This turn of events has the potential to be devastating for authors who wish to make a home on Steemit. As someone fairly well-connected in the mainstream writing/publishing community, I can see this discouraging many authors who would bring value to the platform from becoming affiliated. I don't see how this is beneficial to Steemit or the value of Steem in any way. Many readers are very interested in fiction, even serialized fiction. I would love to see Steemit compete with traditional online literary magazines with both content and payout to the author. But if authors are penalized for creating original fiction and posting it on Steemit, I can't imagine this would ever be the case.