This is only the beginning

I've been meaning to write this for some time now but life has been busy.

Since the beginning of this dream of mine called The Black Bookshelf I wanted to create a place for me, to dump my memory, have a place to come back and see who I was, come back to my younger version. I pulled the trigger and did it and as I mention in my first post on this space, what I now consider a place for community, I wanted to invite people that also were writing enthusiasts to help keep me accountable. As the time passed I let other things become a priority, not because I didn't want to pursue this idea, this dream, but because life happens.

I came back to this project last year with a bigger push and with a bigger purpose. I realized this place can have a bigger reach and use not only for me and my friends but for creatives, writers, people that have something to say. You can read more about this on my personal blog here.

The next step for me is to get to know you, the community that I want this place to be. I've been building this platform in my spare time and dedicated countless weekends adding functionality for readers and writers. Readers can read, like, and comment on any publication that is publicly available once they have a reader account. Writers can choose who can read their works, if they want their work public or only available for logged in users or even if they want to have password protected works so only people they decide to share it with can read them. As part of making the community universal I added multilingual functionality. I'm not an expert on this subject and even knowing this community is just starting, I want to get feedback from you, the community of writers and readers.

I'm going all in and for this to be a successful platform for the community I need to build it in a way that is useful for you, not only for me and for what I think is needed. Let's build this platform together.

At the moment of writing this, the most direct way of giving me feedback is joining our Slack community where I can read what ideas you want to contribute to the platform.

Join the Slack channel here. If you don't already have an account sign up for one here, it is completely free.

I hope you fellow readers and writers help me achieve the goal of making this form of human art grow and flourish in these times where humanity and art need to be preserved and celebrated.

"You can make anything by writing." — C.S. Lewis