Hardboiled Fiction Gets Tokenized!

Make no mistake, fiction will get tokenized and turned into NFTs. It's just a matter of time. In fact, I'm offering up the first ever hard-boiled flash fiction NFT right now!!!

Books as NFTs?

Will books be sold as unique one of a kind NFTs? You betcha...and it's yet one more thing to scare the pants off the legacy publishing trade.

Fiction Gets Tokenized? The World's First Hardboiled Short Story Offered as an NFT

 

I've been following the crypto space for a while now. Or more precisely, since 2017. I've been dollar cost averaging Bitcoin and other currencies since that time. On occasion I would attempt to make a trade but I would almost always lose money doing it (just ask my accountant if you don't believe me). Like writing, some people just have the gift for trading and others should stick to their day jobs. 

More recently, I'd heard about NFTs or what's also known as Non-Fungible Tokens. I have no idea where this name comes from and what it means to "funge" something, but it sounds vaguely dirty to me. But anyway, I digress. According to Investorplace.com, the new crypto-like investments have taken the world by storm, turning digital works of art and other collectibles like photos of NBA players dunking a basketball, into tradable items available only on the digital blockchain. 

And get this, some of these pieces of digital art are going for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some have sold in the millions. Why? Like Bitcoin's attractive nature, there's only so much of the digital asset to go around. In the case of NFTs, what you get is a one-of-a-kind piece of art. Think of it as purchasing brand new Picasso online as a digital property. That is, he were still alive. 

But NFTs, it turns out, aren't just limited to digital art and photos. Just a couple of weeks ago, the rock band Kings of Leon, offered up their latest album as an NFT. Now that's what got me to thinking, if you can sell digital art as an NFT, and if you can sell a basketball player crushing a dunk as an NFT, and you can sell an album of rock music as an NFT, why then can't I sell a piece of one-of-a-kind short, hardboiled fiction as an NFT? 

So that's exactly what I've done. I've set up an account with the NFT trading portal OpenSea, and offered my flash-fiction short, Suicide by Cop, as an NFT. This is a move that is entirely counter-intuitive to the fiction publishing business in which a writer sets out to sell as many copies (or units), of his or her book to the reading public as he or she can, and therefore rake in a lot of money. Or, that's the theory behind publishing anyway. But my NFT is being offered to the highest bidder who will not only receive the story in digital, pixelated form, they will also receive a hard-copy manuscript with my signature which can then be framed for posterity. 

Do I think my short story is going to sell for millions of dollars or the equivalent in Etherium (Bitcoin's main competitor on the blockchain)? God only knows, but it's a start. Like I said, as far as I know, I'm the only author doing this right now, so like Indian Jones, I'm just making this up as I go. But in the back and fore of my mind, I can't help but see other writers joining the cause. Creating short or even long fiction that's meant to be bought and sold to just one individual who wishes to own a one-of-a-kind piece of literature. 

Kind of tickles the imagination, doesn't it? 

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