That's interesting to hear, since we're launching a quarterly of stories in 2017, as a classic magazine.
It will be digital and paper (comic book/pulp format to evoke the Amazing Stories feel), but we really wanted to get paper magazines out there for that same tangibility.
We're still working on getting our 501c3, so that was unexpected. I knew there would be a lot of legal work and IRS work, but the sheer volume of it still staggers me.
The rest of the work on our site (werebooks.org) is coming along pretty well, I think. There has been a lot of work done to get the load times down (especially for mobiles in other countries), lots of tuning. We have a long way to go yet, but it's nothing like the prototype we tossed up early 2016.
Our biggest effort in 2017 is going to be adding content. Lots and lots of content.
So, to answer question 1 - from idea to 1,000 full book reads a week (we don't charge, so no paying customers) took about 8 months. I don't know that I'd consider it "done" any time soon, so many I'm speaking out of turn.
Challenges and unexpected potholes have been almost entirely of a legal nature.
It will be digital and paper (comic book/pulp format to evoke the Amazing Stories feel), but we really wanted to get paper magazines out there for that same tangibility.