Danica Swanson on Farcaster

Danica Swanson pfp

I've been thinking about this stubborn how-to-get-writers-sustainably-funded problem for a long time, since it pre-dates crypto. It's actually become one of my main intellectual interests over the years. Without getting too far into the weeds, here are a few thoughts: What if Paragraph were to zoom out and focus more on the social layer from a systems perspective -- i.e., think of context, curation, and conversation as the primary paths to value creation, rather than individual writers? Could Paragraph help writers collectively build thriving creative scenes with network effects accruing to the contributors -- writers, editors, curators, preservers, and readers? One of the things that drew me to Paragraph in the first place was the quote-highlight feature, for example. Could Paragraph give contributors places to preserve quotes and respond to them in ways that might help draw others into an ongoing conversation around the work? Maybe in a mini-app?

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Kent Babin pfp

"Could Paragraph help writers collectively build thriving creative scenes..." This. Really well said. After fairly recently being introduced to the concept of ergodic ecosystems, it's now clear to me that we're not going to solve the problem by making writers go it alone in competition with all the other writers. We need support to produce great work. For all its faults, trad publishing provided that support. If we were to bring writers, editors, curators, designers, et al. into an ecosystem, it would make the finished product better and, in theory, worth paying for.

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Danica Swanson pfp

The concept of ergodic ecosystems is new to me, too. Great nerd-snipe. I looked it up and I'll be thinking about it for awhile. I agree that systems that pit writers against one another competitively will not be a path to long-term sustainability. I often think about how the "iceberg model" might be applied to shed light on the systems that support writers below the surface. We need the support of pro editors, designers, curators, etc., to produce good work (the tip of the iceberg), but we also need underlying infrastructure like sustainable cash flow, healthcare access, unstructured time to think, and so on.

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Kent Babin pfp

I always think of the aristocrat writers of the 19th century who had very little to do but write. All their needs were taken care of, so plenty of unstructured time to be creative and produce the epics we admire today. Perhaps UBI would unlock a lot of writing talent, but probably not worth waiting around for. I envision a sort of decentralized publishing org. Writers submit first drafts of their novels. The org has editors and curators which determine which projects get selected. Then the novels are polished and published. A pre-sale could, in theory, generate the capital to pay the writer an advance and for the services of the support team. Any revenue after publishing would be split according to a smart contract. Marketing remains the challenge, but maybe FC is a place where a book get generate 2,000 pre-orders at $5-10 a pop?

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