I’ve been an avid reader since I was a little kid, but very much not a tracker of things I read. In 6th grade I could have gotten some little prizes for reading a lot, if I’d been willing to go to the trouble of documenting the things I read, but I seriously could not be bothered to do so.

Very occasionally though, I miss having a record of things I’ve read, such as when somebody asks me, “Read any good books lately?”

I never signed up for Goodreads, and was glad I had not when they got bought. (Letting large corporations use my data to improve their bottom line bugs me on principle.) But just now I learned about IndieBookClub, which (like micro.blog) provides an interface for posting—in this case your reading activity—to your own website.

As a non-tracker from way back, I’m probably not likely to become a tracker just because there’s a new cool tool for tracking, but you never know.

Edited to add: I have posted my first book.

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3 thoughts on “IndieBookClub

  1. “Letting large corporations use my data to improve their bottom line bugs me on principle.” Would you be concerned or creeped out if your local independent bookseller knew what you liked and made suggestions when you came into the store?

  2. Using what I’m interested in to make useful suggestions to me is fine. Using what I’m interested in as an indicator of what local tastes are (such as for the purpose of curating the books on the shelves) is also fine.

    At some point “big data” uses do seem to cross a line, but the creepiness factor isn’t really what bugs me the most. It’s the idea that millions of people are performing unpaid labor that a huge corporation uses to make big bucks that bugs me. Dozens of people performing unpaid labor that a small, local corporation uses to pick up a few extra dollars here and there seems different.

  3. For me, it’s not so much the idea of “unpaid labor”. It’s the data becoming something the corporation can use across domains, or sell as a product. Using the data to make suggestions about books is fine. Using it to make suggestions about other products, less so. Selling the data, or giving access to the data as a product to other corporations is where my hackles raise.

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