Progress Report: the Steemhouse Literary Journal

Finally--some news to report about our developing front end!

Granted, the goal we’re shooting for now differs significantly from our original blueprint. At the start, we hoped to create a blockchain site that was fully interactive, with accounts and posting ability and wallets and all the expected bells and whistles. Steemit was not meeting the needs of our writing community and neither was Discord. The only way to achieve the work flow we wanted was to make it from scratch.

So we tried.

And we got nowhere.

Challenges

The biggest problem we ran into was lack of developer ability to understand our vision. We summarized and whiteboarded and mindmapped, yet none of the prototypes that resulted were anything close to what we required. The final straw was the loss of a small fiat bundle to a dev who talked a great game but failed to deliver a code package we could use. It was the metaphorical equivalent of paying for a tree that produces apples and receiving a tree that produces acorns instead. It would take astronomical amounts of time and effort to modify the product he sent for it to be viable, and we’re just not willing to spend any more thousands right now on developers who may or may not be capable of delivering what we need within any kind of reasonable budget.

A One-Two Punch

In the midst of all of this, two things happened. First, Steemit, Inc. announced the long-awaited launch of Communities. From the glimpse we got behind the curtain, we knew instantly that Communities would be a game changer for us. This development solved many of the interaction and visibility problems we’ve struggled with for years. With the release of SMTs following closely behind, even our need to create a Steemhouse token is met.

Many have wondered why Steemhouse persistently declined to use previously existing platforms to solve these issues. We can give you a very short, succinct answer for that. While our publishing house itself is centralized due to the nature of Limited Liability Corporations and industry standards, we require that all our blockchain and cryptocurrency tools (anything associated with money) be decentralized and open source. Platforms that fail to meet this criteria are immediately struck from our list of potential tools.

The next event that shaped the future of our front end was the discovery, quite by accident, that one of our primary requirements for display of blockchain content would be a real chore to implement. It is absolutely essential that the version of each post displayed by our public-facing site be immutable. Meaning, it must be impervious to future edits. Once we approve a piece for publication, we cannot risk authors going back and making changes that our editorial team did not approve, changes that may reflect badly on our brand.

Now, if authors want to change their work on their own blogs, that’s fine. But the version we display? No. It must remain consistent with the version our editors signed off on. There is absolutely no way to manually enforce this. So our front end would have to pull specific data from a specific block written at a specific time, and while this is technically possible, the Steem API doesn’t support this kind of specificity and an interface that ignores subsequent updates (edits) would be way more than we currently have the resources to develop.

The effect this discovery had on our end goal is profound. Since the very first discussion we had about a Steemhouse front end, we wanted a “pull” system--retrieval of data from the blockchain to be displayed on our public-facing site. The idea of a “push” system like Steempress was not compatible, regardless of how much we officially like and endorse that product. Now, after learning that one of our most fundamental requirements is not readily achievable, we are having to rethink the entire scope of this project.

What Does Steemhouse Need a Front End to Do?

As a professional writing community, the biggest need we see for a front end is to create a bridge between the cryptosphere and the mainstream literary world. A carefully curated public-facing site functioning as a literary journal would do this. A personal blog--Steem or otherwise--does not contain items a writer can list in their portfolio because there was no editorial process, or expert consensus, in its acceptance there. And, with rare exceptions, it is not something that will attract new readers from the mainstream.

Typically speaking, a blog is a flow of information from someone who has gained an audience through some other means. We want to use our front end as that means--a way for obscure writers to showcase their best work to a finicky reading public that may then opt to follow their activities at the blog level. A funnel of sorts, maybe even an elevated form of click bait.

That’s a terrible thing to call it. But hey, if it works....

But How Will It Work?

From the beginning, we’ve said our public-facing front end site should not look like a Steem blog. In fact, all evidence of upvotes, downvotes, post value, and comments needs to be hidden. Why? Because the audience we’re targeting just wants to read. They’re looking for good stories, not a dizzying sideways tumble into a cryptocurrency community most of them have never heard of and never want to hear of. Too negative? Don’t shoot the messenger. That’s just the way it is.

But we still want those readers! Who knows how many of them can be persuaded to open a Steem account so they can interact with their favorite authors? Keep in mind, if the goal is to onboard the masses, first it must be understood and accepted that not all of said masses are going to be cryptoheads. This doesn’t mean they can’t have a positive Steem experience. Within the Steemhouse official Steem Community, we can insulate them somewhat from the external forces of proof of brain while not undermining proof of brain. We can welcome, nurture, and mentor, and also explain the unique dynamics of a blockchain-powered blogging site like Steemit or Busy or Steempeak, or whatever front-end version they prefer. We believe a properly presented public-facing site will be an invaluable tool for us for all of these reasons.

What Now?

What we need more than anything, and what we need first, is a working prototype. Because of Communities and SMTs, many of the technical complexities have been sorted for us. Now we just need a UX that’s custom-fitted for our project, and there are multiple ways to achieve this without immediately pulling content from the blockchain. In other words, we can stand up a website that’s capable of beta-testing our overall strategy without it functioning as a blockchain front end, at least for now.

We’re not going to publicly discuss the details of our IT project until we launch it. However, we do have a working game plan and it’s in active development. We’re going to start with a prototype site built using standard tools available to everyone. The site will have the look and basic functionality that we need and, using it, we can implement the interaction strategies we think will make professionally curated fiction a hot commodity on the blockchain.

How Will the Steemhouse Literary Journal Differ From Existing LitMags?

At a glance, it won’t differ much. And that’s the point. The current strategy for literary magazines does indeed work. If we start tinkering with a tried and true formula and alienate mainstream readers, they will click away without a second thought. The difference will be the new and innovative levels of interaction they’re able to have once they decide to click the “react” button. Also key are the reward incentives they will have for participation. That’s where Communities and SMTs enter the picture.

The website itself will be seamless and simple, offering distraction-free reading and easy-to-navigate menus. There will be nothing in the sidebars to compete for attention, no comments, no post values shown, no upvotes, downvotes, or strange symbols for visitors to wonder about. Readers will be one-on-one with the stories from start to finish. When they have reached the end of each selection, the page will present more choices at that time, including ways to follow the author on social media and an option to receive notifications when that author publishes in the future.

Timeframe

We’re already a year behind schedule. We’ve lost more than twelve months to internal drama, developer failure, and--admittedly--bouts of profound frustration. Birthing new ideas into existence is a lonely road when so few people can see the vision...but in the event that one stumbles upon a brave new way of doing things that actually works, those who stayed the course end up with first mover advantage. Right now, Steemhouse is the only mainstream publishing company in existence (that we’re aware of) with an eye toward the blockchain. This won’t be the case for long. Therefore we do feel a bit of pressure to get this site up and tested so we can keep that first mover advantage, and revolutionize the way both short and long form fiction is marketed and consumed by the public.