Ian Tuason
Combining the Traditional Medium of Book Publishing with the Emerging Medium of NFTs
Updated: May 12
As a writer/director, when I first put on an Oculus Rift in 2015, my storytelling mind went into hyperdrive, dreaming up ways I could tell cinematic stories on this new medium. This led me to creating a series of short VR films on YouTube 360° that now has over 14M organic views, as seen on our channel here. This lead to creating cinematic VR experiences for clients like Warner Bros and Snoop Dogg.
Then in 2021, when I discovered web3, NFTs and the Metaverse, my storytelling mind went into hyperdrive yet again. I wondered how web3 could disrupt a traditional medium like book publishing. And so I created a new storytelling initiative called the Mystery Novel NFT.
The idea was to write a novel using NFT characters that holders own the IP rights to, creating a story universe where individual holders own the rights to the characters in the story, all verifiable on the blockchain.
This lead to me writing more novels for this initiative using more characters that NFT holders own. Like my second novel, "Five Deadly Rebels", a martial arts/science fiction novel.
I see it as "Community Storytelling", where readers can own the characters in the story, adding more value to their NFT that their character is tied to, and can resell to fans of the character in my novels.
But you don't have to own any of the NFT characters in my novels to be involved in the initiative. The novels themselves are being sold traditionally as ebooks, paperbacks and hardcovers on Amazon here. But if you purchase/mint an NFT from any of my collections at www.MysteryNovelNFT.com, you will have lifelong access to all my novels, graphic novels, and audiobooks that I create, free of charge, for years to come. Your NFT can be verified on www.MysteryNovelNFT.com/portal or on our Discord where you can unlock a library of all my content, with new content always being added.
Think of my NFT like a subscription to Patreon where you as a patron can support an independent author or artist, and receive ongoing exclusive access to their work. But with Patreon, if you decide to end your subscription, the money you had paid to become a patron is spent. But with NFTs, you get the same perks as a patron on Patreon, but since there is a limited supply of subscriptions in this NFT model, you can resell your subscription to another patron and potentially make a profit if the artist's career grows in popularity. And the beauty about the blockchain is that with every resale, the artist will also receive a small royalty percentage. It's a win-win for everyone, and not too hard to imagine how this model can potentially disrupt the book publishing world in the years to come.
That's the idea, but only time will tell. Either way, I will continue to write, publish on Amazon, as well as reward my community of NFT holders with free lifelong access to all my novels, graphic novels, and audiobooks, and every now and then, I'll ship hardcopies of my novels to my most loyal NFT holders. "Community Storytelling". That's the vision. That's the journey. Hope you can join me.
