Since Amazon bought Goodreads, we’re seeing a lot of Goodreads users checking out LibraryThing. Here’s a quick guide for them.
Getting Started with LibraryThing:
1. Sign up. Go to the homepage and join.
2. Find your friends. Visit the Friend Finder page to connect your LibraryThing account to Facebook and Twitter. Invite your friends to join LibraryThing, or connect with those already on the site. LibraryThing isn’t as forward as Goodreads—we never post anything without your explicit consent, never send messages to others without your consent, and never make someone your friend on LibraryThing just because you know them on Facebook or Twitter. But you can reach out to the people you want to.
3. Import your books. You can import/sync your books directly from Goodreads at http://www.librarything.com/import/goodreads.
In the last week we’ve upgraded the Goodreads import, so everything you care about should come through. (If you imported before all the improvements were pushed, try again and “sync.”)
Lots of members use both sites. Our import also works as a “sync” between the two sites. You can re-sync at any time, bringing in new Goodreads reviews and other data.
4. Share what you’re reading. Click the “share” link at the upper right corner of the site to get your News Feed page:
http://www.librarything.com/yourfeed.php. Click “Share this” under any item to post to Twitter or Facebook.
5. Have questions? Visit the Welcome to LibraryThing group to ask any questions you have. Our members and staff are happy to help! You can post in the Welcome Goodreads refugees thread, or start a new thread for your specific question. Some of our awesome LibraryThing members have already started a handy Goodreads to LibraryThing guide, too, to help answer some frequently-asked questions.
Things to check out
- Find out what makes LibraryThing tick. Tim, the staff, and thirty-eight members recently got together to hammer out what we’re proud of. See What Makes LibraryThing LibraryThing?
- Groups. LibraryThing has more than 9,000 discussion groups, covering just about every imaginable topic. Check them out at http://www.librarything.com/groups.
- Early Reviewers Giveaways. Each month we work with publishers to give out thousands of books to interested readers, by matching the books on offer up with the books in your library. You can see last month’s list; the April list will be up soon. Sign up to be notified when new books arrive you can ask for. These aren’t just random giveaways, though: we use a complex algorithm to find the best possible readers for the books on offer.
- LibraryThing Local. If you visit the “Local” tab at the top of the site, you’ll see http://www.librarything.com/local, our gateway to more than 80,000 bookstores, libraries and other bookish venues around the world. Set your location to see venues and events near you, or mark your favorite venues so you can see just their events quickly and easily.
- Help and FAQ. LibraryThing is a huge site, and can be fairly intimidating at first. We’ve got an extensive help wiki, with brief overviews of many of the major features.
- Are you an author or a publisher? We welcome authors and publishers to LibraryThing! See our How Authors Can Use LibraryThing or How Publishers Can Use LibraryThing for some hints and tips on how best to get involved on the site.
Above all, welcome, and enjoy!
Salmon photo courtesy James Bowe on Flickr. (NB, the salmon is a joke referencing the frequently-discussed LibraryThing color scheme.)
Labels: LibraryThing
Import from Goodreads.
Doesn’t seem to work at least on my iPad. The details of the export appear on the screen ok, but there is no way to see the file name so you can’t import the file. Or maybe I missed something?
If you want to use LT in another language than English, the best way of finding the mirrors for other languages is http://www.librarything.com/translations.php . Click a language in the list, log in, and you are on the other language site.
Hi, my main site right now is actually shelfari. I joined GR a while back as backup, but the import failed majorly, so most of my books are still not there.
With Amazon’s acquisition of GR, I have now also joined here, as another backup. I am trying to learn my way around, but I was also wondering if there was an easy import from shelfari, as well. It is completely up to date, so I’d like to import from there, not from GR, since my shelf there is incomplete.
Or will the same link for the GR import work for my file from shelfari?
Thanks!