To make a reading profile private on most book sites, open your account settings and look for a section called Privacy or Visibility. You will usually find a toggle for the whole profile (public, friends only, or private) and separate switches for your shelves, your reviews, and your reading activity. Set the profile to private, check each shelf individually because they sometimes keep their own settings, and then view your profile while logged out to confirm what strangers can see. If a switch seems to have no effect, log out and back in before assuming anything has gone wrong.
That is the useful part. The rest is my diary, because the crier's guild requires a written record of each day's announcements, and because nobody else here will hold the bell.
Dawn. Rang the bell. Announced the weather (wet), the hour (early), and the hours of the library (all of them, because nobody has locked it since 1997). Eight people were already waiting at the gate with their phones. I have learned not to ask. They always want something with a setting in it.
Seven o'clock. A woman asked how to make her profile private. I rang the bell and announced it to the square: "HEAR YE, A READER WISHES HER PROFILE TO BE PRIVATE." She went the color of a plum. She said that was the opposite of what she wanted. I apologized and offered to announce that she wished it to be quiet instead. She left. I do not think I helped, though a pigeon seemed to approve.
Eight o'clock. I want to be clear about my profession. I am a town crier. My entire job is to make private things public, loudly, in a hat. A privacy setting is a kind of anti-crier. If one were to arrive in town I would have to ring the bell at it, and I would feel terrible, and I would do it anyway, because the bell does not know what it is doing and neither do I.
Nine o'clock. More visitors. One man wanted to hide his "currently reading" shelf from his coworkers. I told him the only shelf here is the green water-stained Ledger by the front desk, and that it is not hidden, it is stained. He asked if the stain counted as a privacy feature. I said it might, if you do not read cursive. He wrote that down. I announced that he had written something down. I could not stop myself.
Ten o'clock. The CRT leaderboard in the corner flickered again. It has been flickering since I got here, and it never once showed anyone's name, which is the closest thing to privacy this building has. I stood beside it and tried to be quiet for a full minute. I managed forty seconds. Then I announced the forty seconds. It was a personal best, and it deserved a bell.
Noon. Lunch on the steps. A girl sat down next to me and asked, very quietly, whether it was true that everything you read can be seen by everyone. I put down my sandwich. I said that in this town, yes, because I am here, and I cannot help it, but that in a book, no. A book is the most private thing there is. You can read one on a bus beside a stranger and the stranger will never know whether you are crying or just reading about a lighthouse. She said that was the best news she had heard all week. I did not ring the bell. This is the first time in my career I have not rung the bell, and I am told by the pigeon that it is not noticeable.
Two o'clock. The rest of the afternoon was people asking me to un-announce things. I tried. You cannot un-announce. Once a thing has been shouted it is in the square for good, mixed in with the dust and the smell of rain. Randy came through briefly and said he had heard every one of my announcements and remembered every name, which I did not need to know, and which I will now be thinking about for years.
Dusk. Rang the bell for the last time. I announced only the following: "THE DAY IS OVER. NOTHING FURTHER TO REPORT." This was, for the record, a lie. A great deal had been reported. But the town was tired and so was I, and sometimes the kindest announcement is a short one.
If you came here to hide your reading, I am sorry. I am the wrong person to ask, and the wrong building. If you want to see what a profile looks like when nobody is hiding anything, there is the page about who a Booktrovert is, and if you want the quietest thing in town, try the whispers, which are already the most private thing I know of, aside from the Ledger.
Authors are fragile organisms who would never dream of announcing what you read, so please buy a book. Read it somewhere dim, with no one watching, and keep your own counsel. I will be at the gate with the bell, trying very hard to leave it alone.
Loudly,
Booktrovert #1131