I’ve got an idea for a new social network, something similar to Goodreads, which, aside from Twitter, is the only social service I still use. The main goal of this site would be a social home page for avid readers. One might argue that you can connect to writers on the current social platforms, but there’s a lot of limitations in how you friend people, and in how the site administrators view their role in the act of socializing. We’ll get to that in a bit. First let me explain the basic operation of this new social site for reading.
The front page for new visitors would have a generic update steam along with form fields in a top banner to sign up for one of three types of accounts; one for readers, one for writers, and one for publishers. Readers would fill out a list of genres they read, as well as list some titles of books they loved and books they hated. Then they could list the books they’ve read on shelves, like Goodreads. As an added bonus, our theoretical network will allow Goodreads and LibraryThing members to import their virtual shelves to save them from relogging the same books over.
Within a few days of beginning this service and logging books, the network would have a decent idea of what kinds of writers and genres the reader might enjoy. So on the sidebar of their update stream, they get a list of writers and publishers who they might want to follow. (More on what following entails in a moment…) Before the system can offer suggestions, the readers are free to search and browse writers by genre or by their name. So they can friend writers they may already know even before the system starts making suggestions. Like Goodreads, many authors would be logged into the system with a generic blank author account, even if they are not really members. This allows readers to be “friends” with Stephen King, even if he never signs up for an account. If he does, his real account would be merged with the pseudo-account. (Again, just like the Goodreads policy. Did I mention yet how much I like the design of Goodreads?)
Writers could sign up and list their books and genres, but they can also sign up as readers and use a reader’s account to write reviews or get suggestions for new writers to follow. During the initial month that a writer is part of the site, they will be considered on probation, and are only allowed to send a few friend requests at a time from their writer accounts, say 3 per day. Readers and publishers can choose to friend the writer without limits right from the start, but the writer cannot spam-bomb the readers with friend requests. After the probation, the writer may send 25 requests per day. (Site wide shotgunned friend requests will never be allowed.) Also, once a reader has declined an invitation, the system remembers that rejection. Any further attempts to friend the same reader will get an error, “Reader has already declined invitation.” They can still friend you, if they choose, but you cannot bug them about it over and over, like you can (and sometimes do) on Facebook and MySpace.
A writer could go on Twitter and say “I signed up to this new network! Send me a friend request if you’re a reader on the network.” And on day one, a new writer might have 1,000 twitter followers who instantly convert over to readers on the network. But, even if they have 10,000 incoming friend requests on day one, they still can only make 3 outgoing requests for new readers.
Publishers could create a publisher account, which allows them to friend both readers and writers. Publishers too would have probation, but start at 10 reader requests and graduate to 50. But they would not have limits on how many writers they could friend. So a publisher could sign up for an account and friend all of the writers in their “stable” right away. They could also make fan pages with updates dedicated to their new releases and news announcement from editors and marketing staff. From that main page, they could link to the book entries on the network, which in turn lists all the vendors where the readers could pick up their titles.
Writers and publishers running searches for new readers would not see the lists of books the readers have read at first, unless they click on a listing to get more detailed information. The main search screen would only list a compatibility bar, similar to the musical compatibility feature of Last.FM. So a writer could look at a reader and know at a glance if they were wasting their time with a friend request. A writer who only writes zombie books obviously does not want to waste their time spamming a reader who hates zombies, or horror in general. It’s counter-productive and fosters negative feelings all around.
Readers who friend a writer would have access to their update streams, making this feature similar to Facebook. Readers can choose which writer and publisher updates will go in their status stream and they can also filter the updates stream, in case a writer gets a bit too spammy for the reader’s liking.
They can also choose to make friends with other readers and add their friends’ review updates into their stream. (Not the whole review. Just the first few lines and a link to the full review. Even in the update stream, the approach is always ?at the reader?s discretion.?) This is customized book research, delivered at a time when readers are in the mood to think about what to read next. It’s voluntary direct marketing that cuts away all of the ballyhoo to get to the purest social experience possible for avid readers.
Writers and Publishers who also signed up for reader accounts would have stricter rules to follow than regular readers. They would not be allowed to do self-promotion from their reader accounts, and they could have their reader accounts suspended or revoked for doing so. (Entries for publishers’ or writers’ books would not be removed, as it defeat the purpose of the system and is overly harsh as a punishment. )
No hard selling would be allowed on this network. A writer may make a friend request, and then wait and see what happens. If that friend request is accepted, then they may recommend their books to that friend once. The system keeps track of suggestions made, so it wouldn’t be possible to “forget” and send another. The system would tell the writer, “That reader has already been told about your book.” Note, this does not mean other readers can’t recommend the book. In this way, every review, rating, or recommendation carries more weight and authenticity. It would not be impossible to game this system, but it would be damned hard.
In addition to searching for reader friends and new writers and publishers to follow, readers can also search for books by genre and add them to their bookshelves, organizing them just like Goodreads. The books could be listed by site popularity, by the date they were entered into the reader’s shelf, by the date the reader read them, by the story’s length, or by alphabetical order.
Book listings pages would list the available formats as well as the available prices, and they could contain tables of vendor links for the various formats. Each format of the book would get a separate listing, but all listings would be linked to the same master description page for default searches. This is so that if a reader only wants to see print books or ebooks, they will get slightly different listing pages with only print or ebook vendors listed, whereas the general page lists prices and vendors for all the formats.
