Book sites and social platforms - new experiences

On the aftermath of all this, I decided to start trying new book sites and share my experience with each of them, be it as an alternative to Goodreads or as new kinds of platforms to share reading experience, reviews or recommendations. I'll keep updating this as I go from site to site and I'll also post links to posts where other people do the same.

Libib

As I said on the previous post, this is a collection manager. It allows one to create multiple lists of virtually unlimited items, be them books, films or video games. It's possible to import your collection from csv files such as the export file from Goodreads and Libib even mails you the list of books that couldn't be automatically added because of a variety of errors. The thing is the available editions are far too little which, for someone like me that would rather add the specific edition, is really disappointing. This, added to the almost complete lack of Portuguese authors and the inability to manually add books (something that was at the base of Goodreads' extensive catalogue of books and editions in multiple languages) made me give up on using it. If you are a Portuguese speaker, this won't be the place for you, unless you want to use it to list (as a wishlist for example) english written or translated books. I don't know how complete it is when accounting for other languages, though it didn't seem good enough in my short browse.

BookLikes

Some of my friends are already using and seem quite excited with it, even though it is still in beta test. The developers seem active and engaged with the growing community and willing to try to address all their requests.

I finally got to try this one out. BookLikes allows us to import collection via csv file, though it takes a while for the books to appear. I've asked for the importation about 10 hours ago and, for the moment, I have 449 of my 818 books available. Other than that, the website seems to be working fine, even more if we consider it is still in beta. Each person has a blog where he can share  posts such as quotes, comments or reviews, a timeline where he can see when he started and finished reading books or when he posted reviews, and shelves. The blog is really quite cool and though I don't really need another bunch of book blogs to follow, it is a really nice way to check out someone's aggregated reviews. The timeline is a cool feature, not a game changer but still one can't argue it is quite interesting to look back and see how our reading and writing has progressed along some time. It's also possible to add a link to your personal website, so that when a BookLikes user visits your page he sees, under your portrait, four options: the blog, the shelf, the timeline and the personal website. The collection management is where they need to have some improvements. The transition from GR is good, with BookLikes having identified my ratings, the books on my wishlist, some of those I've read come associated with the date I finished them, and they were also able to get some of my reviews, which were integrated on my blog. There were also some glitches such as some books appearing that I actually didn't have listed anywhere and the dates I started reading don't sync, as opposed with the finish dates. But the biggest problems here are of two kinds. The first is the fact that BookLikes doesn't allow for the user to add new books manually (it seems to import them from bookseller websites, as GR initially did) or change between different editions after you've added one. The second one is the shelf system, it still seems to limited, not in terms of number (it's infinite shelves for infinite books) but in terms of shelf type. I want to be able to define exclusive and non-exclusive shelves the way I want to (for example, I used to have "to read", "to borrow", "wishlist" and "considering") Right now I need to have all these on the "planning to read" exclusive list (the others are "read" and "currently reading") and the sub-categorised in shelfs such as "to borrow" or "to consider". The "wishlist", "favourites" and "private" classifications are the only ones not exclusive. This isn't a big concern for me right now because I know the developers intend to add these features, along with a lot of others, as one can see on their blog, so I'll definitely give BookLikes a chance and I recommend it for those leaving GR. For these, the other big problems might be Amazon appearing constantly as one of the main "to buy" options there, but as the platform grows this will be less constant (they'll connect with other stores) and less important (once you are used to the website); the lack of a recommendation system (it will probably be added in time) and a group feature. This one isn't really important for me, I'm usually not very involved in reader groups, apart from my association with Clockwork Portugal.
Oh, and have I said that the ratings have a half-star system? It's really much better, I always felt that 1-5 without halves and the association with some definitive meanings was far to much of a constraint and often confusing.

