I think it is about time for a statement about the Lovelybooks project. Lovely Books is a social networking site based on books whch people read and other people write. The site is currently in very early beta and released in german only. The idea behind it is to find new books and people on the basis of books you have read already. We are working on this project with a team of german publishers. They are really interested to move things forward and to not make the mistake the music industry has made. When co-founding Last.fm i got some insight into the music sector when times were not that easy and i want to point out the differences and things in common between books and music on the web.

You
First of all i want to point out that lovelybooks is you, the person who is using it. Lovelysystems has only created a machine which is harnessing your data. As wonderful and technically advanced this machine might be, it will never fly unless you make it fly. This is something we are totally aware of and we appreciate this very much. This is one of the keys in web2.0 apps and social networking. It is not the software and technicians, but the users who make a system work or fail. I think the term bionic software hits the spot very much. We included a forum in Lovelybooks and we are very open for ideas and directions. Please let us know what you need to make this machine fly.

Social Networking
In 2001 we introduced the concept of musical neighbors at Last.fm, which connects people with similar music taste. Compared to last.fm, on sites like friendster (which was quite fashionable around one year later ;-) social networking had no basis, no foundation. It was networking because of networking. I think ultimately that is the problem with most first generation social networking platforms. Last.fm was the first site (known to me) which based social networking on musical taste or more specific on media items. Last.fm gave digital music the social aspect which music has and connected people because of their music taste. Platforms like Lovelybooks and Last.fm stand for the second generation of social networking sites. It is not networking because of networking, but it is networking based on something. The something can be music, books, shoes, location etc. Lovelybooks puts books into a social context and that is where they belong.

Attention Data
Both platforms are collecting attention data of their users. Attention data is data about where your attention went. Last.fm is constantly asking: “Did you listen to a new song? How long? What song? Did you love it or hate it or was it just ok?” Similarly, lovelybooks is asking:”Did you read a new book….”

We know that your attention is a real valuable thing in your life (see the attention economy) and i hope you do as well… pay attention to what you pay attention ;-) When using platforms like last.fm or lovelybooks you should be aware that you are giving away something and because you give it away you get back something new. Something new is things like reading neighbors, recommendations and so on.

The Medium
The secret lies in how to collect attention data in a way which is non-intrusive and comfortable for you. Here is the big problem with books. Right now, not many people are really reading books on their computer or digital devices whereas a lot of people are listening to music on their computers or digital devices. Digital devices make it easy to collect attention data in a non-intrusive way. It is way more complicated for a user to input all the books he reads manually into a web based system compared to automatically track what he is listening to.

There is other platforms who do what lovelybooks does. One of them is librarything. Librarything is very much oriented on librarians and i guess librarians have less of a threshold to go through clunky lists and start adding books to their shelfs then the normal book reader has. Anyway, to me it is very clear that we need better, non intrusive, ways to submit attention data connected to book consumption.

Consuming books vs consuming music
Thinking about the year 2k when we started last.fm the way 99% of people consumed music was very different to the way music is consumed right now. Current music consumption patterns support platforms like last.fm and i hope that future book consumption patterns support platforms like lovelybooks.
Who knows what happens to the book market next. There is a couple of electronic book readers out there and i would definitely start reading my books on them as soon as i get books into that device ;-)

Scorecard
So where are we? We have a couple of things both platforms have in common but we have at least two major points where the music sector is way in front of the book sector. Someone invented mp3 and soon napster came along and there the music sector went. Nothing like that with books. We have pdf and even more p2p sharing but who reads a book on a digital device? We have music stores which distribute music digitally but i don’t know of many bookstores who distribute books digitally. So here are my recommendations for the participating parties.

Users: We are trying to make this thing as simple to use as possible. The threshold to input your books will become less with every development iteration and the services you get in return will increase with every development iteration. Let us know how to improve the machine and we will certainly do it.
Publishers: Don’t be afraid of the possibilities digital distribution gives. Sooner or later everything will fall into place. Start experimenting and support people who are trying to lead the sector into digital distribution. Think sharp about how to handle topics like the german “buch preis bindung” and prepare for an open market.
Writers: Threshold to publish might get lower but the quality of writing will certainly increase because the know how of users will increase. See this story.
Inventors: Guys, let me know when you have something which looks like a digital book reader. I think it has huge potential ;-)

Team
I want to use this post to thank everyone in the lovelybooks team for their wonderful work, especially my partner Jodok Batlogg, who is streamlining the lovely development.
Thanks

Andras, batlogg, Bergey, Jürgen, LoK, Sigurd