Just going to answer quickly here, while this is fresh in my mind:

Did you ever follow/read @ericvancewalton? He was one of the first people to serialize a book on Steemit, and he did extremely well for himself.

Just my quick observation... just like I have recently been taking a look at some of my old blogs and giving them a fresh coat of paint, I think perhaps what happens is that we need a few months (in my case, a little over a year!) to simply "sort out" what we want our direction to be. As I write this, I have added somewhere on the north side of 600 "essays" to Steemit, and I am just NOW finding the "voice" I used to have.

So, I'm guessing you found your direction. Or something that at least feels like your direction.