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.