(This page–really, this whole website and concept–is still under construction. Any content you see here may change without notice, though we hope to solidify some things in the very near future.)
Who are we?
An independent and open directory for books! Book and author pages may be created by any vetted user, not only the authors themselves.
Our Mission:
To serve the reader and author community, particularly for indie books.
Our Ethos and Execution:
We want to serve the community, like it states above. Here, anyone can create an account. (Well, not yet.) Authors can set up their pages and create pages for their books.
But maybe an author isn’t here, and fans want to make sure others can find an awesome book they just read, so guess what? They can also set up author and book pages. Authors can claim their own pages and, once verified, their input is authoritative on their own pages, though authors can’t hide community feedback – user reviews will still show up!
Okay, so what else does BookSkip offer? Well, I mentioned reviews. That’s both for quality: how much you loved it, and for content: how SFW it is, or how appropriate it may be for younger audiences.
Then, based off that author- and user-generated data, filter and search to your heart’s content! Search and sort by genre, by age level, by author, by average rating…you get the idea. Help fellow fans find their next favorite read!
Sounds great, right? But what’s the catch?
Well, we do need to earn something so we can provide this platform. We’ll probably run ads on the site, but not huge and annoying ones.
Also, at a future point we’d like to focus down into genre-based clubs, where we can provide a greater level of connection and community for both readers and authors. This will likely lead to user-generated content from this platform being shared across *our own* future websites to kick-start those focused communities. We envision something truly cool when we can get to that point, but this main hub has to exist first.
So what *isn’t* the catch?
Hopefully, we’ll be able to keep this clean and free of more “catches.” After years of listening to author and business podcasts and watching economic upheaval in the news, we have no intention to ever sell this platform, meaning we can keep true to the original concept. We won’t be beholden bowing to shareholders’ needs for endless profits. All we want is enough to make it work and live in peace. We’ll work out more details later to show our commitment to this.
Remember: this is a new idea and it’s still under development.