Linking to books online

This Thursday, I ranted in Mastodon how it’s so hard to link to books online without linking to Amazon. I’m happy to report, I was wrong! There are good places to link to and lovely people helped me discover those when search engines just kept pushing Amazon sources.

James recommended Bookwyrm, a social site for book reviews and social reading. It’s a Fediverse compatible alternative to Amazon owned Goodreads where users can track their reading, talk about the books and share reviews.

Sia shared two places: Bookshop.org and Open Library.

Bookshop is an online book store that supports local American book stores through purchases. A user can choose their local store they want to support and then shop for books.

Open Library is Internet Archive’s project that aims to have “one web page for every book ever published”. It’s “an open project: the software is open, the data are open, the documentation is open, and we welcome your contribution” that anyone can help become better.

Jan-Erik linked to The StoryGraph, another service for tracking your reading, similar to Bookwyrm in functionality.

For Finnish books, Osma pointed out Kirjasampo which is a service run by (apparently) the city of Helsinki, built to help people find new things to read and information about books and authors.

All of these are wonderful options for linking when other solutions like Wikipedia or author’s or publisher’s own site don’t exist. Way better than giving Amazon one extra visitor or extra penny.

Thanks Fedi friends for helping me find these wonderful websites!