Skip to content

What is luar.cafe?

Welcome traveler!

Luar is an e-reader, personal library, and hub for discovering, following, and supporting* self-published authors.

*See the note in the "What's next?" section for more about subscriptions

Why is the site empty?

I've been working on this on my own for a long time, but it's finally time to share. Content is, of course, a chicken-and-egg problem, but if you decide to give Luar a try here in its early stages, I'll be thrilled! Please send any feedback or issues to support@luar.cafe 🩷

Give me the details!

Many reading platforms today fall into a few common problems. Luar aims to fix the app-vs-website balance, and will never spy on you to sell your data:

  • Luar is committed to being a website: you can use it in a browser on almost any device, your back and forward buttons should always work, you can use your browser's built-in 'reader mode', and you can even use it without JavaScript.
  • Luar is also an app: you can install it, receive push notifications, quickly jump back in exactly where you left off, customize your reader experience and theme, and even read stories on your reading shelf while offline.
  • Luar is not and never will be an ad platform or data broker.
  • Upcoming: subscriptions, without forcing the readers authors rely on most out to one of the worst app and website experiences for reading in existence

Here's a more comprehensive list of the features which exist today:

  • Customizable reader settings (font, themes, paged/scroll, etc)
  • Cross-device progress syncing
  • Offline reading
  • Notifications (push or email)
  • RSS/Atom feeds
  • Mouse pointer hide while reading (I'm sorry, it just really bothers me, okay??)
  • A Discovery page for surfacing new and interesting stories, with search and customizable default filters
  • Scheduled publishing (needs testing)
  • Multiple licensing options for authors (fanfiction, public domain, rights reserved)
  • Basic stats for authors on how readers are progressing through their stories
  • Auto-saving of drafts and edits
  • Author pseudonyms (split your work into separate unassociated profiles or audiences, if desired)
  • Export to EPUB (with progress-setting back-links, user-specific attribution, and the story's license)
  • Likes and comments
  • Reporting and moderation
  • No ratings (intentionally—see below)
  • No passwords (intentionally—login is via email or passkey only)
  • ...and probably a few things I'm forgetting

Who is it for?

If you're an author, it's for you! As mentioned above, I would love your early feedback, especially if any major features you rely on are missing.

If you're here to read, things are a little more limited until there's some content. What you can do, however, is use Luar as an e-reader. Upload an EPUB to your Library to give it a try. It's only ever visible to you, and you'll be able to read on practically any device, even while offline.

Why "luar.cafe"?

Luar means moonlight in Portuguese. It's pretty, I like the moon. Café Luar sounds like a cozy place to read.

But why did you build it?

For fun, and because I wanted it to exist. I've been pretty annoyed with various aspects of all the other options, so when some unexpected changes happened in my life a few months back, I started putting my extra time into this project. Yes, I'm aware that it isn't going to succeed without content, but I'm giving it a shot anyway.

Who pays for it?

For now, just me. I've put a fair bit of effort into making the site both fast and cheep to run. I can keep it running with anywhere under a million users indefinitely. Long term, if it does manage to grow, hosting costs will be covered with a 5% transaction fee on subscriptions, or possibly by offering a small yearly subscription to the site itself to unlock additional private library storage. There will never be ads or third-party data brokers.

What's next?

  • Book clubs
  • Cleaner UI (I'm not a designer, and I've spent most of my time on the reading experience so far—the Write pages, in particular, need a lot of love)
  • Publish history and previous version restoration
  • Branding/logo improvements
  • Add AI policies to the terms (no AI generated content story content; I'd like to include covers but it seems to have become the status quo for the other sites...not sure what to do here yet)
  • Locales/translations for the site UI (the code for this exists, it's mainly the translation work that remains)
  • The big one: Subscriptions and tiered chapter releases... shakes fist at that one terrible site (intentionally deferred until there are enough users to justify incorporating, setting up a payment processor, talking to a lawyer, etc; but, as mentioned above, this is the planned path to making Luar self-sustaining, if it gets to that point)
  • Potential early substitute for subscription paid through Luar: both an author and reader could opt-in to linking their {insert subscription website} account (the same way many link Discord roles to paid tiers today)
  • More powerful search
  • ...have a suggestion?

More questions & answers