About two years ago I came across the site ‘Woodpie’, a site for the exchange of books. The idea was very interesting and so I explored the site and wrote my views and review on it.

After the initial week or two of use the site fell away and over time I forgot all about it. Then a couple of weeks back I received an email telling me Woodpie was all updated and new and shiny now.

I figured another review was due. I was also curious to see what the improved site looked like and how many of the issues I’d raised, had been sorted. 😀

Welcome Page

The new welcome screen is clean and engaging. It’s well laid out with enough information to show that the heart of Woodpie has stayed the same through all changes. The site is all about book exchange.

And guess who’s testimonial was up there 😀

Home Page

The first thing I notice after the home page is it simple clean lines. It feels nice on the eye and makes we want to explore more. A pinterest type layout that is easy to navigate.

This page tells you all about what other users of Woodpie are doing in a nice cards layout. It feels good to scroll through all those book covers and see which ones catch my eye.

The page also has little widgets/column’s with lists of popular books and popular people, to help you find books to read and make friends in the community.

‘Me’ Tab

The ‘Me’ section has all the books I’ve added placed on shelves. There is also options to check out the ‘Reviews’ I’ve done, my ‘Wishlist’ and my ‘Friends’.

The page looks clean and I like how it is laid out. The bio section with numbers of reviews, books and wishlist is a handy thing for a quick appraisal.

Editing the profile is also easy and intuitive. On your Woodpie profile you can currently list links to Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and your Blog. What you see in the Me is what everyone else sees too when they come to your profile.

The Friends section has three divisions – the people you are connected to,people who are connected to you and Facebook contacts. The first two work quite like the following options on Goodreads or Facebook.

Clicking on Facebook contacts lists out my Facebook friends with an invite button next to each profile. As of now the listing seems limited to 32 friends and the site can’t load beyond that. I would have also liked to see a search option so I could get past the letter A quickly. 😀

Library

Clicking on the Library option takes you to a page filled with books. Here there are some excellent options to choose from. You can take a looks at all the books shared on Woodpie or look at just books in your city. You can also choose to view books from a list of 20 countries and active cities in it.

Trade

The Trade section has a listing of exchange offered made by you and to you. Since my trade section was empty I decided to try requesting a book and see how it worked out.

You can choose the book you want from your Wishlist section or click on any book in the Library. In your wishlist if a book is available (someone has it) you’ll see a ‘Get It’ note below the book details. The library of course has book that someone already has.

Searching for a book isn’t a great option as the results show all editions of the book and if you do not choose the same edition as other users, you will not be able to request the book.

Clicking on the ‘Get It’ option causes a drop down with the flow of getting the book. You first see a list of users who have the book. After you have chosen the user, you next have to choose the book you want to give in exchange on your list or books the user has requested. Finally before you confirm, you can suggest a place and time to meet up.

The exchange process is well laid out and simple. Once a exchange request is placed it shows up in the trade section. I would have liked to see options to mail or courier books too. That way I’m not limited to any city.

Adding Books

There are also two little buttons at the top to Add/Review Book and Invite Friends. Clicking on the Add button leads to a search box, and the results of a search give you a listing of various editions of the book.

The listing also has a lot of books related to your search topic. That’s means aside from the usual title, author and ISBN, you can also search by topic, though you may have to scroll through a lot of stuff.

Each book listing has options to add it to your library, request it or review it. If the book is already in your library, on your wishlist or reviewed the buttons will be depressed. The difference in the buttons being active and inactive is very slight. I’d have like it to be more prominent.

Invite Friends

The invite friends option leads to a page with three ways to find friends – Facebook, Email and Woodpie. The Facebook option here works well and lists all friends in a never ending list. Here too a search option would have been helpful.

The email section asks for a list of email ID’s. I would have liked a way to import email ID’s rather than type or copy paste them individually. In the preview email invite sent out goes from Anuradha Bajpai. I’d have liked to send the email out with my name.

The last option is to connect with users on Woodpie. This is a great way to find new book friends and create a new network of friends.

Apart from all of this in the top right hand corner you have settings and notifications. Settings allows you to choose what notifications you get and control Woodpie’s posting on your behalf on Facebook. Notifications is the usual listing of alerts. I would have liked to see date and time here tomato each alert more relevant.

