can’t get a job without experience and you can’t get experience without a job. You can’t get on a bestseller list without selling a lot of books and you can’t sell a lot of books without getting on a bestseller list. Serialization is the answer for independent authors. Serialize your work and slowly build an audience without the assistance of corporate sponsorship until at the end of the series you finally crack the bestseller lists and can pay off your credit card debts. This is the Independent Author System.

The third part of the Independent Author System is engagement with superfans. These are avid readers who enjoy promoting the works of their favorite authors to others on internet forums, twitter, customer reviews, facebook pages and in personal communication to friends and family. They often develop small followings on their blogs and social media. You don’t have to pay superfans money, but they make money for you by promoting your work. But you do have to pay them with time. Superfans are drawn to writers who engage with them and spend time communicating with them. Time is a cost, it is perhaps each person’s most limited resource. Engaging with normal fans may be rewarding but it is not profitable. For an independent author engaging with superfans can be profitable. Because each link that superfan sends to a friend exposes the friend to everything you have written. If you are doing this right you have written a lot. Because if you haven’t written a lot this isn’t going to work. Being independent is for the Joyce Carol Oates type of writer not the Thomas Pynchon. You have to write a lot so when that one click exposes the potential reader to all content they are being exposed to a lot of content. Because the fundamental method of the Independent Author System is One Click Exposes You To All Content. So all content better be a lot.

I have three suggestions correlating to the three rules of the Independent Author System. My first suggestion is to make something equivalent to the More By This Author link in web seller portals front and center in the site’s design. Maximize the ability of exposing potential readers to all of your content from one single link which was payed for, begged for, or even earned on merit. Arrange the website design around making One Click Exposes You To All Content. Maximizing this is key to making steemit a profitable choice for independent authors. This method of putting time and money into one link which then exposes all your content to the reader is the single most important part of the Independent Author System.

My second suggestion is to accommodate Serialization through more specific forms of following a poster. Instead of clicking on a follow button and seeing all of that writer’s content subscribe to a series written by the author and have only that series delivered and delivered in an appealing and useful way. Independent authors cannot survive without Serialization and so the design should both accommodate and encourage that, both from the perspective of the writer and the reader.

My third and last suggestion is to build a way for writers to engage with superfans into the basic design of the technology. Fan engagement with average fans can be rewarding to the writer but only engagement with superfans is profitable. So some sort of screening would be necessary, say after a minimum of links or mentions you enter into a writer’s discussion forum or some other method. The better steemit allows independent authors to engage with superfans the better it will be for independent authors.

These are simple suggestions and I have no idea on how to carry them out as I am not a technologist. I just want the technologists to know how best to help independent authors. My advice and fond hope is that the people coding steemit will learn how independent authors make money in the internet age. If steemit is the worst way for independent authors to make money it will have the fewest independent authors. If it is the best way for independent authors to make money it have the most independent authors. I hope it has the most because I am against corporate control of content. I want to see independent authors take over writing, but they can’t do this independently. They need the technologists to set up an ecosystem they can thrive in. In order for this to happen the technologists have to understand how independent authors make money, I call it the Independent Author System. If the technologists running steemit can understand this and implement this knowledge into the design of their system it will make things better for readers and writers and worse for corporate sponsors. This is exactly what I want to see happen.