Yeah, I use Zotero a lot! As a Firefox fanboy, I have no problem with the fact that it doesn’t work with IE (and now that I run Linux, that’s even a good thing!).

I just set up the googlereads account. You can see my profile here:
http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/2901365

If you could profit off a WordPress plugin, I’m certainly game trying to get it to work on my site. I think you outlined the key elements that I’d want. Basically, the following fields: title, author, year, rating (maybe multiple ratings, but that’s complicated), and maybe one or two more for things like – fiction/non-fiction, and genre – romance, sci-fi, etc.

There would then need to be some way to display all the reviews on a single page (or spread across pages) that allows you to sort by each of the respective fields. I’m not sure what the best way to do that would be, but it would be key to making it more functional.

Another feature that would be nice is integration with something like Amazon’s affiliate program where you would simply locate the book’s ISBN or Amazon URL, add it to the plugin, and the plugin would automatically generate a link back to Amazon for the book and display the cover. Given that you’re trying to monetize this, you may want those referrals. But I’m sure it would go over better with those adopting it if you let them have the referrals.

I think that would be pretty much what I would want.

Zotero looks like a useful tool. I like how it integrates with your web experience and grabs things fairly easily. I’m not a fan as much about how it only works with Firefox (even their website isn’t IE friendly). Being a web developer, I primarily run IE to see how things look and act to the masses, with Firefox as a secondary browser. The good news is that it is open source and allows for plugins, so there’s a possibility of building cross-browser functionality out of it, including tying it into WordPress (which they’ve stated they want someone to do). BTW – Your blog doesn’t play with with IE.

Googlereads.com didn’t find you through Facebook Connect, a name search, or an email search so I can’t evaluate how functional it is right now. Do you have your profile set to private?

As far as maintaining the code, if I built it right there’s a good possibility that I would do that. Building it as a general WordPress pluggin for mass distribution, tying it into an Amazon partner account through their API, and doing some profit sharing with bloggers I turn it into a mini-adSense with the part of Google’s bank account played by me. It’s good for me in a number of ways to put in the continued effort.

I could probably make it so you don’t have to do anything differently. You post your reviews the same; the page that generates your list of reviews changes to have sorting/filtering options. If anything breaks, you can easily revert to your current system.

Let’s talk sometime about what you would want a book review system to do if it was built from scratch. Perhaps a multi-dimensional rating system that would allow you to rate writing style separate from plot, such as you described for “The Lost Symbol”. That way you don’t have to give books one aggregate rating.

I used to have all of my book reviews stored in a database. Today, I have a “system” I use that isn’t perfect, but works. First, I write the review and post it on my blog. I have set up a page on the blog that adds the review automatically to my list of book reviews (ordered alphabetically):
http://www.ryananddebi.com/book-reviews/

I also store all of my books that I’ve read in various Zotero databases:
http://www.zotero.org

I use Zotero for all of my academic articles and academic book references, so I just created an additional database for fiction books I read and I store the reviews there. It allows me to sort by title and author (rating isn’t a field included in Zotero for obvious reasons). So, I can find them. It doesn’t make it easy for others to find the reviews, but I haven’t worried too much about that.

As far as Worldpress plugins go, the closest I can find are plugins associated with 3rd party websites, like Goodreads.com. They allow you to cross-post your reviews on their site and your blog. Their site allows your friends to see your reviews and search based on ratings, etc.

Having an easier way to sort my reviews on my blog would be nice, but I would worry about upkeep. If you created a plugin to manage book reviews, would you maintain it to keep it current? The previous plugin I used (via Drupal) became outdated and broke my functionality, leaving me with hours and hours of work spent adding my book reviews just to have them become non-functional.

Sorry for the lengthy response, but it is something I have given some thought to as I have over 200 book reviews I have written (with lots more to come).

I’m also toying with some ideas about building software to help people index things they have read (academic and non-academic) to assist in retrieval later. When you have time, we should talk to get your ideas on what such a system should be able to do.