The Reading Room

And here is another potential replacement for Goodreads. The Reading Room is a typical bookish social platform, much closer to GR than to BookLikes at that. There is no blog or timeline feature, but you do have similar collection importation and management and possibility to rate (again, half-stars up to 5) and review books. The platform also has groups and book recommendations with specific tabs for each of those features. I won't speak about the groups because I didn't try them out. The recommendations can be of two kinds, friends' and the site's through some lists or featured bookshelves. It lacks an algorithm, something that though by no means essential to me ends up being quite interesting sometimes. When looking for books one can also find here lists of award winners and even reviews published on the New York Times or The Guardian, something I found quite useful. The Reading Room also allows one to preview some books with a sample chapter (or read some complete books), something that is integrated with their Android / iOS app reading app. The app has no social or shelf update features, one is only able to get the books or chapters and read them. I've also heard it will eventually be possible to buy books directly from the site, and according to the developers, at a price comparable to Amazon's. The website ends up being a little bit confusing at first because there seems to be too much going on and fighting for attention, but this is something to  re-evaluate because the team has said they are going to redesign that interface.
The importation here is much quicker but less inclusive. The Reading Room got 545 of my 818 books (I don't now yet which were the ones that didn't get here, but I'm guessing some were the Portuguese ones) and placed the right ones on my wishlist. It didn't import ratings, reviews or dates. My biggest trouble with this one is the lack of specific edition choice. There is sometimes a very big difference between editions, such as prefaces, illustrations, translations or bonus stories, and when one gives a rating or writes a review, it should somehow be linked to the specific edition. One also cannot add a book manually, which is very limiting, but once one searches for a book and doesn't find it, the site asks for the information in order to try to add it. One can add non-exclusive shelves to organize the books, but it seems to be impossible to change or add the exclusive ones, so I couldn't go back to the ones I was used to (explained under BookLikes). The platform isn't as fluid and intuitive as I'm used to when it comes to organizing books and shelves, but it's not too cumbersome or confusing.
The Reading Room developers seems very dedicated and I've seen the crew answering people's input on twitter and even some blogs (such as the one I linked below) so though I wasn't really convinced on my first visit, I'm certainly keeping my account and will visit from time to time to check how the site goes.

ThirdScribe

Stil don't know anything about it, but I've asked for an inscription.



Other opinions/experiences:

fullofsecrets has an ongoing post with a purpose similar to this one but she has tried quite a few platforms including BookLikes, The Reading Room, weRead and Bookwormr so check it out.


Final thoughts

My overall opinion right now is that Goodreads is the best at what it does but it's far from being irreplaceable. The enthusiastic teams behind BookLikes and The Reading Room have already done very good jobs at developing their own platforms and I'm still open to more suggestions. There is a big problem with this transition for me, and that comes to the amount of books and organization I had on my collection. Almost 300 books read, about 100 to read, 100 to buy, 50 to borrow and over 200 to consider, but it's the fact that those that I have read are rated, some reviewed and all thoroughly organized in terms of length, genre or even if I got them through NetGalley that makes it harder to begin a new collection, even if the list itself is - mostly - copied from one place to another. The other major issue I have with both these sites is that they don't have Portuguese books or translations I read which means the collection there would always be incomplete (please give me a librarian status feature and manual book adding and - much as I did on Goodreads - I'll add them all gladly as time goes by). For now, I'll mainly use BookLikes and see how it goes.

If anyone has any new posts for me to feature here or new sites for me to try (that I haven't excluded on the previous posts) please say so and I'll add them.



Edit #1

Added information about The Reading Room and BookLikes and final thoughts.

Goodreads and Amazon, or where do I keep my book info without having it stolen by market monopolisers?

By now every Goodreads user knows it has been bought by Amazon. This has started a typical online fiery reaction, with a lot of people yelling (or capslocking) that they are going to leave the site for good and move to an alternative. When I started sharing my thoughts on that on twitter my friends commanded me to organize my info and post it. Some even ordered me to write in English, so they could share it. This all seems a bit foolish and not at all typical of me (I rarely follow orders like this) so I did it. (I don't get it either - perhaps my work was rather bothersome today and I needed a break).

