Virtual Bookshelf – An Idea

I was always fascinated by books. I read, buy and collect so many of them every month. I believe a person’s bookshelf tells a lot about a person. When I see pictures of famous people sitting in their library or holding a book – I am more interested to see their book collection or what books are they reading right now. That is one way of knowing what their thinking(at least) for that period of time. May even tell a lot about their tastes if you get a list of the books they are reading. So, following this idea I think there should be an easy way to maintain a virtual book shelf online. So, here is an idea…

1. Registered users will key in the ISBN # for the books they have or own.
2. The site would create a virtual book shelf and store it online
3. We will also have small widgets, for blogs so that I can show off my book shelf on my blog
4. The books in my book shelf (that is being shown on my blog) link to my choice of book seller (amazon/bn) there by if someone follows the link and makes purchase I would get an incentive.
5. I should be able to mark the book public or private or protective meaning only people I choose can see that I own that book
6. Whenever you make a online purchase, you are also given a choice of adding it to your virtual bookshelf.
7. Ideally I should also be able to keep my e-books and audio books in my book shelf.
8. Amazon can advertise, discount and sell a whole row of a bookshelf from any popular person’s bookshelf.

I am sure someone must have thought about this. There must be a site which already does this. But I have never seen one so far and also this could be a great pet project to do in Ruby on Rails.

Author: akbar

Ramblings on Ideas, Creativity, Technology, and Spirituality. View all posts by akbar