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Bringing the power of books to the fediverse

Aye mateys, I wanted to share this with you as you may be interested in a discussion on having annas-archive linked to the fedi.

cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/9006151

Hello everyone,

Books are still one of the most important sources of information we have as a human species. However, the media on which this information has been stored has changed considerably over time and with it its accessibility and influence on our society.

Nowadays you can find an enormous range of books and texts online. Most of the time, however, access to them is extremely fragmented, difficult to find, subject to a fee, incompatible with the software platform of your choice or, in the worst case, goes under with its provider over time.

To counteract this, annas-archive was founded to make the knowledge stored in the texts and books openly accessible and to preserve it for future generations. On the other hand, there are platforms such as Goodreads that aim to simplify the joy of reading and the exchange of information, as well as the review and discussion of books and texts.

Unfortunately, Goodreads is a centralized, proprietary solution that in addition also happens to be owned by Amazon. BookWyrm is a decentralized, open source alternative in the fediverse that steps in right here.

Now here’s the kicker: what if we combined the power of both platforms? What if we combined the enormous book database of annas-archive with the fediverse, i.e. BookWyrm? Annas archive could benefit from reviews and discussions about the books and BookWyrm could expand its still very limited database many times over.

From my point of view, this would be the perfect combination of two already great projects. What do you think?

TL:DR What do you think about combining annas-archive with the fediverse (BookWyrm)

drunkensailor , (edited )
@drunkensailor@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Thanks, I hate goodreads and hadn’t known about BookWyrm … which is ironic since I am currently reading a series that has a dragon-creature that is literally called a book wyrm (Divine Apostasy)

Most of the alternates that I looked at, tend not to have basic info (obv it should have author/title but also i like it to have series info like book # in a series, when it was released, and category/theme tags) or else the sites would have a lot less book coverage (especially in niche genres) so I always seem to end up back on GR which I hate. Will see if some of the bigger BW instances do a better job

wowwoweowza ,

How safe is this to use? What precautions do you recommend to protect oneself from discovery or prosecution?

PropaGandalf OP ,

VPN should suffice if you want to hide your traffic from your ISP. But annas archive isn’t primarily a torrent site so don’t mix these two things up.

Historical_General ,

I’m envisioning Bookwyrm behaving as a comments section for anna’s archive (possibly all/any decentralised book repositary), but they’d be reviews instead. I’m reminded of discus or facebook that you often get embedded on certain sites.

PropaGandalf OP ,

Yes that’s what I think too.

Safipok ,

Anna’s Archive is legally grey/black. Bookwyrm is clear, wouldn’t mix 'em.

Historical_General ,

If they tied a bookwyrm comments section to an ISBN number for example then anybody/site could easily have it embedded to make it a universal tool rather than specifically connected to a piracy site.

Safipok ,

We do have OpenLibrary BTW! Already does the job, pretty good.

dannym ,

First time I’m hearing about Bookwyrm actually, that’s pretty cool.

seaturtle ,

Never used Goodreads before myself but Bookwyrm seems really cool.

lido ,

This is a great idea. It’d be better if BookWyrm could find a way to import our data from Goodreads. But that depends heavily on the ability to get data out of Goodreads. And it’d be nice if BookWyrm had a mobile client. A lot of wishes here.

covert_czar ,
@covert_czar@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Bookwyrm already have a mobile version www.f-droid.org/…/nl.privacydragon.bookwyrm/

lido ,

Thanks. I’ll look into it.

covert_czar ,
@covert_czar@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

And you can import not just from goodreads fedi.tips/importing-your-data-into-bookwyrm-from-…

lido ,

Oh, nice. Thanks!

PropaGandalf OP ,

There is a mobile app although it’s really simple and looks a bit dated.

lido ,

Thanks. I’ll look into it.

interceder270 ,

Reading is so important. It should be free and accessible to everyone.

