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BookWyrm

Instead of handing your reading history to a retail platform and letting an algorithm decide what you read next, BookWyrm lets a self-hosted community of readers make the recommendations. Shelve every book as to-read, currently reading, stopped, or finished, record start and finish dates with progress updates along the way, and set an annual reading goal to keep the habit honest. Rate and review finished books, drop a comment while you are mid-chapter, or save a quotation worth keeping, and all of it can appear on the book page alongside reviews aggregated from other connected instances. Follow friends to see their shelves fill up, join a group to build a shared reading list, or create your own list and choose whether it stays closed, accepts suggestions for approval, opens to everyone, or belongs to the group. Posts, shelves, and lists each carry their own privacy level, public, unlisted, followers-only, or private, and you can approve followers by hand before they see anything. Because instances federate over ActivityPub, your readers can follow you from another BookWyrm community or straight from Mastodon, and book metadata is shared between servers so small instances do not catalog alone. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. Anti-Capitalist Software License licensed.

BookWyrm
BookWyrm
BookWyrm
BookWyrm
BookWyrm

Benefits

  • Recommendations From People Not Algorithms
  • Your next read comes from friends' shelves, reviews, and lists inside your community, not from a storefront algorithm optimizing for sales, so discovery stays social and serendipitous.
  • Federated Across Independent Instances
  • ActivityPub connects your instance with other BookWyrm communities and services like Mastodon, so members follow readers anywhere while book metadata and reviews aggregate across servers.
  • Granular Privacy On Everything
  • Posts, shelves, and lists each carry public, unlisted, followers-only, or private visibility, with manual follower approval, blocking, and flagging for calm, small-scale community moderation.
  • Lists Curated Together By Groups
  • Reading lists support closed, curated, open, and group curation modes, so a book club can accept suggestions, approve additions, and sort picks by rating or title.

Features

  • Four Default Shelves
  • To-read, currently-reading, stopped-reading, and read shelves track every book, with custom shelves, start and finish dates, and progress updates as you go.
  • Rated Reviews And Quotes
  • Members compose reviews with zero-to-five ratings, casual comments, and saved quotations, all aggregated on the book page from local and federated instances.
  • Annual Reading Goals
  • Set a yearly target and watch progress build as finished books land on your read shelf, with optional updates shared to followers at your chosen privacy.
  • Group-Owned Reading Lists
  • Groups give book clubs a shared home where members add and remove titles together, while list privacy controls decide who else can see the collection.
  • Shared Book Metadata
  • Instances exchange book records through extended ActivityPub types, identifying shared editions across servers so a tiny community inherits a networked catalog instead of starting empty.

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