Monday, April 1st, 2013

Extended: Free accounts for new members

Since the Amazon news broke, we’ve been seeing an influx of Goodreads members checking out the site and adding their books—more than 500,000 so far. So we’ve extended our free accounts offer through Friday midnight. Sign up for a new account and we’ll give you a year’s free membership.

Here’s from the original blog post, describing why—in this “free” world—LibraryThing asks for money, even as little as $1/year.


In the wake of Amazon’s acquisition of Goodreads, we’ve had some blow-back on the fact that LibraryThing charges for a membership to add more than 200 books. In fact, when you go to pay, it’s pay-what-you-want. The money helps pay for the site, and keeps us advertisement-free for members. Also, we believe customers should be customers, with the loyalty and rights of customers, not the thing we sell to our real customers.

However, some people don’t like it. And we want everyone. So, as a test and a welcome, we’re giving out free year’s accounts to everyone who signs up through the end of Sunday Now Friday midnight Eastern. We’ve also upgraded everyone who signed up since 4pm yesterday.

Here’s what the profile comment looks like. You should get it pretty quickly:


Photo by flickr member chamisa flower.

Labels: amazon, members

15 Comments:

  1. Sounds VERY good to me!

  2. DaNita Bell says:

    Please sign me up for the new account.

  3. J. Goslee says:

    I bought a lifetime membership for $21 dollars on 10-4-2007 but last year when I tried to get a hold of someone at your company to reclaim my account no one ever emailed me back.

    Library thing doesn’t seem to know either my primary address (the email on this comment) or my old secondary aol account. Hopefully someone will contact me about this.

  4. Sara says:

    Thank. This is something new for me.

  5. Jesse L. says:

    I think $25 bucks is a great friggin’ deal for LIFETIME usage. I am glad Jeremy feels like he can give away free accounts for a year. But LibraryThing is the kind of book-site I really use.

    Cheers, thumbs up and all those other good things.

    Thank you.

  6. Janine says:

    I don’t think that’s fair for everyone who already has an account.

  7. maureen says:

    It’s good way to buiild raptor and strengthen our sense of community.

  8. maureen says:

    Rapor even. Awesome job lb I love it here.

  9. I’m fine with offering the free accounts for a year. Just please don’t give these new folks any special privileges in the Early Reviewers program (i.e. opportunities to get the books to review *just* because they came over from Goodreads).

  10. Gentry says:

    So if we already had an account we are not eligible for a free upgrade to our account?

  11. BeachyBookLover says:

    Man, do I feel welcomed!! I got the welcome message for opening a new account 97 times (one a minute for a little over an hour and a half! *L*) Seriously, though, I’m thrilled to be here 🙂 Thanks for the big welcome 😛

  12. Jessica A. Cox says:

    Dear Library Thing, I am writing to sign up for a free membership. Jessica Cox

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