Bookclubs: Organize & Connect

We have just started using this app and it’s been so great for our group. The free version gives you the ability to manage everything you could want for your group - polls for meeting times, polls that connect directly with the TBR list so that you can easily create book lists for each month. Each member can leave their own rating and review for each book read. The import book list section is really easy to use online so that you can keep track of each book your group has read. I particularly love that most of the books included with book clubs comes with a discussion guide!!!! No more searching the internet each month for book questions. It’s made everything we do so much easier - I love it.

Our neighborhood book club switched from Book Movement to Book Clubs at the end of last year, and we are really enjoying the enhanced experience. We love the design and capabilities of the feature-rich app and website, including the ability to upload photos from past meetings, upload documents (like recipes from holiday parties), send private messages, rate books, and create polls (like helping to choose between two books). I was able to easily upload our list of ten years of prior books via an Excel file. Reminders and notifications are always sent timely, and I generally receive helpful responses to the questions and issues I’ve shared with the Book Clubs team. There are just a few unaddressed items that I previously shared which would make our experience even better - We need to add a notification with next month’s book choice. This should be automatically sent on the day following the current month’s meeting (e.g., send notice of March’s book selection the day after February’s meeting). Book Clubs is set up so that notices are sent when a meeting is created or updated, unless you turn off that notice. Since we often select our books months in advance, we need a reminder of what book was selected before each meeting. The meeting reminder emails should include the hosts’ names, and not just their physical addresses. Regardless, I highly recommend this app (and website) to manage your book club!

I have been using this app for a couple of months now and I like it for the most part. I wish there was a comments or discussion section for members to post in the meeting invites. It would be helpful to have that for members to post what they are bringing or anything they wish to communicate to the group for that particular meeting. Also for some reason when I add an address to the meetings, it never posts it the first time around and I have to come back and edit the meeting to add it again. It’s a small thing and likely user error, but it has happened twice. If we could save addresses or if it populated the location I am typing in it would be nice. Lastly, I think it could be a little more intuitive. Perhaps opening to a Home/Welcome Screen? I am not sure how to articulate what I mean. Just a place for the user to start visually with like your next event and book recommendations based on previous meetings and ratings. It doesn’t feel intuitive to me that it opens up to meetings, which is in the middle of the options as opposed to the left. If it were a home button that stood out, maybe. I will continue to use the app. It seems like the makers are frequently putting out updates and read the reviews for constructive criticism. I hope this helps!