Social Networking for Book Lovers

Social networking sites seem to be all the rage these days, from general conversational/reconnecting sites to blogs to specific interest sites. For example, there are loads of sites dedicated to specific interests, e.g., television shows, photography, sports.

Given that popularity, I started wondering what sites existed for book lovers. Books don't seem to get a lot of love from the public, compared to interests like television and sports, and so we in the book-loving tribe need to stick together! While looking around, I found a few interesting sites and also had an idea of my own that I'm debating as a project...

Virtual bookshelves:

• LibraryThing: Book reviews and discussions.

• Shelfari: Book reviews and discussions. Published authors participating as well.

• Goodreads: Book reviews and discussions.

Really Original:

• BookCrossing:This site has a REALLY cool gimmick. It's sort of a combination of a book club and a geocaching/travel bug site, in which you tag a book and leave it in a public place for others to find. They can then enter its tagged information online, so that the book's progress as it travels around, from person to person, can be tracked. This is one that I'll be participating in myself!

An idea that I had:

Personally, I enjoy both eBooks and paper books and hope that both continue to be available indefinitely. However, there are a lot of books that I'd like to buy for my Nook Color that haven't been published in eBook format yet. And you CAN go to B&N or Amazon and click a link that sends a message to the publisher indicating interest in that book in eBook format but who knows how much weight that carries?

What I was thinking, though, is that if I could get a few friends to click those links (and in exchange, I'd do the same for their links), and they could get a few friends to click the links, then maybe we could generate some real interest in publishing some very cool books in eBook format.

So how about these steps:

• a site is created where you can register a new account of your own, with your eBook reader(s) of choice specified
  
  
• once you have an account, you can search for favorite books and add them to your profile. Perhaps these choices are then available when friends navigate to your current profile; perhaps they're content you can embed in a mashup page. Maybe the content lists your top 5 requests and the top 5 requests of 2-3 of your friends.
  
  
• other friends click on those links, which (for example) send a vote for B&N to release a Nook version of "Double Rainbows for Dummies" or Amazon to release a Kindle version of "Can I Take My @#%& Vote Back, Please?"

I don't know if it would be workable and the intent is NOT to simulate a non-existent interest in books but to stimulate interest. But it's fun to think about...