Fellow web3 writers: I think it's time to say the quiet parts out loud more often.
As most of us know (especially if we've been working in the media industry awhile), the vast majority of professional writers and media producers — even many of those at the top of their fields — do not earn a sustainable living from their creative work.
For writers who don't aspire to earn a living* through creative work, this may not be a personal issue. Nonetheless, it should be of collective concern to all who enjoy reading and respect the writer's craft.
I don't know about you, but I don't want the next Hemingway to be flipping burgers at their "day job" when they could be writing instead. Far too many gifted writers end up spending their peak writing years as marks for content sites, while time/attention for their emergent and intrinsically motivated work gets crowded out. That's a huge collective loss.
For most writers, sponsorships and/or paid subscriptions amount to supplemental income at best, and can bring all kinds of subtle and not-so-subtle pressures to compromise a creative vision. In this sense, web3 is not (yet?) much different from web2.
Disillusioned writers often leave web2 platforms like Patreon and Substack when it sinks in that for most of us, the labor of chasing paid subscriptions in a world of abundant content, limited attention, and subscription fatigue is unsustainable. But even in web3, building a long-term sustainable publishing business that allows sufficient time for the writing itself typically requires other funding sources (often advertising and/or philanthropy) to close the gap.
If web3 fails to address these underlying issues wisely, we risk falling prey to the same enshittification cycles that play out for creative labor markets on web2 platforms.
While I'm hardly the first to identify this pattern, it bears restating, because it's not clear that it's well-understood.
Scores of writers who publish sought-after professional-level work can't make ends meet unless they sell their best work hours elsewhere (i.e., do work for hire — often gigs or day jobs as "content creators"). Even then, many writers still lack sufficient financial/material/relational support to enable them to do the kind of work they do best.
What does it cost us, collectively, when the vast majority of gifted writers must spend their best work hours churning out work-for-hire content, chasing sponsorships, and courting paid subscribers while their emergent creative vision gets neglected or pushed to the periphery of their lives?
Can web3 do better than this?
Questions like this can easily get overshadowed by the tendency to focus on "the creator economy" and "monetizing content creation."
But I wonder: what might be possible if web3 helped more writers level up their earnings in ways that recognize the value of their intrinsically motivated work?**
What if writers didn't have to pay such a steep personal price to do creative work that clearly serves a collective benefit?
What if web3 enabled writers to handle their subsistence needs without compromising or sidelining their unique creative vision?
What if more web3 projects that target creators placed as much emphasis on innovative writer-friendly business models as they do on technical innovation?
What if there were web3 media publications with compensation mechanisms inspired by those of the Ethereum Protocol Guild?
What if writers took inspiration from Zora's artist-centered minting culture and protocol rewards mechanism to collectively build a literary onchain minting culture?***
What might that world be like?
I'd like to find out.
Author's note: As always, thanks to the Farcaster scenius and Zora for continued inspiration. Special thanks to res ipsa for brilliant thoughts on minting.
NOTES
* The whole concept of "earning a living" calls for a detailed critique of its own, but I'll set that aside in the interest of space.
** Of course there are also perils to consider when introducing monetary compensation for intrinsically motivated work. The point is to call attention to a hidden value flow dynamic that constrains creative work but has not been widely acknowledged (let alone well-addressed) in web3.
*** Interestingly, as of this writing, my net rewards are higher from Zora's first minter rewards (which I earned by fronting the gas costs to bring others' creative work onchain) than they are from collectors minting my own onchain writings.
