You typed "is booktrovert legit" into a search engine. This was a sensible and adult thing to do. You were probably thinking about booktrovert.com, the modern site with the free ebooks, the daily giveaways, and the games that load. You wanted to know if it was safe before you handed over an email address.
Instead you landed here, on Booktrovert.org, which is a different thing entirely. We are the parody. We are older, dustier, and run on a server that we are fairly sure is a space heater. So let us answer the question you actually asked, and then the question you accidentally asked.
If you were checking on booktrovert.com, you can go look for yourself. It is a real, functioning website operated by NetGalley, and it does the things it says it does: claim a free ebook, send it to your Kindle, enter a sweepstakes, play a puzzle. We have studied it closely, the way a moth studies a porch light. If that is the place you wanted, the door is right here, and we wish you a pleasant and well-lit visit.
We are not them. We have said this before, at length, in our side by side comparison of the two Booktroverts, which remains the most exhausting document we have ever produced.
Now, the trickier question. Is this one legit. Booktrovert.org. Us.
The honest answer is that we are real in every way that does not help you. We exist. You are reading us. A man named Will Pass built us on purpose, which is more than some websites can claim. We have a guestbook, a founder named Doug, and a recurring visit from the Ghost of Mark Twain, who is real to us and was, at one point, real to everyone.
But "legit" usually means "will this hurt my computer or my bank." On that front we can offer the following assurances, none of which will reassure you.
We hold a Better Business Bureau rating that we awarded ourselves in 1997, predating the form you would normally use to dispute it. The rating is a hand-drawn star. It is gold, or it was, before the marker faded.
We keep a notarized affidavit of legitimacy in the filing cabinet. The notary was Randy. Randy is not a notary. Randy is not, as far as the staff can confirm, a person. The seal is a coffee ring. We faxed a copy to ourselves to be safe, and the fax came back blank, which we have chosen to read as confirmation.
We do not collect your payment information, because we do not have a way to. We do not sell your data, because we cannot find it, and frankly neither can you. The only thing we will ever ask you for is that you read a book, ideally a paper one, ideally by an author who is still alive and checking their sales rank with the fragility of a soap bubble.
Booktrovert.com is a legitimate website that gives away ebooks. Booktrovert.org is a legitimate parody that gives away nothing but a strange afternoon. Both are real. Only one of them is what you were looking for, and we are at peace with not being it.
If you came here worried and you leave here amused, that is the only transaction we run. If you want to understand the creature whose name you keep typing, we wrote a whole page on what a booktrovert actually is. And if you are still suspicious of us specifically, good. Stay sharp out there. The internet is full of sites pretending to be helpful. We are at least honest about being neither.
Verified by no one,
Booktrovert #1099