Why I built Libreture

Hello, I'm Kevin,

I'm an avid ebook reader and was once a Kindle-owner. After news broke of Amazon's UK tax-avoidance, I decided to look for alternative ebookshops.

I concentrated on finding bookshops that sold DRM-free ebooks, to ensure I could read them on any device I chose to buy in the future. I also wanted to support small and independent publishers and bookshops. With this in mind, I started compiling a list of DRM-free bookshops. The list is still growing and is now a key component of Libreture - readers record where they bought their DRM-free books, helping others discover new bookshops, books, and authors.

A big part of Amazon's service is its ebook storage and management tools. To avoid them, I began using Shelfari, a library management website. Shelfari was a great tool, but in 2008, the owners sold Shelfari to Amazon. So I moved to Goodreads.

When the owners of Goodreads also sold their business to Amazon in 2013, I had finally had enough. Many others felt the same way.

"What terrible news. Loss of an independent reader community, now another channel for the faceless machine to leech reader data to withhold from suffering publishers & booksellers. If through this account Amazon has a record of my reading habits I will be deleting the account. Very sad."
Laura - 28/03/2013

At that point I began building my own stable platform to store ebooks, record reading activity, and promote DRM-free bookshops and publishers.

I built the first version myself, and for myself. It soon became clear that others may find it useful too. Working with an external development company, we re-built Libreture from scratch.

Libreture launched to the public in March, 2017

So far, readers are storing 16,528 ebooks, digital comics, magazines, & RPGs with Libreture.

 

Get in touch

Contact me or connect at BlueSky, Mastodon or Twitter.

Readers are storing 16,528 ebooks, digital comics & magazines with Libreture.

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