Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Bitchery reader Elinyx gave me a heads up about a neat-o offer from a new site called ”BookRabbit." In what appears to be a merging of Flickr-style photo labeling and Shelfari or Library Thing book-based social networking, BookRabbit is building their site community by giving away 1000 free books. Open to UK folks only, the setup is simple. Upload and tag five books, and they’ll hand pick a free title for you. Elinyx tried it, and she says that their choices are based on what you’ve uploaded already, so you’re going to get an autobiography when your tastes run to science fiction. BookRabbit sent her a copy of Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, and while it’s not romance, Elinyx says it is similar to her uploaded selection of books.

Elinyx pointed out that a lot of the Free Kindle books are not available to the UK segment of our readership - which sucks, I agree - so if you’ve got a hankering for free books, you’re in the UK, and you want to upload and tag a picture of your bookshelf, have at it and let me know how it works for you.

But I have to say, if I had to pick 5 books that represented my bookshelf, I don’t know what I’d pick. 

7 comments •
Categories: General Bitching • The Link-O-Lator
Tags: free stuff, kindle, shelfari

Anyone who gets the Publishers Lunch has received the news that Amazon acquired Shelfari. TechCrunch is reporting that Amazon dropped a cool million on the Shelf, while the Seattle Post-Intelligencer notes that three weeks ago, Amazon acquired AbeBooks, which owns a share in Shelfari’s competitor, LibraryThing.

While the nom-nom-nom-ing of the internet does make me raise a cautious brow, it also makes me wonder if Amazon is the only party with massive cash behind it that recognizes the potential power of book network marketing. Not marketing of books, but the marketing of book networks, and how powerful social networks are when founded on common reading experiences. In my research for advertising brokers, I’ve been told that book sites don’t sell, that books are hard to market, and that there isn’t as much interest in book based blogs as there is celebrity gossip, celebrity pictures with Photoshopped jism on them, and celebrity babies, handbags, diet plans, and plastic surgery. Oh, and celebrities.

Now, I happen to think these brokers are totally wrong, and while the massive big gulp that Amazon seems to be undertaking makes me wonder what they’re larger plans are for unifying these brands, it does give me a small amount of pleasure that at least Amazon does recognize that book network based marketing is an untapped market.

21 comments •
Categories: Random Musings • The Link-O-Lator
Tags: amazon, celebrity, gossip, shelfari