You typed "booktrovert app" into a search box, hit enter, and arrived here. We can tell you are looking for something you can install. A tidy icon for your home screen. A thing that buzzes when a new book is ready.
We have to be honest with you, the way we are honest about most things eventually. Booktrovert.org does not have an app. We have never had an app. We will not be getting an app. Doug, our founder, was asked about an app in 2011 and left the room. He came back in 2014 with a wheelbarrow and would not explain it.
What we have instead is heavier than an app, and you cannot charge it.
When a regular Booktrovert wants the Booktrovert.org experience on the go, they take the experience with them. Physically. A volunteer hands you a canvas tote, and inside the tote is a book, a candle, and a laminated card that says PLEASE READ THE BOOK. That is the app. It does everything our website does, plus it can be used to hit a wasp.
There is no download. There is a pickup. You drive to a building we do not advertise the location of, you knock four times, and a man named Randy decides whether today is a tote day. Most days are not tote days. Randy keeps his reasons in a binder we are not allowed to read.
You may have wandered over from booktrovert.com, the modern site that sends free ebooks to your Kindle and lets you play little games on a glowing screen. We admire them. They have buttons that work and a library that lives in the cloud, which is a place we picture as a damp filing cabinet in the sky.
If you genuinely want a reading app, theirs is the one you are picturing, and it is right over there: booktrovert.com. Go in peace. We will not be hurt. We will be a little hurt. We will get over it by Tuesday.
We once laid the two sites side by side in a full comparison, if you want to confirm which Booktrovert you actually meant to find. The differences are large and one of them involves a ghost.
People love an app for the notifications. We understand. There is a small thrill in the buzz that says a thing has happened.
Our notification system is Randy. When a book becomes available, Randy walks to your house and knocks. He does not text first. He does not have your number. He found your house the way he finds everything, which is a topic he will not discuss and we have stopped raising at the holiday party. The notification cannot be silenced, snoozed, or turned off in settings, because there are no settings. There is only Randy, and the weather, and your willingness to answer the door.
This is the one feature where we beat everyone. Booktrovert.org is offline by default. It has always been offline. A book in a tote works in a tunnel, on a plane, in a cabin with no power, and during the kind of storm that makes you reconsider your choices. The battery is a candle. The candle is the battery. When the candle runs low you go outside and look at the sky, which we are told is also free.
If you are still hoping we will email you when the app launches, we do have a newsletter of sorts, though calling it that may be generous. You can read about how we handle digital delivery, a phrase we use loosely and with a straight face.
So no, there is no Booktrovert app. There is a tote, a candle, a binder we cannot open, and a man who knows where you live. We think that is better. We are biased. We are also, technically, a website, which means we already broke our own rule by existing at all. Please buy a book. Authors are fragile organisms and the cloud cannot hug them.
Manually,
Booktrovert #57