My Steemit Failures #1: Lessons Learned from Trying & Failing to Start a Book Club on Steem
I had always wanted to start a book club… one day, after a glass or two of wine, I decided to give it a go.
“Fuck it,” I thought to myself - “why wait any longer? Let’s just make a post about this idea and see if people are interested.” And that’s exactly what I did - I made a thread entitled “Who’s interested in a Monthly Steemit Book Club? Read Great Literature and Earn Steem!”
Here’s the original thread if you are curious: https://steemit.com/books/@heymattsokol/who-s-interested-in-a-monthly-steemit-book-club-read-great-literature-and-earn-steem
Initial Enthusiasm
At first, there was a great reaction. Better than I expected. In fact, it was a great lesson in the dynamics of social groups:
Lesson #1: Once a crowd of people is supporting your idea, you have an obligation to follow through.
After all, if you propose something cool and 5+ people chime in saying they’re down to participate… well, now you have momentum. It’s awkward to cut off momentum, and the stronger the momentum gets, the more committed you are.
If a bunch of people are really pumped about what you doing, you have serious momentum. Stop too quick and you’ll give everybody whiplash!
So, we moved forward. I posted a few more threads, making sure to tag everybody who was interested and gathering more members as we went. Pretty soon, we had twenty people on the signup list.
Crowdsourcing Decisions
It was fun to set up a largely decentralized book club. We held a vote for the club name, landing on “The Page Dwellers.” I liked that, it has some character to it.
I hired a Steemian to design us a logo - @joewantsfreedom - and the end result was cool. Hiring was super easy, I just made a Steem Gig for it: https://steemit.com/steemgigs/@heymattsokol/steemgig-logo-artist-needed-usd20-sbd-for-a-steemit-book-club-logo
Lesson #2: Steem Gigs are awesome. You can hire a Steemian to get the job done. Why go anywhere else?
I made a point of NOT doing a “logo competition”. After all, asking people to submit their work and you’ll “pay for the best one” is TOTAL BULLSHIT. It’s an exploitative hiring practice that leads to many people working for free, while only the winner gets compensation.
If you can offer a minimum payment to all entrants - for example, if your upvote is worth $10 and you promise to give 100% upvotes to the first 10 people who submit - then perhaps there is a path forward like that. But if you just pay for the winner and that’s it, fuck off with that, you should hire BEFORE they do the work. /rant
Joe did a great job with the logo - here was our end result:
Lovely! Definitely hire him if you need a logo for anything Steemit related, he’ll do a good job for you.
Reading the Book
Everything was great up until we started reading. Then… things fell apart.
In the first week, people were still participating. Of our 20+ “members”, I’d say ~8 were actively involved in week one. There were a few comments about our book (Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens) being “tough going”, a bit hard to follow.
I enjoyed the beautiful prose and lifelike conversations within the story - Dickens has an incredible knack for portraying humans as the strange and flawed creatures that we are. Nonetheless, I had to admit that I was squeezing the book into my life, listening to it via audiobook whenever I found a few minutes… and yeah, I wasn’t following the plot super well >_>
What ended up happening was, within the first three weeks, we lost just about everybody. By week three, only myself and @winstonalden were actually reading the book, and a few other stragglers were posting to say “Ah, I haven’t kept up.. maybe next book I’ll get back into it!”
Sadly, and I only have myself to blame, I gave up on the whole thing. I became disheartened and never ended up posting the thread for week four.
Lesson #3: You have to be willing to work through initial slowness and failure to make a club succeed. Even if the initial response is good… there may come a “down” period where things aren’t so exciting.
I mostly felt bad because Winston was posting AMAZING comments, he lent awesome insights to the book… and nobody responded or upvoted him.
Lesson #4: You need upvote juice to support any club on Steemit. That’s why we are here - not just to converse, but to do so while earning rewards.
