Why I Believe In Ghosts

Awhile ago a group of people I know invested heavily in a daily, online, anthology magazine.
The idea was brilliant!

Every day authors from all walks of life could submit articles on whatever topic they chose.
Other authors could read and select content for editorial review.
Editors would then decide on what page that article would run, but no one would be denied a place in the magazine.

In exchange for submitting their best work, the authors would get a cut of the earnings of the magazine for each day they were featured.

Because a new magazine can take a long time to catch on, people were paid half in cash, and half in shares.

The front page was the real attention getter so articles on the front page were paid the most, as much as 80% of the earnings for the day. Other pages paid pretty well too, but the back pages paid little to nothing.

It was discovered quickly that certain authors just "sold well" in general.

After this discovery was made, it became more about the author and less about the content.
Eventually authors just seemed to "occupy a slot", regardless of the quality of their content.
The natural result of this was that a handful of people got a lot of money consistently, while the majority of authors got almost nothing.

This left many authors who could not make the front page, disillusioned and angry they no longer subscribed to the magazine or participated positively in it at all.

But they became poltergeists, making a lot of noise and throwing things around the room, even attacking people.

The poltergeists scared off new authors. Revenue and mindshare began to drop precipitously as shares in the company dropped from $5.00 to $0.50.

The natural result was that the former high paid front page authors were now paid much less.
Being paid less, some felt less need to produce "front page quality" content, and began producing lower quality content yet still making the front page, because their position was all but guaranteed.

This frustrated many authors who weren't as concerned about the money, but more about getting exposure in general while having a little free income to pursue their passion.
Not being able to ever gain any traction or readership left them feeling haunted.

Instead of it's original goal of highlighting a broad and diverse range of authors from around the world and giving each author a voice, the magazine began to devolve into little more than a super market tabloid.

No one could really understand what was going on. The magazine was haunted by the ghosts of authors who had been silenced by being ignored. They had turned into angry ghosts and they were attacking new authors sometimes turning them into ghosts too!

The editors themselves were all major investors and they were mostly interested in the long term results of their investments.

As circulation decreased and the value of the company stock plummeted, some of the primary editors made a decision.

"Because the quality of the content is beginning to drop, but the quantity is increasing, we will find authors ourselves and vet their content ourselves before publishing. But since we have to do so much more work, instead of giving these "ghost writers" a share in the publishing company, we're just going to pay them a flat fee per article."

Since some authors just "sell well", we'll take multiple ghost writers and lump them under a handful of fictional authors.

This worked well for weeks.

The quality of the content on the front page began to level out and the existing authors, noticing that their positions were being threatened, decided to really up their game.

In fact the ones who benefited the most from this were the readers.
The readers were suddenly faced with lots of quality choices on what to read.

A diverse range of topics from a broad and diverse range of authors suddenly populated the front page.

But it wasn't to last...

At least one of the ghost writers, perhaps feeling underpaid, began to plagiarize material and sadly the editors were not vigilant enough in vetting each article. This content slipped through editorial control, but the loyal readers were not fooled!

This erupted into a huge scandal. The community of dedicated authors and readers was torn.

Yes, the ghost written material was in many cases well below what "should" rightfully have been front page material.
But the flip side is that existing authors, suddenly faced with increased competition for sharply decreasing resources had upped their game, so much that they had begun to actually earn their slot again.

Under the ghost writing scenario, the investor editors believed that they were justified in removing resources from the author's pool and redistributing it. They were faced with doing a lot more work if they wanted their investment to succeed and they weren't seeing compelling content from the regular roster of authors.

The authors however felt slighted and insulted by this.
They began to publish articles talking about what a scam the platform had become and how evil the editors had become.

The stock price continued to plummet.

The investors, having been called out on it, resolved quietly not to do that again.
But something needed to be done in order to drive a more fair distribution of cachet from being on the front page, everyone could agree to that much at least. Yet no one could really agree on how.

During this time, one author who had consistently been building a dedicated following that somehow had survived all of this, had what he felt was a very good idea.

Anyone, including the investors could submit an article to [email protected]

These ghost written articles could be written OR submitted by any author, but the author's name must always be stripped off so that there could be no favoritism.

The regular cadre of authors could then select which of the articles by the "ghost" authors would be selected to run that day.

They could do this because mailinator provides a completely open inbox that anyone can read.

By using "vote by email", one person, one vote, only voting on one article in a 24hr period.
Every person would have the same amount of say as to who would be on the front page.
This vote was also a promise to upvote and reblog the article as soon as it appeared.

Each day, this "ghostwriter", would publish the 4 most popular articles as selected by popular vote.

Her own editorial power would be controlled by a guild of smaller, lesser known authors who would take the time to select for only the best content regardless of source.

At the end of the day, after the payout period passed, the original author could step forward and the guild would upvote his/her next article with full power, thereby giving this author a really good shot at the front page and building a following on his/her own merits.

Now of course as we all know, this is a purely fictional story.

There's not a platform that works like this, but just in case people like my story and would like to try it out here on steemit.

I have registered the account "ghostwriter"

My wife will be doing most of the work here. She's always telling me she feels invisible anyways ;)

We'll check the email "[email protected]" daily every day and post the 4 most popular articles.
Since we don't want to do this forever, if project curie wants the keys to the account, we'll hand them over gladly.

The next decision would also be up to the investors / editors.
This won't really work without a commit of one upvote a day to the "ghostwriter" account from the investors, especially the largest investors.

What I can tell you is that it always has an upvote promise from me.
Follow @ghostwriter to participate!