https://zora.co/collect/zora:0xf3c4a4026a790aea33951778bf363380210b06d4/16Image source: UNC Commons
Second prompt for this new season of /words: Is writing your livelihood, or part of it? If you want to get more specific: -What kind of writing do you do? -How do you think about the value of writing + editing on Farcaster? -How can crypto fund high-quality writing sustainably? Please respond with either a comment below or via quote cast here in the channel, whichever you prefer. ✍️
My take on writers, web3, and earning a living: https://paragraph.xyz/@danicaswanson/writers-web3-and-earning-a-living?referrer=danicaswanson.eth
It is yep, and has been for almost exactly twelve years now. The only other income is crypto based (airdrops/rewards from web3 gameplay/Farcaster). I write anything and everything fiction but the income generators are books (short and long form) Started here on farcaster writing poems strangely, felt like a good platform for it and the right time for me (was sort of between projects at the time). There is definitely value for writers here, both fiction and non-fiction alike. There are good people here, it's a diverse crowd, very intelligent, cultural, and pro paying artists for their work, which is very important obviously! How can crypto fund...? Still waiting for that crypto based online platform for selling written work / hardware device enabled. Get a start-up funded, get it going! Other than that, crypto based writing contests, crypto focussed prodco's, maybe some Blockchain based project that identifies non AI written work. It'll happen eventually it'll just take a while Find me at /screenplay !
I've done a lot of different kinds of work in Web3 over the years, and I am shifting almost entirely to research and writing this year for one reason alone: The war for our digital sovereignty will be won via narrative. I think that writing is the single most important thing that value-aligned individuals can do in this stage of ecosystem development. The potential of this ecosystem is entirely nascent and, honestly, completely incomprehensible to the average person. What even does sovereign digital identities mean? Very few are building and funding this development, because there is no cohesive narrative and use case development around what that looks like. Few truly understand the value to be built here. It isn't flashy, like the casino games are. To drive the ecosystem in the direction of true change, we have to craft the story people need to hear. And it will come as no surprise, it has to come from all of us! No single person can cover the breadth of this narrative and reach every nook and cranny.
Love this. Thanks for responding so promptly! If you'd like to say more, where are you planning to concentrate most of your research and writing time this year? I'm asking more about the research questions that drive you than specific projects.
We are just beginning to draft the foundation of this, and we will be building this openly to get input from everyone, so I'd love to hear your initial thoughts and reactions as well! Mainly my mind is focused on uncovering what drives high quality contributors to be a part of their communities. Getting paid isn't an incentive to be a high quality contributor, it's a reward. The incentive comes from within. This is the missing narrative, I feel. We need to de-protocolize this process and refocus on the passions of individuals. What drives them to care about their communities and shared interests? Beyond that, I want to know what stops these individuals from contributing? I think the modern web2 tools have disincentivized the highest quality contributors in favor of the ones most willing to play engagement games. I want to understand how these barriers create disincentives so we can design better protocols!
Happy to talk more about what you've got planned! I appreciate your framing of the question of intrinsic vs. extrinsic incentives. I think ideally we'd have sustainable ways to enable intrinsic motivation to thrive, with extrinsic incentives used only in *service* of contributions driven by intrinsic motivation. There are deeper layers of questions here, too, in relation to motivation crowding theory and barriers to contributing. For example: some writers aren’t in a good position to prioritize intrinsic motivation over extrinsic, because of constraints (time-wise and financial) related to earning a living. I don't see this talked about too often, which is one reason I wrote this prompt. I agree that web2 platforms favor engagement over high quality. This has been an ongoing thorn in my side as someone who left Patreon and Substack after becoming disillusioned with their business models. Much of web3 has "inherited" the focus on rewarding engagement, so we’re seeing similar issues play out.
GM... how many people reading this have: a. Published a book with a traditional press? b. Self-published? (Amazon KDP or other ebook) c. Published an audiobook? d. Published a "literary NFT" / NFT book? Bonus Question: What excites you about publishing in Web3? Looking forward to dropping some $DEGEN on comments!
a. d. For a): Haven't published a book with a traditional press as sole author, but I've done developmental editing for a nonfiction anthology and also contributed an essay to it. It was then published through a traditional press. So... sort of? For d): I've published "literary NFTs" in the form of essays.
