Real-World

World Publishing Meets the

Blockchain

July brings a critical milestone for Steemhouse Publishing. It marks the end of
our first major bookstore tour, which covered many major cities on the
t East
Coast of the U.S. We call it a “bookstore” tour rather than a “book” tour, because
we did not focus on author events like book signings or readings at this time.
Instead, we shook hands with as many booksellers, librarians, and industry
influencers as we could, laying the groundwork for a grass
grass-roots
roots marketing
strategy that we hope will lead not only to sales, but to long
long-term
term relationships
with real people who can connect our writers to real
real-world
world readers.

It seems to be working. Let us explain why

why.
For those unfamiliar with Steemhouse Publishing, a quick recap may be in
order. Our team emerged from the @thewritersblock, a now-defunct
defunct community
that imploded after much internal conflict and leadersh
leadership
ip failures. Sounds
harsh? Hey, no need to beat around the bush. It happened.

Things changed in November of 2018 when @michelios audited the Writers’

Block presentation at Steemfest and quietly began assessing our business model.

actual footage of Michel at the SF3 presentation alongside @ezzy

Michel spent the next few months lurking in the Discord community and finally
stepped into a leadership role in February of 2019. He is now co
co-owner
owner of
Steemhouse Publishing, LLC., alongside @rhondak,, and under their direction
the company is quickly becoming established in the publishing mainstream.
What is Steemhouse Publishing?

Steemhouse Publishing is an independent book publisher with a focus on

quality fiction. We intend to build a thriving online community of writers,
editors,
s, and skilled creatives capable of mentoring authors from their very first
attempt at fiction all the way to publication. Because the company is rooted on
the Steem blockchain, we have the ability to generate income in both
cryptocurrency and FIAT environ
environments.
ments. This gives us an edge when it comes to
affording aggressive promotion of our authors.

Our bookstore tour is an example of this. We applied a certain formula to our

process, the same formula that was carefully crafted as far back as Steemfest 3
when the Writers’ Block still existed. First, we ensured the manuscript and final
product was of the highest quality possible. This was done through stringent
professional editing, formatting, and cover design. Then, we purchased bulk
ISBNs that ping back to Steemhouse,
eemhouse, not to a distribution service like Amazon.
Finally, we obtained ringing endorsements from recognizable and relevant
people and got a Kirkus review.

Kirkus?

If the name “Kirkus” doesn’t immediately register, we recommend that you give
it a Google. (Start here: https://www.tckpublishing.com/4
https://www.tckpublishing.com/4-important
important-book-
publications/)) Love them or hate them, Kirkus cranks out professional reviews
that are considered the gold standard by most industry booksellers and
publishers. A Kirkus review can destroy a book’s chance of success as well as
launch the career of an unknown author. They tend to be hypercritical, to the
point, and unforgiving. For this reason, those “in the know” take them quite
seriously, since there is very little chance that Kirkus will e
endorse
ndorse a book that
doesn’t well exceed industry standards.

In May, our Steemhouse debut novel, High Kill, scored an overwhelmingly

overwhel
positive review from Kirkus. Then last month, we received an email from Kirkus
notifying us that High Kill had also been selected as a featured book in the
Kirkus online trade publication. This was at no cost to us and not per our
request. They simply
ly chose our novel because of the excellent review and felt it
represented their brand well. Fun fact: fewer than ten percent of indie or small
press novels published worldwide are accepted into the Kirkus online magazine.
It is primarily Top Five real est
estate
ate (the “top five” NYC publishers) and highbrow
exclusive. Yet there we are, and we could not be more proud.

Keep two things in mind. One, High Kill was written, edited, formatted,
designed, and published entirely by Steemians. Not one word, design, or
creative
eative implementation was outsourced. Two, the name “Steemhouse
Publishing” references directly to our home blockchain and features
prominently in the quarter--page
page ad that will appear in the August 1, August 15,
and Sept 1 print editions of the Kirkus trad
tradee publication. How’s that for “real-
“real
world” exposure for Steem?

It will take a bit of time for High Kill to cycle through all the promotions and ads
and hit the bookshelves, then find its way into readers’ hands and hopefully onto
a few bestseller lists. In the meanwhile we will continue reaching out to
booksellers with a UK tour coming up this fall. We also have a second novel in
the pipeline as well as some big plans for a Steem book club to promote reader
engagement,
ement, and possibly a system of book sales, lending, and re
re-selling
selling that
utilizes cutting-edge
edge blockchain technology. Stay tuned right here on this blog
for updates. We’ll tag related posts with a fiction tag, a writing tag, a publishing
tag, and of course,, our steemhousepub tag, so be sure to watch for them.

Michel and Rhonda at a Bitcoin Pizza party in Long Island, NY, to celebrate the
anniversary of Bitcoin's famous 80 Million
Million-Dollar
Dollar Pizza.

VLOGS from the Road

From May until the first of July, Michel Q and Rhonda K traveled heavily
throughout the eastern U.S. introducing Steemhouse to as many industry folks
as possible. You can watch highlights from the trip at the following links. Some
of the videos are long, but
ut they are a form of documentation, not infomercials or
entertainment. Except for the gag reel footage
footage--that’s
that’s pretty entertaining.

Hey, nobody ever said work couldn’t be fun!

Gatlinburg
Savannah
Cape May
Eastern Virginia
Richmond
Pensacola
High Kill can be viewed and purchased at the following links: