Could steemit finally be the platform that means indie authors can earn a living?

With the rise of e-books and Amazon opening up the door for ordinary people to publish their stories online to a massive global market thousands of people jumped at the chance to be a published author.
All those unseen stories that people had written in the hope of one day releasing to the world now had somewhere to go. We didn't need the big publishing houses and the power tripped all powerful agents any more. We had Amazon who would take our books and show them to the world.

Yet it didn't quite happen like that and Amazon wasn't really the new champion of indie and self publishing authors. It was a business that was looking to expand it's markets and make money. Thousands of books were published each year by this new breed of authors and your book just sank into the sea of stories and while there was some that made people money many struggled to cover costs. Added to this Amazon wouldn't pay you a penny until you had earned a set amount, many authors never even get paid out for the sales they make.
Many of these writers couldn't afford advertising for their book and there were many sharks out their eager to take the money off of those who did with scam offers. It was down to the writers to build an online presence through social media to try and build their personal brand and pull in potential fans.
Here they were up against it as there was in the book reader world a snobbery against self publishing as those stories couldn't be as good as those released by traditional publishers with their massive publicity budgets. added to this sites like Facebook wasn't wanting to give you a platform for free, they wanted you to pay so people would see your posts about your books.

It was all a bit demoralising as you spent more time trying to get the word out about your new book than writing the next one.

(Me trying to write.)

Then last year I was told about steemit by my local publishing company Gingernut Books and @michelle.gent who runs it. In that year I've made far more here than by having my books on Amazon for over 6 years. I get the rewards for my posts credited to my account after 7 days and my writing is earning me actual money.

Steemit isn't there yet as a site that can earn writers a living but it's the closest thing there is and in time it could become what indie and self publishing authors have wanted. We could here, be at a site that will get us out of the shadow of the publishing houses and agents and take our stories to the world while earning money for them.
It also means we have to push ourselves and write more.

Thoughts and comments welcome.