March
Special Monthly Update Edition
This is a special monthly update, so I won't follow the usual structure here. You can, of course, find the usual changelog over here, to see all the new updates released this month, albeit it's quite short this month, for reasons I'll explain shortly
New Chapter for Kenmei
As many of you know, we are now approaching the 4-year anniversary - it's hard to believe how far we've come since 2019. From just a few people joining every once in a while, we now have thousands joining every month. Our community over at Discord is vibrant, Kenmei library continues to grow every day and I continue to work on countless new features! If you missed my overview of the 3rd year of Kenmei, you can find it here:
Now, why am I talking about this? Well, I am extremely excited to announce that I've quit my job to start working on Kenmei full-time. Yup, you heard it right - from May onwards, I will dedicate all my time to improving and growing Kenmei. To put it into perspective, I currently spend roughly 17-18 hours a week working on Kenmei. That will increase to 40-50 hours a week, meaning more than twice the number of new cool features every month!
This wouldn't have been possible without all of your support and enthusiasm, especially from the early days when the app was just a barebones product. I also can't overstate how much those who subscribed to Kenmei Premium helped me make the transition from my regular day job to this. But while Premium has grown faster than I expected, I still earn a lot less compared to my regular job. As a result, I will be mostly relying on my savings for the foreseeable future.
On that note, while I am not one to ask for financial support, and I've always said that you should only get Kenmei Premium if you really need it and can afford it. Nevertheless, as it is now directly linked to my livelihood, I hope you won't mind me saying this - if you've found Kenmei to be useful and want to directly support its development, and ensure that I am not going to end up homeless, I'll really appreciate your support. There are a ton of cool things planned for Kenmei Premium, so I think you won't be disappointed in the long term!
Apart from focusing on Kenmei full-time, I am also moving out of the UK. With both of these big changes happening simultaneously, I've had a lot on my plate, which is why updates have been quite slow since January. I apologize for this.
I am currently in the process of moving and still working my remaining days at my current company, so I am afraid updates will continue to be slow for the month of April. I hope you'll forgive me for this, and instead, focus on what's to come in May and beyond!
For now, my priorities haven't changed, as you can see below. However, this section will likely change significantly as I adjust to the new reality of working on Kenmei every day. You can expect it to grow significantly, as I'll be shipping a lot more features every month. Additionally, I am planning to explore a more official roadmap in the near future, as I'll have more time to plan precisely for the mid to long-term.
The list of priorities is as follows:
Quick Search v2
Series Details v2
Discovery and Search Improvements
Importing from MAL, Anilist and more
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