We live in a very interesting world now, with the advent of browser and cloud based applications. We can talk to people anywhere in the world and share just about anything we want: where we are, what we’re buying, what movies we watch, what books we’re reading, etc. I’ve been looking for a good way to share books for a while (and even started developing my own WordPress plugin for it), and think I found a pretty nice solution in Readernaut.
It looks like Readernaut has been around since 2007, but I just discovered it last year when my friend told me about it. From their About page:
Share your reading experience by writing notes, tracking progress, and engaging in meaningful discussions with friends.
With the right group of friends, you can really leverage Readernaut’s social aspects to get some nice discussions going about whatever you happen to be reading.
Readernaut Homepage (once logged in)
As you can see from the above screenshot, what you see when you first login is a timeline of activity from you and your friends. From here, you can comment or share anything that appears in your timeline. You also have a search bar at the top of the page; this is what we’ll use to add books to our profile.
Managing Books
Book Search
When you do a search, you can choose from several options: Amazon, Books, Notes, Users, and Tags. While Amazon is the default search option, it does not seem to be working. Any search term brings up the same results. However, when it is working, it is the most convenient, as you can add a book to your profile right from the results page.
In the screenshot above, I used the “Books” option. It does not include as much information, but the results are accurate. Clicking on a title will bring you to the book’s page, which displays other people’s progress and notes, people reading the book, editions of the book, and user lists it’s been added to. You can add the book using the button on the right hand side, which allows you to add it as one of the following statuses: Reading, Finished, Plan to read, Reference, Wishlist, Abandoned. Once you add it, it will be placed on your profile page.
Book's profile page
Your books are organized by Finished, Reading, Plan to read, and All. I do like how all of the books are displayed by cover, though I wish there were some sorting options. Right now, your books are sorted by date added, most recent first. I’d prefer alphabetical by title. To update a book, you simple mouseover the book to reveal a few options: Write note, Amazon, and an icon which allows you to add the book to one of your lists. Write note allows you to do just that, as well as mark the page the note refers to, and a few tags. Clicking the title will take you to the book’s page, where you have more options, including marking off your progress and changing the book’s status.
Book's mouse over and Progress tracking
One feature I really like about Readernaut’s progress tracking is that you can do it not only by page or chapter, but also by Kindle location. As a Kindle owner, this is something I appreciate, as it’s unclear how pages relate to Kindle locations (no doubt, because of the varying Kindle device sizes). This does, however, alienate people who use another e-reader.
I would have thought you’d be able to change the book’s status and mark your progress without having to go to the book’s page (it would be included in the mouse over), as these I imagine, are the most commonly used functions.
Import Books
Another really nice feature of Readernaut is the ability to import books from LibraryThing, Shelfari, Good Reads, and Anobii. If you don’t use any of those, but still have a list of books you want to import, you can also do it by ISBN. This can be a really useful feature for those who want to switch or get a running start once they sign up.
The Social
The other aspect of Readernaut is that its a social site. You have a profile and friends!
Your Book List
When you friend someone, their progress will show up on your home page and they’ll be listed as a friend on your profile. Aside from that, there is no dicernable change between your friends and other users. It doesn’t look like friending someone gives you access to more information or the ability to comment on posts. You can do that with any user.
You can find friends from Twitter and Flickr. Just head on over here and put in your username for either service.
On your profile, people will be able to view your activity, books, notes, lists, and some (very) basic information, as well as write on your wall. While you can add other profile links like Facebook and Twitter, there doesn’t seem to be any integration with them, like posting books to your profile or importing tweets.
Getting to the edit profile area is also kind of confusing- you need to go to Profile on the left, and then you’ll see “Edit Profile” on the right.
Staying Organized
My favorite thing about Readernaut is how useful it is to stay organized. With any book, you can track your progress, jot down quotes and reviews, and keep a nice log of the books you’ve read using lists (or the standard functions). Everything is dated and you can tag your notes with terms like, “quote,” “review,” “spoiler,” etc.
The notes and comments system, as I stated earlier, makes it really easy to get good book discussions going online. However, even though I have a few popular books on my list, I didn’t see a lot of that. My thought is that Readernaut does not have the user base you’d find in other, even slightly more popular social web apps. This is probably due to the stiff competition from other websites.
Conclusion
I like Readernaut; it’s simple and functional. I really like their notes/progress features and the ability to create an archive of your reading history. However, there are some UI & functionality faux pas that make the app a little uninutitive. This is most apparent in the search for Amazon items, which doesn’t seem to work. I would also like to see better social media integration. For example, I’d like to automatically post to Twitter when I finish a book. It would also be awesome if Readernaut automatically hid notes tagged ‘spoiler’ on any book you don’t have marked as Finished.
There is a lot of potential if Readernaut plays it’s cards right; I’d really like to see the site take off. With a stronger user base and some refinement, I think it can be the best social books web app out there. They are listed as in beta, so hopefully we’ll see some growth in the future.