Creating A Fictional World In Web 3 With Rae Wojcik and Stephen Poynter

Why are digital scarcity and ownership so important to the business model of creators in web 3? How can an author use a wider fictional world for creative and business goals? Rae and Stephen talk about why creators need web 3 and their fantasy universe, SitkaWorld.

In the intro, I mention the Creatokia podcast with Elf from the Forgotten Runes Wizard’s Cult, a world of story, built upon characters licensed through NFTs. I'm also creating 1 of 1 generative art NFTs from my fiction words on Opensea.io/jfpenn.

This podcast is sponsored by Written Word Media, which makes book marketing a breeze by offering quick, easy and effective ways for authors to promote their books. You can also subscribe to the Written Word Media email newsletter for book marketing tips.

Rae Wojcik is a speculative fiction author, freelance editor and journalist. Stephen Poynter is an online entrepreneur, film professional and NFT enthusiast.

Rae and Steven are the creators of Sitka World, a community-driven, community rewarded literature movement based around a fantasy world.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.

Show Notes

• The importance of community ownership
• The difference between web 2 and web 3 tools — and attitudes
• Why digital scarcity and the ownership and resale of assets could transform the business model for creators who value their intellectual property over the long term. Rae also has a great article on Why content creators need Web3
• Different types of NFTs for different levels
• How the NFT model benefits readers
• Using existing digital publishing options alongside blockchain and web 3 options
• How long will adoption take?

You can find Sitka World at SitkaWorld.com and on Twitter @SitkaWorldNFT. You can also check out their Discord here.

Transcript of Interview with Rae Wojcik and Stephen Poynter

Joanna: Rae Wojcik is a speculative fiction author, freelance editor and journalist. And Stephen Poynter is an online entrepreneur, film professional and NFT enthusiast. Rae and Steven are the creators of Sitka World, a community-driven, community rewarded literature movement based around a fantasy world. Welcome to the show, Rae and Stephen.

Rae: Thank you.

Stephen: Thank you. Glad to be here.

Joanna: I'm very excited to talk to you about this. So let's start with, we've established that you're authors, creators.

Why are you so interested in Web3? And what does Web3 even mean to you?

Rae: I've been writing for most of my life, actually. And for so long, I was attracted to the idea of traditional publishing, as many of us are when we get started in this space.

But over the last few years, I feel like I've gone on a different journey of thinking of what are some different ways that I can really make writing work. I was attracted more to this idea of being a creative entrepreneur, and loved reading your book, How to Make a Living with Your Writing, and starting to think of that more creatively.

More recently, I've become attracted to this idea of community-driven publishing. And what I mean by that is almost taking this idea of the thousand true fans idea and thinking, how can I, instead of just sending a book out into the world to be read by people that I might never meet, trying to get it into as many hands as possible?

How can I really start to build a community and a community of those people who really care about writing, care about fantasy worlds and care about my book?

That's what drove me to the idea of Web3.

Stephen: I think that as far as why Web3 in the first place, why would we even go that route in terms of publishing, and then sometimes it's easy for people to be in the mindset of, well, if it works already, why change it? If we can get a book on Amazon Kindle, then isn't that good enough?

Beyond the community is the fundamental idea of ownership in Web3. I think that a lot of people don't really grasp all the ramifications that come with that. Because, with Web2, you never really own anything, you're just renting or licensing the right to be able to view content within a certain big tech platform.

And those platforms pretty much have all of the control over the distribution, over what's on their platform, over how the finances work for that. And they end up often taking a large percentage of those finances, and you're just at the mercy of whatever distribution platform is the main one for your genre normally.

With Web3, it gives more creative ownership and control for the artists, in this case, Rae, the author to be able to have more control over what she writes and how she connects with her audience, and how she sells to them and all that.

Joanna: Fantastic. Let's get more specific around ‘Sitka World.'

Tell us about SitkaWorld and what it is and what you hope to create around it.

Rae: With ‘Sitka World,' our mission is really to bring the magic of storytelling to Web3. It started out just as a way to publish my upcoming book series, actually, which is called ‘The Sitka Saga,' which is how ‘Sitka World' got its name.

But then I was thinking of it more and more. And I was realizing this doesn't have to just be a book, which is part of what the beauty of Web3 is, Web3 is so much more collaborative in many ways than many creative publishing platforms we've seen.

So I started to think of how can I make this more than being just about my specific fiction work. I work as a freelance journalist, I do some author coaching. The wheels started to turn a little bit and I started to think, ‘How can I make this really a community that's not just about my work, but can be about other people's work as well.'

With ‘Sitka World,' essentially, what it comes down to is it's going to be a whole community of writers helping everybody learn more about the Web3 space and being able to build a successful writing career in the Web3 space.

Stephen: And to expand on that idea of bringing the magic of storytelling to Web3, that's how we best came up with a way of describing and encapsulating what our vision is because it's partly like bringing the magic of the fantasy world, which is like this is a series that Rae has been writing for over a decade, has pretty much been her go-to passion creative outlet for since she was in high school.

We want to bring the messages and magic of that to Web3 in more interactive and immersive ways that are possible normally. That's one of the beauties of NFTs that maybe we can get into more later about how you can have this digital proof of ownership and you can get access to more than just a book. And you can continue to build on that, you can add more and more.

When you want to be doing audiobooks and looking at graphic novels and games and metaverse stuff and artificial intelligence and the community aspects and stuff where we can really allow readers to have a more immersive journey in this fantasy world where the book is really just the starting point, and just the base layer sort of introduction to that. So that's kind of one part.

The other part that Rae was saying is we really are developing this idea of what we're calling our Writers Guild, and having an inner group of writers within our community that we can help them find work like having a job gig portal, as well as different services like coaching and publishing services and helping them with networking and getting them connected in the world of Web3.

They can actually either bring their own works to life, if they're publishing their own works and want to maybe launch NFTs, or build a community or brand around that, or helping connect them with other established brands that are lacking in the storytelling.

A lot of brands, I think, especially in Web3, as they mature, will start to realize more the value of the intellectual property, of having a strong story and strong characters that their community will relate to, because that'll help keep their community engaged for the longer term.

We want to be able to present ourselves to other brands saying, “Hey, we have this group of writers. We could help you get connected with someone that could build out stories for you,” whether that's lore stuff, or websites, books, graphic novels, comics, game narrative, all that stuff, and to really then help bring that magic and power of storytelling to the broader world of Web3.

Joanna: Let's get a bit more specific, because I feel like the discussion of Web2 and Web3 can sometimes be confusing. And of course, you've mentioned things there like books and audiobooks, we have those right now, those exist right now.

I presume at some point, Rae, you're going to put these out in print, which, of course, is, we could say, not web at all. They're very old technology.

You've also mentioned almost being almost an education platform o