Is Steemit Affecting The Way I Am And Have Been For A Long Lifetime?
For 60 years, I have refused to read books I do not own. To have lived in the world of the author and to have left it with the regret that I have to leave, such regret was mitigated by my ability to re-enter. I have re-read most of the books of my favourite authors and gained from it, for on the second time around, I see much that I was blind to during my first voyage. I have about 35,000 novels on my hard drive. I have read about a hundred of them. I have about 10,000 soft and hard cover books. I have read every single one of them. The same is true for paintings, music, poems. Now on Steemit, I read, I see or even philosophise (or try to) for the length of time I stay on the page, then I go on to the next post that titillates my curiosity. When I buy books, I look to choose from paperbacks that are at least a thousand pages long – longer? All the better. Here at Steemit? Apart form my posts, the longest item I’ve seen is a well written science fiction story of ten pages. As a writer, and as an elderly man, I am keenly aware that every story, every life, is created out of a myriad short stories strung together into one, so that the sum becomes greater than the parts. At Steemit, novels are cut into tiny short stories, on average, about three to five pages and nobody seems to notice how much they have lost. Imagine, a world of short stories (episodes) only! I wish there was a way for me to find the writers who publish an entire story, as in a book, without altering their work so as to maximise the number of readers and points (money) earned, so that we can share our dreamworlds between us and our ‘fewer’ readers, and take advantage of the Steemit world which enables us to talk with each other and steep ourselves more deeply within each others’ worlds of imagination. To further illustrate my point, here is the post of mine I think has had the most readers up to now, and all it had was the title and one word of text! https://steemit.com/sfandf-fiction/@arthur.grafo/what-i-can-never-achieve-when-writing-or-talking
I think in the future as the price of "steem" rises then I would not be surprised if we see whole novels published on the Steem blockchain.
I suppose authors wish to earn some steem dollars for their efforts and so publish novels in pieces. There is also the possibility that another kind of platform (like steemit or dtube) could be made just for entire novels where people paid a fee to read them or something similar to ebooks on the blockchain. I am sure this will happen. Blockchain technology is still in its infancy but it is ready to explode
Being a prolific reader I suppose you in the minority here on Steemit. I have been told my posts are too long in the past - known as TLDR - "too long didnt read". Therefore most bloggers try to find a balance I guess.
There's nothing like the smell and feel of a real book!
Gotta disagree about the short story format though. It's an artform unto itself. See Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich, for instance. Of course, that's by no means a 5-page story. But in that case I would direct you to something like Philip K. Dick's Roog, for instance.
Same goes for small books. Voltaire's Candide is an example.
I have many anthologies of short stories, in one, the story is literally only half a page, but has a BANG to it, so that you sit and think about it for longer than it took to read it. It is not what I am objecting to. If the writer wrote a story of two pages, he did so intentionally and the story fits within those two pages.
When an author writes a long story, say 80 pages (which is still fairly small), it takes him a bit longer to flesh out the characters. If that author publishes here, at effectively 2 pages at a time, for he now adds photos taken from Google so as to make it 3 pages long, it means I don't get the feel of the characters and do not get caught up in the story as I would if I could read the entire book in one go.
Funny thing, I did not plan it, but I walked about twenty four blocks today to visit a Mall, as I have not been to it before. They had a new bookshop with many Fantasy books (strangely, hardly any SF) and very few authors were recognised by me. What did make an impression is that the shelves are full of books of 1,000 to 2,800 pages (that I noted).
It seems that when readers are not logged on, they really do like long stories. It makes sense, if you are enjoying a story and the characters have come to mean something to you, you must either buy book after book (like the books about Pern by Anne McCaffrey) or else, as the reader, you don't want the story to end and rejoice that it is nearly two thousand pages short..
Only a decade ago or two, publishers would instruct their authors to cut down the length if it passed 400 pages, saying readers don't want long stories. so maybe, things will change here also. Maybe more would want the longer story if it were possible for them to click a link and download the entire story.
I appreciate that ll this is subjective and depends on the personal liking/attitude of each of us, so thanks for letting me blow off some steam. (I have not read Candide, read wthe link you gave and have downloaded (Project Gutenberg EBook of Candide, by Voltaire) - not really an ebook, just in text. I don't know how I missed this one and thanks.
I also like the long book format. When I would buy paperback books at $3.99 280 pages was fine. But then the price went to $4.99-5.99 and then those short books felt like I was not getting my money's worth. When I got my first Kindle, I thought that was great, I could read a lot of books for free, but that seems to have gone by the roadside also, and a lot of the free ones were pretty short and only entertained for an hour or two. I did find some longer ones, and paid for a lot of them, but the mainstream Authors wanted way way way to much for an e-book edition, so I got into the Indie writers, and did find a lot of good reads. But like I said it was getting hard to find stuff to read for free or stuff that was of high enough quality at a reasonable price to pay for and read. So my kindle reading was chopped way back.
When I first joined steemit I really did not know what to do. My wife and a friend of hers said I needed to join. I mostly hated social media, saw it as nothing more than a pity party cess pool. I found steemit to be different. I found a story to read, then another and another, so I am pretty much hooked.
I started my little mag that you found as a selfish endeavor at first, a few people seem to like it now. But I needed a way to keep track of the writers and in a place I could just click through and find the latest stories. The short format of the stories being posted I have found after a bit to be not to bad. I mean currently I am reading I think 6 ongoing stories, maybe more. I have not really,(which surprises me), had a problem with keeping the characters separated from each other. And one other thing about steemit, and the method the Authors, (several of which are published and have Amazon Links, or are sold in hardback/paperback format at stores), use to "Publish" their work for us is that it cost nothing to read them, and yet a vote pays them, and sometimes they upvote your comments, so you are paying them and being rewarded for reading. A real win-win situation. Sorry got long winded there. It is nice to meat a fellow book reader @arthur.grafo.
Thanks - and I tend to get a bit long-winded myself, as the other two commentators above will laughingly confirm.
I would love to have many read my stories, it is the main reason I joined. However, I do not want to cut up my books. If someone reads a few pages and gives up reading, so be it, I can only blame myself for not writing well enough. But if someone finds themselves sinking into my dream-world and loving it, I owe it to them that they can read it with the minimum distractions.
I would have hated it if Anne McCaffrey had split all her books into 2 or 3 page segments, adding photos from google to artificially make it more interesting. I would say to the reader, use your imagination, the results will be a hundred times more real, personal and rewarding.
Another point: I have been writing for about 18 years and my books total about 26,000 pages. I will not be offering all of it here, but even then, I could end up posting three to five thousand pages. Can you imagine me splitting that into 3 page segments. It is likely I'll have been buried long before I finish - especially if I am also expected to go searching for two or three pictures for each segment.
Anyway, I'll be checking your site often and I'm looking forward to enjoying many short stories.
An author you may find interesting:
@everittdmickey
Oh yeah, I found @everittdmickey, reading "Soulstone" and "Ride the Lightning" as he releases bits and pieces. Volume 6&7 of my little steemmag have slightly more in depth reviews of the Authors/Storytellers I found up to that point. I don't know what I am gonna do when I make number 9 up. I have I think 8 more Authors to add, and I generally was only doing 4 or 5, but this week, well it's like hitting the jackpot. lots of new reading material. I have no Idea how I am going to keep up. But that is okay, because writers sometimes go through blocks or dry spells. Not that I have seen that as a problem on Steemit, just gonna have to read faster I guess.
Yeah this is the other extreme. Most long books, you'll notice, are by authors no one knows. I think they're just being verbose without substance. There's something to be said about Hemingway's strict advice to cut cut cut!
For me, I can't read stuff on screen that are too long. But I can read (real) books for hours. Screens are not exactly easy on the eyes.
I don't know about books, but what I have noticed is we're living in a new golden age of TV series. I.e., people prefer to watch series than movies and/or movies are becoming longer and more and more serialized (e.g. all superhero movies). People love to identify with characters and then go on new adventures with them, and get to know them better. So the same might be true for books.
lol Alexander,
So if anyone does read Boxee, they might end up wanting more stories about Cherine. Just from what I have already written, I have enough stories of hers to keep me posting for the rest of my life.
I look forward to that - just as I look forward to seeing what new works of art are presented to us by you.