So I'll start by saying what it is I think is troubling with having Amazon owning Goodreads. Well, everything. Amazon is not only a monopoliser, which by itself is already bad enough, but it's a very aggressive one at that. Everyone that reads and deals with them must have already heard about the way it treats authors, small publishers or stores and worst of all, how it allows the subcontracted warehouses to explore its workers. If you haven't, please search it, the internet is packed with those stories so there's no point in me aggregating them here. But my problems don't end with Amazon's lack of ethical concerns. There is one other thing that is perhaps most unnerving and that is the independence claim. Goodreads was always supposed to be a community made for and by its people. When Amazon last tried to get a grip on it all the librarians helped to save the database. I was one of them. I've been a librarian ever since I found that I could be, and have helped with adding books, correcting information, aggregating doubled insertions or different editions for years now. I have, as most that were there almost from the beginning, helped build not only the database but also the community, calling my friends there and sharing my reading status through other social networks. So when it comes to this, I feel somewhat robbed of a thing that was not only useful and full of my info, but also a thing that was, in a way, partially mine.

Therefore, we have a giant company very interested in controlling the book market buying its third (that I know of) social network for readers, and this time one that was picked precisely for being independent from stores and publishers and allowing both positive and negative reviews and ratings without any kind censorship.

Finally, I've just heard from a friend that there are already rumours of comments being deleted on the post that talks about the transaction.

And now, to speak about the possible alternatives, for those who are already considering to leave, though I haven't really tried most of them (I've been looking for info on their respective sites, trying the logged off experience and searching the web to produce these comments):

Anobii - Seems like a nice, graphically appealing alternative to Goodreads. The one thing I don't know if it has is author pages, give-aways and other author-reader interaction experiences. It includes on its list of backers / investors, companies like HMV Group, HarperCollins, The Random House and Penguin. So, might not be as bad as having your info on Amazon's hands in your opinion, but it's by no means an independent venture. The privacy policy does state that you can decide if you give your info to their fellow companies or not, so its some kind of protection. Another good thing for some people is that Anobii also has an app that scans barcodes, something I've found really useful when building lists of things to check or buy later while exploring bookshops.

Bookish - Though it is affirmed that the site is editorially independent, the platform was jointly founded by Hachette Book Group, Penguin Group USA and Simon & Schuster. So if one wants to avoid giving information to big publishers or sellers, this is not the place. I also seem to recall a problem with the site's terms of use or privacy statement, though I don't know if that situation has ever changed.

Booklamp - This is not a social network or a collection organizer, so it isn't an alternative to Goodreads. All that aside, it seems an interesting project of its own, trying to describe books in terms of their DNA, in other words, the features and themes that are part of the book. And they do this with computational tools, trying as much as they can to differ from social networks' book recommendation system.

BookLikes - A social network for readers and bloggers, this platform appears to be a good alternative to Goodreads. It allows for bookshelfs, reviews, comments, recommendations and on top of that lets you have your own sort of customizable blog and timeline with your thoughts and favourite quotes. I don't think they have author pages or give-aways integrated, but that isn't why I use these platforms anyway (I might miss some authors' thoughts on books). It is a Polish start-up, but I have no info on its current status as independent. I do know they have a direct link to Amazon.com on the book pages, but so did Goodreads once upon a time. I've also read it used to have an integrated bookstore but I see no further evidence of this.

BookRabbit - This is not an independent site, it belongs to Redberry Digital. a multi-disciplined creative agency that works with multiple companies, such as Sony or Waterstones, but at least it isn't part of a massive online bookstore. The network itself has a purpose quite like Goodreads, with bookshelves, reviews and ratings, but I saw no evidence of author pages, give-aways or groups. A thing that worries me is that there are no links to alternative editions. Each edition stands on its own, as if they were all different books. Another problem I have with it is that it shows a list of people who own each book. Not just a list of reviews or ratings to the book, but a direct list of owners, an information that seems directed at companies such as Amazon and not at all useful for the site's users. A final note that is definitive in my opinion is that it allows no other language but English, prohibits so-called foul language and may revoke posting rights if you answer too many times with "wtf" or "lol".

