Growing As We Go

We've been very busy behind the scenes with the SFT. There was never a doubt that at some point our intitiative would need to expand, but in the interest of not getting ahead of ourselves, we decided as a group to start very slowly and build over time.

We now have six active curators and one honorary member, several scouts, a voting trail, and a truly crackerjack team of supporters and ancillary help. Discussions lately have revolved around fundraising drives to make sure we can pay the authors we curate, what we should do when curatable fiction is scarce, and what we should do when we have too many good stories to include in a single post.

The Saturday-only schedule of posting originated from being short-staffed and pulled in multiple directions. We now have enough internal resources to offer by-line posts by various curators as well as offer multiple curations posts during the week. Our model of curation is based more closely on mainstream publishing methods than other curation trails on Steemit. Never for a moment think we believe "our" way is the only way. We're simply doing something different in order to fill a particular gap. Several of our curators actively curate for other teams, and there is no conflict. Our goal from the beginning has been to choose selections from Steemit that are publishable by mainstream standards--or very close to it--and collect them all in one place. That place is the SFT Library. It's a showcase and repository for outstanding fiction that is not only well written, but well edited. We are very proud of this initiative and believe that, over time, it will bring mainstream traffic to Steemit that might otherwise never find its way to us.

If anyone is interested in becoming involved with The SFT as a scout or delegate, please contact us through the MSP PALnet Fiction Workshop, linked below. Anyone interested in learning more about how our unique curation process works may also join us in the Workshop with questions. Additionally, we're looking for ideas about how to generate enough cash flow to reward curated authors each week. We've been able to transfer 20 SBD per story for the past two curation cycles, but as we begin to curate more authors, this may present a challenge. We believe that investing in publishable fiction is an investment in Steemit as a whole. Hopefully as we reach new milestones, readers from the community will find value in our work and donate SBD to keep us growing.

One other bit of news we'd like to report is the Fictioneers Radio Show streaming every Tuesday from 6 to 8 p.m. EST on MSP Waves. While this isn't an SFT project directly, several SFT curators are involved in production of the show. The SFT is mentioned frequently, as well as Steemshelves, a Fiction Workshop project aimed at generating SBD for author payouts. Steemshelves is a website similar to the SFT Library, but differs in that it's a showcase for noncurated work that authors want to collect at one URL. Cost is 2 SBD per link, and all proceeds go directly to The SFT.

This curation trail is a project made possible by @aggroed 's PALnet @minnowsupport channel, conceptualized by @andrewgenaille, @rhondak, @mk40, and @swelker101. Logo created by @pegasusphysics. If you would be interested in lending your support through delegation, please contact @mk40 or @swelker101 .