Mr_Blott ,

Umm… It is

dannym ,

Agreed, but it kinda already is… Ever gone to a library?

uis ,
@uis@lemmy.world avatar

This is why publishers are suing libraries

uis ,
@uis@lemmy.world avatar

You wouldn’t download library, would you?

millions ,
@millions@universeodon.com avatar

@PropaGandalf somewhat unrelated to this post; is there a way to post book reviews to bookwyrm from mastodon?

PropaGandalf OP ,

I’d say so but I’ll check if I get home.

RobotToaster ,
@RobotToaster@mander.xyz avatar

I think it would be a great broadside against the bow of publishers.

PropaGandalf OP ,

Combine this with a direct, p2p donation option and you have a perfect book hub.

MonkCanatella ,

I think any official integration wouldn’t be smart. Working on interoperability and a plugin to link them that way would be far smarter. This guy likes decentralization but wants to combine two very different concepts and products lol. I get it though and I love that idea. The other thread also mentions open library which is a legal version of what op posted

indigojasper ,
@indigojasper@kbin.social avatar

I like OP's idea but I wonder about the legality of it and how it might be used against BookWyrm by private entities. Interoperability/plugins that act as middle-men + open library seems like the way.

PropaGandalf OP ,

Or just use the api for retrieving the books info and a link to annas archive if you want to see more (or download). Officially bookwyrm would provide no direct download links only redirect to annas archive if the user wants to see more. If you combine this with OpenLibrary this would hopefully dillute the piracy concerns.

Krafting ,
@Krafting@lemmy.world avatar

Please yes, this could be awesome!

ProdigalFrog ,

Love the idea of this. I believe slowly building up these alternative, open-source and decentralized platforms will be pay off long term as the centralized platforms bloat and die via enshittification.

SamXavia ,
@SamXavia@kbin.run avatar

It's always good to see alternatives but decentralized ones seems to be the most likely to become a new norm for people and I'm all here for it.

PropaGandalf OP ,

Exactly. And as I already wrote: the worst part of it is that they may take valuable sources of information with them.

seaturtle ,

Sidenote: I wish I could do more to encourage friends on the internet to use Mastodon and Lemmy…

ProdigalFrog ,

Mastodon will hopefully naturally grow as twitter continues to destroy itself. Lemmy might be a bit harder get people to stick with.

If they can find an instance that really fits them, or most of their communities are here, then it should be an easy transition. But if they’re missing their favorites, it’ll be tough to get them to stick with it.

seaturtle ,

Back when Mastodon was more in the news I told various friend groups to jump on it. I wrote up guides for them too. They largely didn’t, and some of them even got annoyed at me.

Nowadays I see they’re still somewhat mostly using Twitter though some of them have started to slowly warm up to Bluesky. Sigh.

rustyriffs ,

Seems like a really cool concept. Something I’d be curious about is if there are ways to encourage people to support the authors as well.

PropaGandalf OP ,

Yeah thought about it too. Maybe annas archive could develop into a book publishing platform one day?

JoMiran ,
@JoMiran@lemmy.ml avatar

I’ve been reading the Honor Harrington book series from my local library system but I noticed them on sale in Amazon. The Kindle versions of the books are “DRM-Free at the request of the author”. That right there convinced me to buy the books.

A way to “tip” the authors anonymously would be a great addition.

PropaGandalf OP ,

I’d love an implementation where under each book you would have the option to donate a custom amount to directly support the author and/or the library.

seaturtle , (edited )

I know some people (albeit mainly writers of gaming-related and gaming-adjacent works) use itch.io for this, because it has a built-in ability to let people pay what they want with a minimum amount to get the product.

Edit: Now that I think about it I’ve seen comics there too.

thegreekgeek ,
@thegreekgeek@midwest.social avatar

Honor Harrington books in the Baen free library were what got me into ebooks!

SamXavia ,
@SamXavia@kbin.run avatar

I would hope that donations to the author or something could be a way to fix that at least a little.

M500 ,

That would be great. I’d love to use that platform as a way to discuss books.

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