you’ve bought a vps server, then after that you played around with it and made your first website and decided to make your own social media. you feel like having everything you’ve ever wanted to own because you can do whatever with it. and then come to the realization in which you have no idea what to do with your social media platform. how do you start a community?
You can invite people who hang on other literary communities, pointing the advantages of the fediverse. But we already have some communities as that on fediverse like https://writing.exchange/about and https://www.bookwyrm.social/.
So, I suggest you should think about what makes your unique. Maybe creating a Lemmy community, as I can’t find one, to provide a new kind of user interface.
[Edit] BookWyrm is a “test instance”. hosting a public instance open to all should be a good contribution as well.
writing.exchange is more of an instance for writers than it is a community. because it has all kinds of writers, and the lack of activities and interaction in them. and bookwyrm is not even for writing. I could definitely ask them to signup/join though.
You said literature, not writers, so I included BookWyrm.
Maybe you can reach @matt@write.exchange to organize activities and interaction. Or maybe what you want works better on a different platform, like Lemmy.
Two cents to add. On “community”: It is interesting what @darius does with Friend Camp, creating more intimate community by allowing non-federated, local-only posting as well. Quoting: “I think local-only posting increases the vitality of community, increasing the volume of overall activity, and contributing more to the fediverse than a less vital instance would”. Here’s a good link mentioned in the toot: Run your own social - How to run a small social network site for your friends.
Now also on Lobsters : https://lobste.rs/s/rnsi0u/how_run_small_social_network_site_for_your