In answer to the bonus question: what excites me about publishing in web3 is the prospect that we might finally have viable ways to free the next Hemingway from flipping burgers. https://paragraph.xyz/@danicaswanson/writers-web3-and-earning-a-living/?referrer=danicaswanson.eth
Congratulations on getting an essay in an anthology! Care to share the title? Also, how do you find Paragraph to be in terms of audience/income? 2 $DEGEN 🎩
Sure! Here's a link to the anthology. In addition to my personal essay, I also contributed an interview, and wrote the synopsis on the back cover and publisher's page. (I did NOT select the cover image... lol). https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/moon-books/our-books/polytheistic-monasticism-pagan-cloisters
B and D and a little C for me. Recorded some chapters from my book on SoundCloud. Does that count?
I think it counts! I've recorded audiobooks (still need to upload to Audible) and also used Murf AI to voice audiobook unlocks to one of my NFT short shories... Haven't got a SoundCloud yet - do you find it is either good for profit or audience-building? 3 $DEGEN 🎩
b. Discovery is what excites me about web3 publishing; even though we may still be at the beginning of the premordial big bang stage, if that makes sense. Kinda like those Rocket reader days of yore when few could imagine reading fiction other than on paper.
Great answer, Mark - and that's one of the things that excites me, too! I remember being "in" during the early days of KDP, Smashwords, etc - then having to focus on my military career for the next decade. Now, I'm able to focus on writing / publishing - and we're again at the "dawn of a new medium" 8 $DEGEN 🎩
"Writers, Web3, and Earning a Living," a 3 min read from last month, is my most popular work on @paragraph. Someday I hope to write another piece about how web3 fundamentally changed the earnings landscape for writers. https://paragraph.xyz/@danicaswanson/writers-web3-and-earning-a-living?referrer=danicaswanson.eth
loved this one! such a great, concise overview of the power of monetizing in web3
Glad you enjoyed it! With all due respect, an "overview of the power of monetizing in web3" was not at all my intent with this piece. So if that's your takeaway, I have more work to do. My aim was to point out a value flow dynamic that constrains creative work in web3 & invite deeper questioning of the status quo.
That said, it's fundamentally a hopeful and optimistic piece, in that I wouldn't have even bothered writing and publishing it if I didn't think web3 had genuine capacity to address the underlying issues I discussed.
definitely! and this is more what I was getting at. I think we have taken steps towards it, but there still needs to be a social contract-esque update to the valuation of writing as an art form I think AI generation is a problem, but that people will still value human-authenticated experiences as story
oh to be completely honest, I mixed this up with the protocol reward piece (I'm a bit jet-lagged 🙃) I agree that the status quo has more to be challenged. I think there's a fluff when it comes to "earning" online in the creator "economy" but i do think minting writing is a good step, and so is degen tipping
No worries. Mix-ups like that happen to the best of us... lol. It's great that you found my protocol rewards piece that memorable! 😀 I agree that minting writing is a step in the right direction. I need to take some time to get up to speed on degen soon.
I don't think I had a tip allowance when you first released this, so I came back to show my appreciation for asking people to contemplate the 'what ifs' you list. 259 $DEGEN
Much appreciated! Thank you. Those what-ifs are top-of-mind for me lately. I think I'll screenshot them and share them again soon, because we still have such a long way to go. If we want writers to thrive in web3, we'll need to build real literary cultures and communities and develop writer-friendly business models.
Great read. Would love to see the future of writing emerge onchain with new types of engagement, rewards and monetisation mechanisms
Thanks! I'm skeptical about "engagement," at least inasmuch as it's portrayed by some VCs and influencers in the "creator economy." For both writers and readers it adds more labor, but the value flows aren't returning to them in proper measure. But I'm excited about rewards and experiments with onchain monetization.
