The goal of Booksprouts is to make Book Clubs a Fun and Easy experience for everyone. We want to do the hard and tedious parts for you so that you can get busy reading and discussing!
What are some of the hard and tedious parts you ask? Good question. Booksprouts introduces Book Choices to help book clubs agree on what to read. We automatically create and organize online discussion spaces for each book. And we help clubs manage their member lists and their club meetings.
Have you ever read a book and though 'Wow, That was a good read! I wish I could talk about this book with so and so'. Well, Book Clubs are just that. A social group of people who discuss books together.
Book clubs come in many shapes and forms. The reason they exist and the real raison d'etre of Booksprouts is that book clubs create and foster friendships, intellectual stimuli, and discoveries of books, of the world, and of oneself.
Easy, click on the 'Create a Club' link on the black menu above. Fill in your club details. If you haven't registered as a user yet, then you'll need to register and activate yourself as a new user. That's it!
We've tried to make the process as easy as possible. You can always go back and add more details to your club and user profile later on, when you feel like it.
A club can either be Open or Invite-Only. Anyone can join a club that is Open. For an Invite-Only club, a current member of that club has to send you an email invite before you can join.
When you search for a club, it will show whether it is an Open or Invite-Only club.
More often than not, the members in a book club will read the same books. When there's a single book, it just makes club discussions and meetings easier. But when there are a lot of members, choosing what to read can become a real headache. A Book Choice is how members of a Booksprouts book club can choose a book.
Only club leaders can start off a Book Choice. They can either choose a book right away, or they can leave it up to the rest of the club to choose the book using an easy voting process.
If the club leader chooses a book, then all club members are sent an announcement and a Book Discussion is automatically created just for your club.
If the club leader leaves it up to the members to choose, then ALL members will have time to Nominate a book that they would like the Entire club to read. Then, after all members get a chance to see what everyone else has nominated, they will be able to Vote for a book. We will tabulate the votes, announce the winning book, and create a Book Discussion automatically for your club.
Only Club Leaders (creators of a book club) are able to create new Book Choices. If that's you, then go to your Club Homepage, and click on the 'Create a New Book Choice' link. You'll be taken to a page where you can specify the details of the new Book Choice. These details are described as follows.
Once a Book has been Chosen, it's time for you to get the book and start reading! Each Book Choice has a start date, which is determined by when the Club Leader created the Book Choice, and the time it takes to Nominate and Vote for a book (If the voting process is used). The start date appears above each Book Choice.
Everyone reads at a different pace so it's really up to you how you want to participate in your Book Club. Here are a few of the things that you can do after a book has been chosen.
If you are a registered Booksprouts member, then you can keep a list of books on your My Books page. You can add as many books as you want and remove them anytime. They can be books that you've read, are reading, or want to read.
If you are a leader of a Booksprouts Book Club, then simply go to your club's home page, and click on the "Create a Meeting" link. If you are not a club leader, then you won't be able to do this. However, you could always post a Club Discussion Topic about having a meeting.