BookShout! - This is a mix of a store and a review sharing site, so I don't think it's what I'm looking for here.

Bookwormr - This one seems like an alternative, but as happens with others, it doesn't seem to have author pages, collection management / shelves, groups or give-aways. So it's another review / rating sharing page and it doesn't look very active. On the other hand, the site has a new version, introduced in February 2013, so it deserves a better look.

LibraryThing - Owned partially by Amazon so this isn't an alternative to anything. It doesn't make for a very good user experience comparing with Goodreads, at least it didn't when I tried it a few years ago. It is more independent from Amazon than Shelfari or Goodreads because, according to Tim Spalding, he remains the owner of the majority of the company. But one is still working in Amazon's interest here so I'd rather keep on Goodreads or else move to a totally independent site.

Readernaut - Another social network for readers, though I couldn't see how it worked without registering. On the other hand, I do know that only Amazon books can be added so this is far from the freedom Goodreads allows. I don't know if it sports a recommendation system, if it allows for book reviews or to follow authors.

Reader2 - This place looks quite abandoned and the interface is barely developed. Anyway, it would be a place to do lists and look for recommendations based on keywords and similar books, but not to manage collections, shelves or read and share reviews. An alternative if all you want is a place to list your books and a basic recommendation service. I don't know if the reader is able to contribute to the recommendation system as it is on Goodreads. Also don't believe you can have the experience of following or interacting with authors.

Revish - This one has been around for a while and seems to offer a similar experience to Goodreads, but actually doesn't. This isn't a collection manager, it's a review manager, where you are encouraged to follow some guidelines and produce well-thought and developed comments on the books you've read. The terms of use are quite typical of these platforms, though they prohibit swearing and can at any time moderate or eliminate user generated content without prior warning or explanation, which is something I really don't like. This is, sadly, the general practice of these websites. It appears to be quite independent from monopolisers. It's something to try if all you're interested is in reading people's book comments.

Riffle - This site doesn't allow any kind of unregistered exploration. So I went around the internet to try to find out something about it. It seems to work through Facebook and it's basically a pin-board (Pinterest like) for books, with some direct connection to the publishing houses. Check it if you are interested, but this isn't an alternative to Goodreads nor is it particularly good for those with information sharing concerns, considering the association with Facebook.

Shelfari - Also owned by Amazon so no alternative here either.

SocialBooks - This is a place to share thoughts and discuss books. Without registering I couldn't see how it works, but the announcement on the home page is for the first read in November so either it's from last year and has been abandoned or it's this year and it's not yet working. There's also no place to read the terms of use. So this isn't an alternative to Goodreads but it might be interesting on it's own.

TheReadingRoom - This seems like an overall good social network for readers, which also includes advanced copy request, free chapters and its very own eReader app for Apple or Android tablets and phones. The site includes recommendations, bookclubs and reviews, so most of the experience we get from Goodreads. The one thing I failed to find is if they have some kind of librarian participation, one which allows the user to add books and edit information.

Wattpad - It's not really the same kind of platform. This one allows you to publish your work and ask readers for feedback or, as a reader, to be a spotter of new talent or new works from already established authors who choose to start by showing a part of their next book there. Wikipedia describes it, and rightly so, as a "Youtube for electronic text stories".

weRead - I've heard this one wasn't working any more, but that doesn't seem to be the case because the website is online. It started as a Facebook application but had expanded into a privately owned website of its own with connections with multiple social networks and offering an experience very similar to Goodreads, with lists, reviews, comments, and author pages. It was bought by Lulu and then by Flipkart, an online store like Amazon, in 2010. The community doesn't seem to be very active currently, considering all the books with no reviews or comments. It also doesn't seem to include book ratings but we all know that those pesky stars are both good and bad.

YourNextRead - This is a recommendation system, based on some algorithm and people's input. No platform to keep a collection or share reviews, but a different way to look for books worth trying.

