I posted an update to Kickstarter backers today with a video of me talking about the Indie Microblogging book and next steps. I’m including a copy of the video here, followed by a transcript.
Hello Kickstarter backers. My name is Manton Reece. It has been a while, and I wanted to give you an update.
If you’ve forgotten, the Indie Microblogging Kickstarter was for 2 things. First was a new social network and blogging platform called Micro.blog. We launched this pretty soon after the Kickstarter wrapped up, and in the last 5 years it has really improved to be a full-featured blogging platform. Photo blogs, categories, new themes, a plug-in system, team blogs, email newsletters. And I rewrote the backend recently to be powered by Hugo, so you get some of the benefits of a static-site generator but with full native apps for iOS, macOS, and now Android. There are third-party apps, and of course an API and support for IndieWeb standards.
The second part of the Kickstarter — and that’s what I want to talk about today — was for a book. And again, I’m very sorry that it was so delayed. The book has taken a back seat as I focused most of my time on Micro.blog the last few years.
Today I’m happy to announce that the complete draft of the book is available. In the Kickstarter I promised ePub and PDF versions, but as I was working on it I realized that a book about the web should also be on the web. So you can read it now at book.micro.blog.
The book turned into a much bigger project than I expected. It is divided into 6 major sections, covering older social networks and blogging platforms and what we can learn from them, the foundation for indie microblogging, how Micro.blog works, IndieWeb standards, owning our own content, Mastodon, community management, and more. There are interviews in the book.
There are about 70 short chapters, and each one is on the web so it’s easy to link to.
So what’s next. I still have improvements I want to make to the book. I will be editing it over the next few weeks. When the editing is done, I will be sending out PDF and ePub versions to y’all, and I’ll also be preparing the print copy for anyone who backed the Kickstarter at the higher tiers.
Last year I collected some of my blog posts into a book, partly to test the printing process for the Indie Microblogging book. And this is what it looks like.
The cover will be different for Indie Microblogging, of course, and it will be thicker. Indie Microblogging is about 400 pages when printed. But otherwise it will be very similar to this. I’m really excited to get it out.
So that’s the update. Thank you so much for your support. For your patience. If you haven’t checked out Micro.blog in a while, it is way better than it has ever been. If you never used your free months that you got from the Kickstarter, feel free to drop me an email to help@micro.blog. I’m happy to update your account to give you more time with the blog hosting.
And finally, this week, we are actually having a free online conference for the Micro.blog community. It’s called Micro Camp. You can go to micro.camp to learn more if you’re interested. Thanks so much. Bye.
