What I learned in a month of exploring Web3 opportunities for writers.
Many of you may know me from my articles last month about selling my first poem for $50 or getting over 100,000 views on my work through a text NFT marketplace. These achievements drove me to continue exploring Web3 for all of February, and I’m going to share what I learned below and some tips I have for optimal growth. I was a beginner to Web3 only a few weeks ago, but I think I’ve learned a lot and want to share with the community!
What is Web3?
Web3 has taken the world by storm and generated over $23 billion in productive revenue in 2021 alone. Whether you’re an experienced crypto enthusiast looking for upcoming trends or simply a writer looking to enter the space, we’re here to break down some details about Web3 and why it can benefit you as a writer, creator, and/or investor.
Web3 is essentially a ‘decentralized database and server’ — it’s a computer running across millions of peoples’ machines (crypto ‘miners’), and the core idea is that Web3 is a new form of internet where users can control their data, and there’s transparency in individual and business operations. Take, OpenSea, for example — the biggest NFT marketplace — or UniSwap — a tool powering some of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges. Because these two billion dollar products are built on the blockchain, we, as users, can see every transaction that occurs with the business — every NFT buy and sell, the price, the NFT’s history of owners, and more ! — and all the data the business is keeping. Contrast this with the traditional stock market, for example, where trades are done in relative secrecy with little transparency (think Nancy Pelosi’s flagrant but unpunished insider trading).
One major benefit of this transparency, and accessible information, is the rise of NFTs — digital collectibles. This is because unlike traditional collectibles, such as rare art, NFTs cannot be faked. The ‘minting address’ — the ID of the user who created the NFT — can be verified and linked to authentic creators, and as a result plagiarism and fraud can be entirely prevented. Imagine you come across a real life painting of the Mona Lisa. It looks real enough, but unless you’re the most experienced of art critics, you can’t really tell if it’s real! An NFT of the Mona Lisa, on the other side, would be authentic if and only if it was ‘minted’ by Da Vinci himself. In this article, we’re going to take a deep dive into how NFTs, enabled by Web3 technology, can help writers and creatives stay protected in a digital world, take full ownership of their work, and bolster their careers.
Text NFTs
If you’re interested in the Web3 space, you’ve undoubtedly seen how artists have made $17 billion in 2021 alone off NFTs (and allowed for NFTs to take up 16% of the global art industry in a single year). While visual artists have prospered off this new industry, however, writers have been left in the dark despite the publishing and writing industries being far larger than the art industry, and there being far more writers than artists (at least in the United States). While writing has undoubtedly lagged behind in terms of Web3 technology, sites like In Writing — a text NFT marketplace being dubbed ‘OpenSea for text NFTs’ — and Creatokia — a (unfortunately centralized) book NFT marketplace — have sprung up within the past year, and already begun to make waves.
These NFT marketplaces have seen what the first NFT marketplaces such as OpenSea have done right — intuitive user experiences (despite a lot of data), easy interactions with the blockchain, etc. — and what they’ve done wrong — expensive onboarding fees, lack of creator support, etc. — and remedied them such that I’d argue the text NFT ecosystem is currently much healthier than the art NFT ecosystem. Here, we’ll explore a couple reasons why (and how you can leverage these reasons to benefit yourself as a writer and a creative).
Minting your work as an NFT
This is the most obvious way you can benefit from text NFT marketplaces: by minting your short stories, poems, books, articles, jokes, or even art as an NFT and selling it. Sites like In Writing have made it very easy to mint NFTs — to get your first one, you simply need a crypto wallet and something to mint! Traditionally, sites like OpenSea charge hundreds of dollars to ‘onboard’ your wallet to their platform, but In Writing is currently running a promotion where your first NFT is completely free. The instructions are simple — just head to their writing page, copy and paste your writing into the text box, and choose ‘free mint.’
To sell your own work is more complicated — the website says it’s because “only you can list your work for sale [because of decentralization], and so you have to acquire MATIC [cryptocurrency]”. However, it ultimately costs less than a few cents to list your work, and so if you’re thinking about looking deeper into Web3, I’d say it’s a great place to start. I did some research into In Writing specifically, and NFTs have been selling for over $800 USD (at the time of writing) and the average NFT currently sells for $29.
Royalties and Rewards
However, the benefits of Web3 for writers don’t stop at selling your NFT — listing it for sale, having someone buy it, and having it go from your wallet to a buyers’. Even though your NFT has left your wallet, the In Writing marketplace remembers who originally minted it — you — and, when your NFT is resold, automatically pays the original author a royalty fee of 20%. Their website says it’s to maintain a sustainable and healthy ecosystem for investors and buyers, and with how rapidly the platform is growing, it’s clear to see their business model is working.
On the note of their business model, In Writing also works to prevent fraud and plagiarism by working with authors and creators to implement a verification system, meaning even if someone chose to steal your work — which is unpreventable on the Internet — it likely wouldn’t sell for much as the fraudulent actor would be unverified.
NFTs and Publishing
Minting your work as an NFT is also a low-impact way to try out boosting your career. Legally, minting your work as a digital collectible and actually publishing it (by yourself or through a publisher) are non-overlapping events! As an analogy, imagine Shakespeare selling his first draft of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ as a first edition, and then publishing the same play through a publishing company for commercial availability. He now has two revenue streams (not that he needed it), and you could do the same! Now that first drafts are (mostly) digital, it’s time for the collectible industry to catch up and shift to the digital world as well. If you’re a poet you can mint your poetry as a single-edition collectible (one of one), or as one of many first-edition collectibles (by simply including [1/10], for example, just as print artists do when selling exclusive prints).
There’s constantly opportunities for aspiring and experienced writers and investors alike in the Web3 space, and one such example of this is In Writing. They really seem to be a platform catered towards writers, with generous royalties, validation, and an incredibly low barrier to entry. If you’re interested in learning more, I recommend you check out their website and try minting something for yourself — the first mint is completely free, with no strings attached, and took me less than 2 minutes from start to end!
TL;DR: Web3 is not nearly as big for writers as it is for artists yet, but there are platforms like In Writing that are making it more than possible for writers to make side hustles and additional income and augment their careers in doing so! Read more (or even mint your first NFT, completely for free) about In Writing here, and thanks for reading!