What did I take from all this? I'll probably keep using Goodreads for now, but I'm growing favourable to the possibility of leaving or at least diminishing the information I share there. There's really no complete alternative and most of those who get close to do it, like Anobii, Bookwormr or weRead aren't exactly independent ventures, currently don't have organized communities contributing with their opinions and ratings or don't allow for collection management. Some have such terms of use that wouldn't even consider them (see BookRabbit above). If I was to change, or if I eventually decide to do so as a consequence of this process or of any changes to Goodreads experience or privacy policy (if they change the "all is allowed in reviews" policy I'll leave immediately), I'd probably try TheReadingRoom or BookLikes first, or ask my friends if they are already using any of these and how good they actually are. One of the most important things in this transition would be to keep at least a good part of the people that I share reading with in Goodreads and get them to the new platform. In spite of this, if I can't do it, it won't stop me from leaving the previous community.

Last, but not least, I am even more determined to reduce my purchases from Amazon and its owned stores. There are things that I can't afford if not from there, but there are others that I can or will make an effort to. There is no point in complaining about what Amazon does to people and small companies and then remain a client. So I'd also be glad if people can tell me not only alternatives to Goodreads, which I'll keep adding here, but also alternatives to Amazon in terms of books written in or translated to English.

Edit #1

I've heard of some more options but haven't listed or spoken of them yet because none offered to be on par with the best choices above. Anyway, here are some names people have told me:

WhichBooks - essentially a tool to look for a specific kind of book based on factors such as funny vs serious, gentle vs violent, optimistic vs bleak. Not really my kind of recommendation system, but it might be cool on some instances. No Goodreads alternative though.

ThirdScribe - this in still under construction but people have been promising it might be a cool platform for those who liked Goodreads, though I still don't know what it is going to offer exactly.

Storyverse - this is, again, not really a social platform for readers or a collection manager. It's a tool to find what was referenced inside a book. If you look up American Gods, for example, it will show you what mythological figures, songs, books, authors and other stuff Neil Gaiman decided to mention or draw from in the book. Do check it out. (heard about it here, through WhiteLady3's comment below).

Skoob - This one is a real alternative but for one limitation: it's in Portuguese and directed towards Brazilian readers. I didn't reference it initially because I think one of the very best things about Goodreads was how multicultural the community was and I wouldn't want to narrow my scope now.

Bookworms - on the same note as the previous one, this one is directed to Portuguese people and written in Portuguese and was referenced by Telma in a comment below. I've also heard it hasn't been updated in a while or is no longer worked on, but can't really be sure right now.

Edit #2

Libib - This is a collection manager, not only for your books, but also for movies and video games. You can also publish reviews to the items you have collected. It seems much less of a social network and much more of a catalogue, and I like the idea. I'm considering registering and using it as a general backup of the items I actually own even if I also start using a new book social network to speak about books, review them, check other people's opinions and look for recommendations. Thanks Sofia for reminding me of this one.

BookGlutton - I found that I initially also left out this one because it's not really an alternative to all that Goodreads was good for, but seeing as I am already speaking about most of them, here it is. BookGlutton is a social reading platform, focused on public domain and small press books, allowing people to read a book together, comment on specific paragraphs, sections or the overall work and chat with your group while you read each chapter. The creators are also preparing ReadUps, which appears to be a platform to further enhance the social reading and include the possibility of feedback on writing. This is supposed to launch this Spring so if you are interested visit the site or and sign up. I think this would be great for book communities as a preparation for book discussions, meetups or hangouts. Let's see how the new platform comes into being.

Edit #3

my-bookclub - Though more focused on creating book clubs, this platform allows for some collection management (if only 4 shelves), review sharing, and book recommendation. My problem with it is the acceptable use policy. It has far too many rules and limitations to what one can actually write, such as no unjustified caps lock use, no content that is obscene, blasphemous, untrue, misleading, inaccurate or that causes annoyance, all should be civil and tasteful, etc.. my-bookclub looks like a place so tight that I feel incoming social claustrophobia, which is odd for a site that pretends to host clubs. I won't be trying this one out.

I'll me posting mine and other people's experiences with new book sites on the next post.