That’s a fair point on engagement. I’m curious on the ways engagement and monetisation can blend and create new biz models for content Re: https://warpcast.com/brg/0xbe747dc8
Thanks for this. I need to spend more time getting up to speed on $DEGEN. I'm intrigued by the idea of degen as an early proof-of-concept for emerging business models that return some of the long-extracted value back to writers (and readers who engage thoughtfully, like you're doing with my comment right now). :)
New short essay (3 min read) on value and creative labor. TL;DR: - The vast majority of pro writers don’t earn a sustainable living from their creative work. - This is a huge collective loss. - Can web3 do better? https://paragraph.xyz/@danicaswanson/writers-web3-and-earning-a-living/?referrer=danicaswanson.eth
According to Farcaster User Stats, this is now my #1 most liked cast ever. There have also been 50+ new subscribers to my newsletter since I sent this cast. Thanks for the cool frame, @paragraph! https://www.farcasteruserstats.com/users/8451
Very much appreciate all the tips, likes, recasts, and thoughtful comments on this piece! Trying to respond to all comments but Warpcast service has been interrupted several times for me. Will return later.
Love this!
Glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for reading, recasting, and collecting!
Anytime 💚
Feel like @cameron would have input on this. Basically how web3 can enable content to stand on its own as monetization instead of having to play the chase followers and ask for subs sales game. More writing less shilling To me collect on paragraph and things like that are an awesome way. Tipping natively like warps
“More writing less shilling” is my North Star too. How can web3 get there? I doubt tipping will be enough. But I'd like to see 1000 experiments bloom. We don’t have to start from scratch. I think we can learn a lot from the mechanism design of @zora Protocol Rewards and the Ethereum Protocol Guild.
Web3 literary minting culture (as I've observed it so far on Paragraph and Mirror) is in its infancy. It may not work the same way Zora’s art minting culture does, but in any case I think context is the key. Minting alone, without much context, is supplemental income at best.
@samuellhuber.eth - thanks for being a CLP and facilitating the discussion (and tagging @cameron). Much as I love FC, cast threads are ephemeral by design, which doesn't lend itself to carrying on these discussions in an ongoing way. I think we'll need another approach if we're to build a literary minting culture.
frames I think are a good starting point. smart wallet frame that sends USDC as tip if you click tip e.g. at end of paragraph frame
Appreciate the tag! Inside me there are 2 wolves. The first one sees the state of the ecosystem and can’t help but wonder if society has honestly priced the value of good writing. Maybe writing as a tool is already relegated to the dustbin of history? The 2nd is building creator tools to test that thinking.
Thanks for commenting. Though I'm not aligned with the first wolf about the value of writing, I agree that an honest reckoning with this issue makes it awfully hard to stay hopeful about the state of the ecosystem. Web3 has a long way to go in recognizing how this hidden value flow dynamic constrains creative work.
The tough part for me isn't that I think good writing is worthless... It's that I think most people are worthless at identifying good writing. And ofc it's inherently hard to value, which means "true price" discovery of good words is really really hard (and the incentive is to underpay writers 😩)
Excellent points. Fwiw Solana ecosystem has a writing “bounty” going on right now. Not a long term fix, but directing resources toward the written word is a good step. Not much $ though. RPGF also created a pipelined. https://x.com/0xmert_/status/1753162543080640547?s=46&t=TVy9rDl3UkuxmVj4e18bOA
was planning to give it a go. might as well amirite. it's a first step, maybe if they figure out to run something in a more long-term way.
A drop in the bucket. 777 $Degen. Creative writing has been neglected since the adoption of video, exacerbated by the TikTokification. Specific cultural communities like Orion Magazine helped some flourish > https://orionmagazine.org/
A tip 'o the hat to you for the tips! Thanks. I think web3 is our best hope, but we've still got a long way to go.
I wonder this quite a bit as I write the 4th and 5th SEO article about the same topic for yet another client. Plus, the funny thing then is you end up competing with yourself. Can't help but see it as a waste of time. Would love to see some kind of writer collective.
*nod* I hear that. For years I subsidized my projects by writing for content farms. I knew I was capable of more, but it was the best option available at the time. I think web3 is our best hope, but this issue needs to be addressed deliberately.
Loosely related to that, the beginning of The Angel's Game comes to mind. "A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins or word of praise in exchange for a story. [...] A writer is condemned to remember that moment, because from then on he is doomed and his soul has a price."