In retrospect, I should have rented out some SP or tried to find a sponsor to offer some Steem prizes for great participants of the club. Incentives are important, as that is what distinguishes this website from other social media platforms on the web.
I Don’t Regret It!
Do I regret starting The Page Dwellers? Hell no!
My only regret is not finishing that first book. It would have been fine to call it a day after finishing round one - there’s no shame in deciding that an idea isn’t working. But, it was a HUGE mistake to just stop posting before the end of the first book.
If you start something, you finish it. Even moreso when other people are involved. I’ve usually been very reliable on Steem and elsewhere - so I consider that a major fail. I am sorry for this, and I know I will have to work hard to build this part of my reputation back up to a good place.
Nonetheless, starting The Page Dwellers was a great experience. I made lots of new friends, several of whom I still engage with on a daily basis via Steemit. I also gained a ton of experience regarding starting a club and recruiting people, which is a valuable skill.
The final lesson I’d like to share is this:
Lesson #5: Only Start a Group Project if you are SUPER PUMPED about it.
I think this is the big thing. I liked the idea of a book club, but I wasn’t obsessed about it. It just seemed fun. As a young dude with a LOT of ambition, there isn’t too much room for mid-level fun projects right now. It’s gotta be all-in or nothing.
The next time I start a project on Steem, I will follow through with insane passion and dedication. Nothing will stop me from completing whatever goal I and my team set out to achieve.
This was a HUGE post - but I’m glad I wrote it. I think it’s a useful story for those who take the time to read it.
Have you had any experience starting a group project on Steemit? What was it, and what happened?
Sorry for letting you down. I was really keen on this but found the first choice hard going. Also my commute, although long, is not the best place to read as I am too tired. It could work but at present it's difficult for me.
Are you still doing the personal finance posts? Those were great!
It's ok, it wasn't any one person's fault. Literally everybody other than me and Winston gave up before week two. It just... didn't work, at least not this time.
I fell off of the personal finance stuff... I've thought about getting back into those, but I am not sure. I'm either going to restart them soon, or there is going to be a "Steemit Failures #2" thread about exactly that... :-) time will tell.
There was a few months where I started WAY TOO MANY PROJECTS, which led to some of them disappearing. I'm gonna try and figure out now the best projects to reboot and what to leave behind... it's not an easy task. Hopefully people wont be too bummed out about it either way.
Well said brotha, I think you basically covered it all and with precision!
Epic rant too lol I totally agree with:
"I made a point of NOT doing a “logo competition”. After all, asking people to submit their work and you’ll “pay for the best one” is TOTAL BULLSHIT. It’s an exploitative hiring practice that leads to many people working for free, while only the winner gets compensation.
If you can offer a minimum payment to all entrants - for example, if your upvote is worth $10 and you promise to give 100% upvotes to the first 10 people who submit - then perhaps there is a path forward like that. But if you just pay for the winner and that’s it, fuck off with that, you should hire BEFORE they do the work. /rant"
Honestly, I wanted to make a contest the second i found out they existed on steemit....It took me almost 10 months to finally know what it was going to be, something that i could really remain passionate about & that was going to be distinctive among the other contests.
And then, there was the preparation for making the contest and also building up my account enough to the point where I would likely be able to support it. I think that part was pretty key actually!
And as you said, obtaining sponsorship is very helpful for maintaing the momentum. Even though I know some of the participants for SCC would enter no matter what (some of them are actually sponsors too) it definitely helps to have a payout incentive that isn't just the rewards pool from the post... I mean My posts still only make between 3-5SBD lol
BTW, when are we starting the drummers union club ;)
I also implemented the full power upvote for each entry! I think that helps a lot too!
Your sandwich contest looks awesome Jay! You are doing it 100% right in my book. I wanna participate sometime, but my diet only allows for sandwiches on Saturday so my options are limited.
