BookPuddle

My friend Frank Carver has launched a new service called bookpuddle for recommending books via blogs, tweets, facebook or anywhere you can put a URL. What makes bookpuddle worthwhile is that you can link to the book via it's ISBN10 number (ISBN13 support imminent) instead of using that nasty amazon url. Bookpuddle urls look like this...

http://bookpuddle.com/1617290084

Frank's following a Lean startup model, so don't expect a sexy ui or tonne of features. Right now all that's on offer is the minimal viable product (MVP). If he gets enough traffic, he'll start building out. One feature that's on the horizon is to optionally include an Amazon associate id in the url. This way you can start earning revenue from your referrals, but unlike Amazon URLs you don't have to chose whether you link to the amazon.com, amazon.co.uk or amazon.etc web sites, meaning you won't miss out when a reader from the wrong territory clicks on the link.

Nice work Frank.