By default, the site search would list books by site popularity, which would allow writers and their publishers to see at a glance what titles were working with a broad base of readers, and what other titles were niche successes. (And which books were total flops, for that matter.) It would also help new readers see the more popular recommendations from their fellow readers. So they can literally ask, “What’s the most popular horror book right now?” and get back a list of only the horror titles from the most popular to the least.
One extra thing this site will also factor in is online and short fiction. Writers of online fiction or short fiction appearing in printed periodicals could make “book” entries into the system for their stories, adding links to the story or to any ebook or print options, if these are available. They can tag the stories with genre and various useful keywords to place them in the same search results with books and ebooks.
New serial stories would require at least five posts before a description page could be started, but a single-shot short story could be listed at a “complete book.” And, just like book writers, the webfic and short fiction writers would be limited in how many requests they could send to readers during their probationary period.
Readers can choose to opt out of seeing webfiction or short printed fiction altogether, and so writers searching for readers would not see them in their search results. If that seems unfair, don’t worry. Readers can also opt not to be seen in search by writers and publishers outside of their preferred genres. So if I didn’t want any romance or crime fiction folks to see my reader account, I could just check a box and hide from them.
What this means is, when a reader does opt in for a webfic search, they are already more likely to want to become a part of your audience. You don’t have to spend so much time generating first impressions for webfic itself. Instead you can focus on finding new readers already converted to the webfic way, and on updating old readers on new projects or chapter posts.
This intended to be a reader’s haven, a place where they can feel safe looking up new fiction without every contact acting as a hard seller. This is very important to readers, and it is NOT being addressed by any of the current social networks. The network should act as a mediator, fostering positive connections while helping readers AND writers filter out negative relationships.
This is one of the main reason I have given up on social networks. I sign up for an account and list myself as a writer. In my profile, I write: “I want to meet new readers of dark and weird fiction.” But, in six months’ time, I will have 300 friends, most of them other writers, a few of them actual friends, and not one avid reader. While some of the writers and friends may eventually be won over to read my stuff, I’m not looking for this kind of protracted begging and pleading session. No writer should, since it take time away from what we really want to do, which is to keep writing.
And, the other problem is, as a reader, it’s often fatiguing for me to deal with the varying levels of hard selling that too many writers at all levels of the profession adopt. Yes, I do want to know when your new book comes out. But I may decide not to buy it. And if that’s the case, you need to go away after the first “no.” On many social networks, it’s too easy to forget who got a sales pitch and who didn’t. So you keep firing off a friend request multiple times, or send invitations to the same blog parties to the same people, or send yet another book recommendation, further annoying your readers.
I think the social site itself should help to act as a mediator between readers and writers. It should help writers connect to new readers, but it should also help readers feel just as welcome as they would in a real bookstore or a public library. If I went to either a real bookstore or public library and humped every reader’s leg in an effort to get a sale, I would be politely shown the door. But the social sites don’t have any level of protection for the readers from over-eager writers.
This social site would treat writers exactly the same as a brick and mortar bookstore would. The network would love to have you, but you will be expected to conduct yourself by a professional standard. And if you can behave yourself, the reward is a friends list full of avid fans of your work, instead of other writers who likely aren’t going to read your stuff anyway. Doesn’t that sound like an attractive trade? In exchange for adopting a softer sell approach, you could get back a few thousand new readers?
I like this idea of a readers’ haven so much that if by 2011 I have not seen someone else doing it, I will try to hunt down some coding gurus to start the project myself. As we move farther and farther away from traditional media methods, what nobody seems to want to address yet is how do the writers reach the readers at the best possible time? And how do the readers sort through the flood of new books to find the stories that interest them?
This is the answer: a social network based only on the hobby of reading. No extra apps. No video games…okay, maybe some games, but they’ll be word games, scrabble, and book trivia. Nerdy reading-related games, in other words. We’ll have an IM feature built in like Facebook and MySpace, but with the option of merging chats into a single room for group discussions. There will be a limited range of advertising spaces, and strict limits on who can advertise. This would be a site that serves as a librarian and advocate to the readers first, and it would serve as a resource to the writers and publishers second.
Readers need a place to get new suggestions without pressure, and they need a way to filter out the stuff that for sure they won’t like without actually having to sift through piles of titles. They need to feel safe discussing the books they hate without worrying about the writer or the writer’s fans jumping them. They need a digital version of the public library or the local bookstore coffee shop combo.
Writers need this as a resource online. We need a way to reach new readers without hard selling. We need a way to search a social site and only find readers by genre instead of trying to shotgun blast courtships to the entire site’s client base. We need to get useful feedback without making the readers feel like it’s work.
No social site has that feeling, in my opinion, and so, to improve the overall health of writing and recreational reading, I feel we all need a social network dedicated only to reading. If someone else isn’t going to get to work on that, I’ll make it my new year’s resolution for 2011.
Man, I sure hope somebody else does it first. Cause it sounds like a lot of work. (O_o*)
I am a bisexual transsexual with bigender tendencies, a former resident of Texas, but now live in Milan with my husband. I used to write in a variety of genres and published my work through 