We're starting the drummers union as soon as someone gets around to starting it, haha. I'm dying because my drums are not in Raleigh yet, so I only have a practice pad, ERGH. Buut ya maybe soon that can be a thing. :-)
You definitely should participate, i knoe it's silly however there's a reallygraat and ecletic group of ppl worth meeting who have been entering. That's more so the point. An opportunity to mingle in a light hearted way with ppl u might bot otherwise find on steemit.
Also, even if u make a sandwich sat u have til monday night est to submit ur entey!
We'll keep DU in mind for a future project ;)
It might have been the book you picked, though a classic and a good read. Today people have shorter attention spans so books that are easier reads and more modern will likely keep more of a following. I didn't know you were doing this, or I would have chimed in Dickens is one of my favorite classical authors.
Well for what it's worth, the group picked it... we voted! shrug - I can see some merit to the idea of a shorter book being most useful. Perhaps if the vote had gone a little different and a Picture of Dorian Grey had won, we'd have had better luck w/ that 200 page story.
There is a counterpoint, though - the most popular book club on the internet was Infinite Summer, a three month long readthrough of the thousand page monstrosity that is Infinite Jest. That was definitely more modern, but also much more challenging. IDK!
Well being a group pick then I am shocked it didn't work out the way you wanted it to. I am a reader and my biggest issue when I have actually tried to join one, is the speed of how the books are read. 1000 page book I would have it completely read with-in two days. It is why I never join book clubs. Well maybe a 2 person one with my oldest daughter she is a reader too but she can read a lot faster than I can. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows she read in 1 and 1/2 hours. Took me 2 days to read it. But we have a tendency of talking about the books we have read like you do in a book club.
Hey, Matt, I've gone through some intense emotional turmoil through August and into Sept.(even my own posting has been quite limited and mainly reposting from my site).....It's connected to long-term trauma in my life. I don't talk about the situation publicly to protect a few people that I love.
What I can tell you is that I'm still reading Dickie and am at the point where Darney asks Doc. Mannette for his daughter's hand in marriage.
In general, I don't find the characters to be as compelling, as say, Pip, and Mrs. Havesham; or Marley and Scrooge. I also find the plot more meandering than his other writings but I agree the prose is dense and intriguing.
I find many parallels, though, to today as far as the tensions between the elites and their decadence (4-chocolate servers), and the commoners.....
Perhaps this doesn't bode well for our own times although I do concede to being deeply cynical.
You may have noticed that our governments no longer serve the people and now serve gov., banks, and corps., or, they now serve about 20% of the pop. who have won in their casino model of the economy. You'll know this to be corporate oligarchy running a trans-national plutocracy....( or, maybe you don't view our society in that way).
Hey, at any rate, I hope you're settling into your new digs...Rumour has it John Michael Greer recently moved there, too.....
Peace:)
Hey Andrew,
Glad to hear that you are still reading the book. That does seem to be one of the noteworthy aspects of the book, how the conflict within the story rings so true today as well.
I'd argue that we've basically always had this conflict - the struggle between the rich and poor seems eternal, perhaps in both directions. Will we ever find utopia? IDK. It seems like human nature to want more, and some people will achieve great wealth, others will fail. Even in a fully voluntaryist society, that seems like it would still happen...
I was wondering why there was never a second book, haha.
I don't think you should give up hope for the Page Dwellers yet. It might not be active right now but you could find someone with the right motivation and hand over the reigns to them.
On the topic of failures though, I think my biggest failure and regret on Steemit is not being able to continue the Dwarf Fortress posts. I just found it too difficult to get all the information and screenshots and try to present it in a sort of narrative prose style. Oh, that and my laptop was finding it hard to keep up with everything even after just the first year of the fort, and anytime I used Stonesense the game started crashing.
I'm not giving up hope for it yet though, I was recently considering trying to start a sort of collaborative effort with a better storyteller than myself where I give them all the information, we work through it, and they write the prose. It's something I need to give more thought to though.
