There are more people reading books than there are people reading books from a library. If I had just made a tool (in English) to keep a list books without involving (German) libraries, it would probably be much more successful and only take a hundredths of effort.
And worse, I did not target libraries in general, but libraries in my city. Anything limited to one city has a too low user base. I planed to expand it city by city, by selling it in one city to cover the travel cost to the next city, so I can lend books there, actually test it, and make sure everything remains bugfree.
The alternative option, expert users can use it with any library, by editing the config XML files to include their webpage URL and server parameters, seems to have been too confusing for people
Is this a German thing, an urban thing, or really a true statement universally? I ask because prior to covid lockdown, we made at least weekly trips to our public library and it always had a steady stream of patrons.