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About Us
Don't you hate it when your TBR pile becomes unmanageable? Me too!
Over several busy years, I realised that although I hadn't had a tonne of time to do much reading, my rate of buying books hadn't really slowed - you can't afford to sleep on that all important hardback edition of your favourite author's new novel, and if you don't grab that book whose review you had particularly enjoyed you'll never remember it later!
The new books would be slid into place on their carefully organised shelves (by author, then size (height), then publish date) and become indistinguishable from the ones I'd already read.
Scrolling back through my order history wasn't really working for me, so I decided I needed a proper list. A tool of some sort. Probably an app…
A bit of a google didn't really turn up anything I liked the look of (honestly, I didn't look that hard), so I decided this was the perfect excuse to write something myself.
Initially, for my own use, I found a couple of book databases with APIs, taught myself how to write an Android app and knocked out version one in a couple of weeks. After adding a couple of hundred books to my personal library, I spent another three weeks changing a lot of how it works to streamline the process a bit. Those old BCA editions with no ISBN were killing me.
Now at a point where adding books and maintaining my library wasn't quite such a horrific chore, I decided that I might as well give other people access to the app, so they can organise their collections too. I thought this would be quite a quick job, I mean, I'd already done the hard bit… but it turns out that what I need and what others would likely expect differs quite a bit!
So, a few months were spent building a website with comparable functionality, setting up a bit of social, adding features to the app, adding a few cheeky affiliate links (if you were going to buy a book anyway, please consider using one of the affiliate links) and here we are.
I'll keep adding features (sharing your library and reviews are pretty high up the list at the moment. Reliable cover images are proving to be a bit of a nightmare too, but it's something I'm thinking about) and we'll see where it takes us. I find it super useful, so hopefully you will too.
If you have suggestions or just want to reach out, social links are at the bottom of the page, as well as a more formal 'contact us' page, if you need it.
Thanks for being here!
Over several busy years, I realised that although I hadn't had a tonne of time to do much reading, my rate of buying books hadn't really slowed - you can't afford to sleep on that all important hardback edition of your favourite author's new novel, and if you don't grab that book whose review you had particularly enjoyed you'll never remember it later!
The new books would be slid into place on their carefully organised shelves (by author, then size (height), then publish date) and become indistinguishable from the ones I'd already read.
Scrolling back through my order history wasn't really working for me, so I decided I needed a proper list. A tool of some sort. Probably an app…
A bit of a google didn't really turn up anything I liked the look of (honestly, I didn't look that hard), so I decided this was the perfect excuse to write something myself.
Initially, for my own use, I found a couple of book databases with APIs, taught myself how to write an Android app and knocked out version one in a couple of weeks. After adding a couple of hundred books to my personal library, I spent another three weeks changing a lot of how it works to streamline the process a bit. Those old BCA editions with no ISBN were killing me.
Now at a point where adding books and maintaining my library wasn't quite such a horrific chore, I decided that I might as well give other people access to the app, so they can organise their collections too. I thought this would be quite a quick job, I mean, I'd already done the hard bit… but it turns out that what I need and what others would likely expect differs quite a bit!
So, a few months were spent building a website with comparable functionality, setting up a bit of social, adding features to the app, adding a few cheeky affiliate links (if you were going to buy a book anyway, please consider using one of the affiliate links) and here we are.
I'll keep adding features (sharing your library and reviews are pretty high up the list at the moment. Reliable cover images are proving to be a bit of a nightmare too, but it's something I'm thinking about) and we'll see where it takes us. I find it super useful, so hopefully you will too.
If you have suggestions or just want to reach out, social links are at the bottom of the page, as well as a more formal 'contact us' page, if you need it.
Thanks for being here!
Mark, the MyBooks.Life guy