[image description: a bunch of open books with long-stemmed flowers scattered across them.]

This July will be Off the Beaten Shelf’s 6th birthday. My little baby is old enough to go to first grade! ;)

Over the years, I’ve gotten soooo many ideas for things I want to do for this community. A couple of them, I’ve done: like creating printable reading logs, starting a Facebook group, starting the Ask a Book Nerd advice column, and the Read More, Live More ebook.

But there are still so many more things I want to do! A couple of the projects I’ve been thinking about are…

• an OTBS podcast where I record audios of the written posts

• an ebook with the hard-won writing wisdom I’ve collected over the years

• a Literary Tourism travel guide ebook where I expand on that series

• fully fleshed out written book reviews for every single book I read (something I realized I don’t share anywhere!)

• an archive of my creative writing that can be shared, regardless of whether the work has been published elsewhere or not (aka exclusive creative writing content like creative essays, short stories, and poems just for y’all)

• monthly book giveaways (I regularly cull my shelves, so why not give y’all dibs?)

• an online database of literary magazines so you can get the inside scoop on which ones are good to work with, which editors are the best at what they do, which ones pay, and which ones you’re better off avoiding

• resources for book clubs, like discussion questions for less mainstream (but still super good) books and lists of books that lend themselves to interesting discussion, categorized by theme/genre

• book club/read alongs with Off the Beaten Shelfers

• reading challenges

I’ve got a lot of ideas! Before I run wild with them, I thought it best to ask you what you want rather than assume I know what you want.

I’ve seen communities on the bookternet get steamrolled by their creators because they were too busy making viral clickbait content rather than actually catering to what their unique community wanted. I don’t care about pageviews and vanity metrics. I care about YOU.

I’m excited about all of these possibilities, so knowing what you want will help me know what to focus on and how I can best serve you through this community.

To quickly and easily gather responses, I’ve got a form below with all these options where you can check all that apply.

Please tell me what you want, what you really, really want. It only takes a sec!

Or if there’s something else you’d like to see, tell me in the comments below. I’m looking forward to hearing from you! :)