Booklore, like a lot of sites out there, started in January 2000 as a homepage in answer to the inevitable question 'What shall we put on the web space we got free with our e-mail account?'

Chrissi and I are both basically book lovers and have been reading since an early age so the obvious answer was something to do with books. We started very small with a few book reviews, adding various bits as and when we came up with ideas. We went about obtaining reviews from any friends who showed the least bit of interest in reading (and even some who didn't:) and the site has evolved since then through a number of redesigns. The majority of reviewers are still friends but we are starting to get more people we don't 'know' other than through the Internet and online communications.

We are in contact with a number of authors and hope to attract more as time goes by, providing honest reviews and a place for a bit of free publicity. Our dream is that one day BookLore will be a recognised Review Site and we will have so many books delivered for review we never have to buy one again… although this is not strictly true because we find wandering around bookshops to be one of life's pleasures, but it's a nice fantasy:)

The site is currently written in plain HTML and so it takes a bit of effort to get the updates together. We are improving though and we are currently working on moving over to a database and dynamic pages… however, time is the rarest of commodities and finding enough is our biggest problem… hence we are a little late updating sometimes.

BookLore is simply a labour of love and is not about making money so we have tried to remain clean and simple without resorting to lots of advertising banners (although we did make £14 from our Amazon affiliation last year…. don't tell the taxman:)

Being contacted by an author every now and then and being sent a book for review is one of the biggest pleasures we get. Without the website this is something that would never have been possible.

You never know one day we may get quoted on a cover alongside The Times…

Chrissi and Nigel - 1st June 2002