Hey, I host a lemmy instance focused on books and reading (and all the communities that fall under that umbrella)
I don't think this was posted here already, but this instance has been up and running for a bit. Apologies if this isn't the best place for it, feel free to remove if need be! The instance has been running for a few weeks now and has a few users already, but if there's people invested in that specific niche interest that wants to spread the load across instances it exists. It has some extra lemmy front end UIs available, and I am building up the local communities as I have time to.
Some policy stuff as to how it operates, for sake of transparency.
Although I am currently the "only admin" I do have a "break glass" admin account and will be giving it to a trusted point person just in case (life happens sometimes...) as well as scaling up the team as need be.
If the instance ever has to go down, at the very least a 30 day notice will be given in advance as well as an outlined explanation as to why and a good faith effort will be made to keep it up as well.
The de-federation policy might be slightly controversial, and I completely understand. It is currently temporarily defederated from lemmys pornographic instances, mainly because of just how much it spams c/all. I will refederate in time when there more granular federation options, but I just can't reasonably moderate that right now. I also do defederate from the "worst of the worst" fediverse instances (ie, known CP hosts, far right, nazis, etc) as a precaution despite how janky cross federation is for lemmy right now, hence why the instance blocklist is long.
The instance currently uses object storage, and I post monthly financial statements as to what the cost of the resources for it are.
I also use a community seeder bot that runs every 12 hours to diversify content in all. The local communities focus are mainly book related, but it federates with most other instances.
I also am currently taking manual secure database backups at least weekly and storing them remotely, but I will be automating that process as soon as I can. I value security greatly.
The link is https://literature.cafe
Holy fuck, Gabe you approve people super fast.
😂 Yeah I have it linked to my email whenever I get a new registration. Also community creation is open, I love pretty much all of those that you listed, but I just made the basic writing and reading communities first. I considered making a camp halfblood community but it's best to focus on small communities and build those up instead of making a bunch of empty communities out of the gate. I do want more specific fandom spaces and communities, it's what the instance is generally for.
You've clearly put a lot of thought into this, it's gonna be awesome