Summary

Over all Woodpie looks and behaves way better than when I saw it two years ago. The usability and smoothness is good and I enjoyed going through the page. There are still some glitches to be smoothed out but nothing that majorly takes away from the experience.

The biggest drawback I see is not in the site but the concept. I don’t know how many people today want to metope and exchange books. That needs to the core missing piece I saw. There aren’t enough users right now and until the critical number is reached the site isn’t going to be very helpful.

That said, I would like to see a future for Woodpie as it would bring book lovers closer and revive paper books to some extent.

P.S. – I also hope they move their Social Links elsewhere. On a page with unlimited scrolling trying to click on links at the bottom of the page is a b*tch. 😛

 
P.S. – Day Eleven of the 30 Day Blogging Challenge.

Photo Credit: Andrew Subiela on Flickr

As a reader one of my biggest pain points has always been getting more books. While growing up my biggest challenge was my limited pocket money; my budget still is my biggest challenge.

Libraries helped solve this to some extent through the years but I’ve exhausted a few and there aren’t many left. Ebooks have also helped in price and availability but nothing beats paper books. I belong to book communities like Goodreads to make more reader friends but exchanging books across countries is unfeasible. Well, you get the gist of the problem, don’t you? 😀

Then a while back I heard of Woodpie – a site that encourages the exchange of paper books. This I had to check out.

Woodpie’s main page says that it helps you explore what’s trending, what your friends are reading, find rare books you’re looking for and even make real friends.

Here’s what you get when you login. I’ve filled in a bit of my profile, added some books and a review to see how the site works.

So, How does it work?

As a new user after setting up your profile, the first thing to do would be to add books to your shelf. When adding books you get two options – shelf and wishlist. In both cases you can choose who your book is visible to by adding circles and specific friends names. The shelf option also allows you to mark the book as read, reading or will read.
Circles here work just like on Google+. You categorise your friends into circles that you can then use to share relevant books.

Challenges –

I couldn’t find an invite friend option, and that would have been helpful to reach out to my friends on G+, Facebook and Twitter.
I would have loved an import G+ circles option, since it’s circles here too.

Plus –

Choosing circles and friends gives me privacy control over each book and I like that. No everyone needs to know what books I have and read. 😀

Library

Your library (separate from shelf) is a collection of books your friends have shared with you and all the books members have shared publicly. Basically these are the books that are accessible to you.

If it’s a book you want, you can request it from the main library page. Clicking on the request button gives you a list of people who own the book and options in the mode of exchange.

Clicking on the book takes you to a page with more details on the book, user ratings, reviews and a list of people who have the book. If its a book from your shelf you’ll also see a list of people who want the book and offer it to them with a click of a button.

Challenges –

The book details page does not have a request book button. To request a book you have to come back to the main library page.

Requests

We saw one way to request for books above but you can also request for books directly from on your wishlist. Aside from that there is also a page for all requests, where both sent and received requests can be tracked.

Matches

This is a interesting feature to me as it compares my shelf and wishlist against that of my friends and public and gives me a list of books I can share or borrow. Simply put I can see who owns books on my wishlist and request for them easily. I can also find people to pass a book onto after I’ve read it.

Plus –

It’s a great way to make new friends, share books, and save paper and save money.

Offers

The offers section works just like requests. You can track all your sent and received offers. You can also recall/cancel an offer.

Trends

This section gives you a snapshot of the most active books and members.

My Thoughts –

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On the whole I like the idea and site. I have a lot of books on my bookshelf I’d like to share and Woodpie lets me do just that with relative ease. It also helps me find books I want to read without having to buy them. And all of this helps me make actual new friends and widen my reader circle. This is good stuff.

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That said, the site still has a long way to go. There isn’t a large base of members yet, and that means that there isn’t a large variety of books to choose from. The probability of finding books from your wishlist on people’s shelves is currently quite small. I couldn’t find anyone to borrow Chanakya’s Chant from and that’s a fairly famous book.
The various social networks used by readers are not integrated into the site. I’d like to see options to invite friends, announce book requests & offers and import book lists. Adding books would be easier if I could import a book list from Goodreads, rather than add one book at a time.

Woodpie is a great idea and if there are enough people using it, there’d be a lot of happy readers. I’m going to be watching the site to see how things go.

One question though is picking at me – In the age of ebooks, where we are seeing libraries disappear, can a paper book exchange program work?
Are you on Woodpie? What do you think of it?