It’s weird to be blogging—apparently my last post here was November 2019?! Geeze. But I wanted to pop in and let you know what I’ve been working on…
Bookhype
Bookhype is a site for tracking your reading progress, posting reviews, and keeping up with new book releases. If you’ve been following me for a while, you might recognize this as the passion project I wanted to build back in 2014… well, better late than never?? Frankly it’s probably a good thing that I built this now instead of in 2014—I’m a much better coder now!
Bookhype is currently open for public beta. You can request an invite here. Once approved, you’ll be able to create an account, and even import your Goodreads library. 😉 It’s pretty much open to everyone, I’m just moderating signups in these early days as I ensure everything is working smoothly!
Here are a few things you can do on the site:
Add books to your personal library
You can mark a book as “to read”, “currently reading”, “read”, “DNF” (did not finish), or you can just add it to your library without a status. I tend to do the latter for books that I have my eye on but I don’t yet own and/or aren’t sure if I really want to read them yet.
You can easily view all the books in your library on your profile page.
Keep track of what you’re currently reading & what you’ve read
For each book you can also record the dates you read the book, which edition you read, and what you rated it (you can have different ratings for each entry!). If you reread, like I do, then sometimes your rating changes from one read to the next. I like to keep records of all my historical ratings.
(This is Lord of the Fading Lands by C.L. Wilson, and yes, I’ve read it five times!)
Record which books you own and when you got them
For each record you can choose which edition you own, the date you got the book, where you got it from, and whether or not it’s signed.
Follow series
You can follow any series you want and it will appear on your personal tracking page. This lists how many books you’ve read in the series, and the books you have yet to read. Additionally, if a new book is added to the site in a series you’re following, it’s automatically added to your library. (In the future there will also be email alerts, but I’m still testing those!)
Browse new and upcoming releases
This is one of the big reasons I made Bookhype in the first place—I wanted a release calendar. I wanted to easily be able to see all fantasy books coming out in the future so I didn’t miss anything. The Bookhype releases page allows you to do just that. You can filter by genre, age group, and year/month/day. Want to look at YA fantasy in 2021?
Still more to do, but it’s a start!
Although I’ve opened the doors, Bookhype isn’t done yet. It’ll definitely be an ongoing project. I’m currently testing the start of an activity feed, personal release calendars (here’s mine), really awesome yearly stats, and email alerts about new releases. There are also loads of little improvements on my to-do list, like library filtering and searching.
On a personal note, this project has been a ton of fun and a great learning experience. I’ve learned so much about book data—and what a mess it is! LOL! I always thought that getting book data straight from the publishers would be neatly organized…. nope! There’s still a ton of cleaning up to do. You wouldn’t believe some of the messes I’ve found. (Though I have blogged about some of them here.)
I’ve also learned a lot about different technologies that I’d never used before. I’m not even using WordPress! Gasp!
Anyway, if you want to give Bookhype a try, feel free to request an invite! You can also follow @bookhype on Twitter and let me know if you have any thoughts or feedback. 🙂
Hi. Sounds brill. Is it instead of kindle and iBooks or is it another reading platform. Or do you view kindle and iBooks through it. Hope that makes sense.
Regards Annette.
Thanks for asking!
So the actual reading isn’t done on Bookhype – that would still be on Kindle, iBooks, or your other preferred platform. But you can view information about the books on Bookhype and mark whether you’ve read a book or not. So you can use it to keep a list of books you’ve read and books you want to read in the future. But when it comes time to actually read, you have to buy the book elsewhere.
So would there be room to put whether you have the book on kindle or iBooks or whichever platform?
I like that we can add all the readings of a book. In goodreads if i read a book more than once it doesn’t count.
Good reread support is a big priority for me because I reread quite a bit. 🙂
Hi, I’ve just read your email about Bookhype – thank you.
Am I right in thinking it’s focused on Fiction?
Hi Ian – thanks for asking!
Most of the curated pages you see (like the homepage and our simplified genre list) is indeed geared towards fiction. However, we have tons of nonfiction in our database! (Approximately 12 million books!) You can still use our category filters to search for nonfiction books if that’s what you’re looking for.
I would love to discover bookhype. It sounds great and from what I see in your email it would be what I am looking for besides Goodreads. About a week ago I asked for an invite and received an email from you that shows me your post here. Is your work only for bloggers on WP or your customers? Thank you for your answer, Ashley.
Hi Vi!
It looks like your invite was approved – can you check your email? Maybe also look in spam. You should have gotten a message.
I’ll also email you a registration link separately. 🙂
There are no platform/customer requirements to join!