Sunday, September 4, 2011

Authors and Booklovers Tracking Tools


The publishing world is ever changing and awesome in its torturous maneuvers, of which most book readers haven't a clue; and no concept of how those moves affect them. Take for instance what Amazon juggled as it acquired two book-lover ventures, Shelfari, a social network for bibliophiles, and AbeBooks. Shelfari is now an Amazon-owned social network for book lovers.

Shelfari and GoodReads both get high marks for helping you to keep track of the books you own and/or have read as well as those you'd like to read. And there are other uses, as well: Form a book club, answer book trivia, collect your favorite quotes; or get book recommendations from people you know, to name just two.

Another site book lovers and authors gravitate to for various reasons is Easybib, an awesome tool for all kinds of things such as bibliography as well as tracking and inventorying books you've authored, and searching out related books and topics.

I tried the title of my books, Behind These Mountains, vols. 1, 2 & 3 at Easybib and it does do a fantastic bibliography style entry. It also adds information so I didn't have to type everything in. Plus, it quickly located publications of many of my favorite authors, giving me interesting insights into their lives as well. It's my favorite tracking tool.

Give them a try and let the Internet help you, the way it helps those other writers and authors.

Also, Delicious Library 2 was recommended by authors for the Mac to catalog DVDs. You can use the built-in webcam to read bar codes, and it interfaces with the Amazon API to populate the database fields, though you can write information in as well. It also has the ability to track items you've lent out!