Oh yeah I remember those! You were putting in so much work, and it was great content - but I don't think enough people were paying attention to it. It should have been rad - but it's very similar to what happened with The Page Dwellers, where all that initial interest kinda wanes and then you have to ask yourself: "Is this worth pushing through, or should I abandon it and try another project?"
There's never an easy answer. One of the problems right now is that Steemit really rewards short, quick interactions. Any club that requires a continuous effort from the members that is more than ~5 minutes per day is VERY hard right now.
There are some examples tho - like the Minnow Support Project radio station, which is ballin'. It's just... tricky. That's why I stopped several projects, I realized I needed to slow down and rethink everything... and this post (plus some more upcoming ones) are part of that thinking process :-D
I would love to do The Page Dwellers, but in all frankness I doubt I can try it again in the next few months. Maybe in 2018 we can all get together and give it another try...
For the Dwarf Fortress posts it wasn't lack of interest that caused me to stop, it was just my own laziness, apathy, and good old fashioned procrastination. I always planned to do another post but putting all the information together and then trying to make a story out of it was just too much for me.
I'm sort of in the same situation with making posts in general right now. I haven't done a real post in weeks, I just don't have the drive right now I guess. Thanks to DSound and learning how to use Reaper for making beats I am at least still doing something on here, haha.
But, yeah, slowing down and rethinking things is always an important thing to do, otherwise you run the risk of burning out.
As for the Page Dwellers, I do hope to see it active again. One idea I've only just had is that the focus of the project could change for a little bit. I've seen you post at least one book review, perhaps if you plan on doing anymore reviews you could post (or at least mirror) them on the Page Dwellers account. That would keep it active to some degree, and it would sort of keep it in the collective conscience of Steemit. It's something that doesn't require a large effort, it's much more of a passive undertaking than trying to run a book club. Then, once the time is right, and there's more involved interest, the book club can start up again.
Now I'm thinking more, and I wonder... maybe The Page Dwellers as a short story club would be better?! That way we can just read something in like 20 mins and discuss it for a week or two.
HMMMM....
edit: and we could even feature Steemians' stories! So we could read short fiction, some of which is written by our very own authors. O_O
Oo! I like that idea! ....Sorry, totally eavesdropping :D
:-)
I've only just seen this after making my own suggestion for The Page Dwellers in my other reply, it didn't show up in my replies tab. That's a good idea, especially the bit about including stories from Steemit. It would work as a constructive criticism group to some degree, and that's something I know I'd like to have access to.
Cool, let's consider this a solid maybe for now :-)
I'd totally join a book club here on Steemit :). So no more Page Dwellers? Have you heard of anyone else starting one?
No more Page Dwellers, sorry! It was fun while it lasted... There was one other book club on Steemit by @the-alien and @neilstrauss, but neither of them have posted about it in many months :-/
Darn! Oh well. I'll keep my eye out. I can only read so many romance novels before I feel like I need something with way more substance, haha :) My problem is, I love reading but there are so many books out there I think might be awesome that I just freeze and don't commit to any. Book stores have always been a problem for me :D
Dude you are saying exactly how I feel too! The books are endless, I wish I could read them all.
There's lots of awesome stuff beyond the romance novels. Or you could find one that is both a romance novel AND has other depth to it. You ever read Jane Eyre? It's one of my favorite classic books.
I haven't read Jane Eyre... I've gone the lazy route, though, and have seen a movie version of it. I wasn't really attracted to the story line at all which is why I decided to skip the book but knowing it was a classic I felt like I at least had to experience it one way or another. Probably a mistake since I didn't enjoy the movie! Oh well.
The idea of a book club totally appeals to me because most of the time I get to have someone else choose for me and I don't have to go through the pain of bookstore syndrome :D I've read some pretty good books that way.
this is really nice from you i like it
I tried to start an Introverts of Steemit movement here. I totally failed to followup much because I was... too introverted I guess haha.