1st of November

Keep your eyes peeled guys, this November the 1st 2008 the new and improved We Swap Books will be launched, including

• More functionality
• Easier to use and understand
• New design
• Our USA site will go live as well
• 2 competitions launched on the 1st (one in the UK, one in the US)

So, keep your eyes peeled.

On the way

Roberts to-do list

1. Redesign website
2. Add more functionality and features
3. Build and launch USA site
4. Launch competition due for November

Phew! I’m working on number one just now and hope to have everything up and running before the end of October, including the American site.

Also I like to big up people who are impressed by the things I build :o) so go check out this guys blog

http://cliffjburns.wordpress.com/

A great blog and some free ebooks on his blog, his site is well worth a visit. I haven’t had the chance to read one of his ebooks yet, but his latest “Of the night” is available on the site and it is on my to-read list. Like I say the blog is good, so please go check it out.

SPREAD THE WORD

If you think you know someone who would enjoy the site. Maybe they have books to swap, maybe they are fed up buying new books every week for the commute to work. And they’re in the UK, then let them know.

I’m trying to spread word of the site to the four corners of the web, if you can help in anyway…let me know.

reviews

You might have noticed that a recent edition to the site has been book reviews (the reviews tab from the front page leads to)

http://www.weswapbooks.com/uk/reviews/default.aspx

If you’d like to submit a book review for everyone on the site to enjoy then please, contact me and I’ll give you an idea of what books are suitable and that kind of thing. No prizes (not this time around anyway) but you never know.

Please don’t be put off by the length of the one we have on the site just now (Lilly did a fantastic job writing this one and the fact it’s so long is utterly my fault, I found some 2000 word book reviews and thought that was a good length. It’s not, but not Lillys fault (who produced a great review despite this) the fault is totally mine).

Lilly Hunter’s review for “A good old fashioned future” is a great review of one of my favourite sci-fi books. Click here to check it out.

I might include one’s I like in the next newsletter and if you have a link, I will add a link to your site from your blog.

YES….100!!!

We just hit 100 members, YES!!!

In April we had 9, today 100…a fast turnaround and long may it continue

edinburgh book festival

A little disappointed I didn’t get to the book festival more often this year. I was ill for the start of the festival and then the weather really took a turn for the worse the rest of the festival, I only managed to make it along twice and hand out leaflets outside. I think handing out leaflets outside is a good way to gather more members for the site and generate interest in our community.

A few things that disappointed me while handing out leaflets

• Staff from the festival were very dismissive of me. I had thought if they were really into books they would have at the very least taken one of my leaflets, especially as I was saying “book swapping site” to them. They not only were pretty dismissive, some of them outright ignored me. Now I can understand this to a degree as they did have a few people outside advertising shows, but as far as I could tell…the times I was there I was the only one actually handing out leaflets for something book related. So a bit miffed with the staff at the festival…
• The amount of tourists I saw that were almost hit with a car outside the festival was worrying to say the least. Now I was only outside about 3 hours this year but I think every 10 mins a tourist would just walk out, how no-one was hurt is a miracle. In saying that Edinburgh drivers coming up to Charlotte Square aren’t the most patient. Especially the day 5 of them sat and beeped horns at an old woman who was taking to long to cross the road…an old woman with 2 walking sticks. I mean what was she going to do, drop them and run.
• At one point I felt kinda sick and shaky so I went inside the festival to get something to eat. So I bought a can opf lemonade and a biscuit (an empire biscuit to be precise cause I found it funny the guy behind the till didn’t know what I meant when I called it an empire biscuit. I said “been in catering long then” to which I got a bemused look. No more bemused he got when he told me for a can of lemonade and biscuit I owed him £3. £3. Remind me to take food next time I go.

To be honest if it weren’t for my site and handing out leaflets I would give next years book festival a miss. Unfortunately I won’t be able to, like I say it’s just too good an oppurtunity to let other book lovers know about the site. Mind you by next year hopefully the site will be a bit bigger, sister site should be up and running by this time next year.

Nigerian School Books

Standing outside the book festival handing out bookmarkers I met a guy who was promoting an African Children Stories show happening later that day. I got chatting to him and he let me know something quite interesting.

Apparently the rate of inflation in Nigeria has made many things unaffordable for a lot of people, one of them is school books. He’s been spending his time trying to find second hand school books (I don’t think the subject matters or even age range) to send to Nigeria where they’re screaming out for these kinda resources.  Education is a big thing in Nigeria (where isn’t it?) and this would be a huge help for a lot of kids.

I said I would help anyway I could, so…

Does anyone know anywhere or anyhow to get a load of second hand school books to send to Nigeria?

phew

Well after a late night, the forum is up and running.

Sent out the 1st newsletter today as well and later tonight I hope to add about 15(ish) books to the site. If you’re at the book festival tomorrow, I’ll be the one in the We Swap Books t-shirt handing out leaflets.

Now I asked this question in the forum, so I’ll ask it here as well…

As some of you may know I have 2 more sites in the planning stage.

• A version of this site for the USA
• This places sister site that I’m playing close to my chest for now

This is not to mention a complete redesign for the site, most likely in the new year. I have a question though. In terms of the USA site, would you guys prefer it if it was a standalone site or mixed with the current site?

Would you like to be able to swap books with members in the states or not?

Let me know what you think because it will influence how I build the USA site.

today’s a big day

I hope to launch the forum today and send out the first newsletter for the site.

A lot of work involved in both (as I’m sure you can imagine) so fingers crossed everything goes ok.

Also today the site is being promoted on Gumtree and Facebook and hopeful of being featured in a national newspaper very soon…fingers crossed. Weather permitting I’ll also be at the Edinburgh Book Festival this Saturday (16th) handing out free bookmarkers, so feel free to say hi.

In preperation for what is a big day I’ve added 14 new books to the site and plan to add around 20ish later today as well.

EDIT: Ok, bit of a small problem with the forum and coupled together with the fact I went and seen Batman for a 3rd time last night, I’ve not got the forum copied over yet. But fingers crossed today I will. Newsletter should come out Friday.

cool book covers site

I found a pretty cool website that lets people look at some amazing book cover designs and rate them. Pop over and visit the site, you’ll find yourself looking at the designs for hours.

http://www.coverboom.com/

some small things

just a quick update on the site this time around…

• 2 new sections added in the shape of the spirituality & religion section and the politics section. When the site was launched I didn’t want to have too many sections with very little books. So I decided to lump a great many of them into the section titled “Other”. I received an email asking for a religious section and decided to separate these 2 subjects from the other section.
• The first inaugural newsletter is on the way. The hold up at the moment is I wanted to include a book review in the first newsletter and I suck at writing book reviews…just awful. So what I was going to do instead was ask someone else to write it. I’m still looking for someone, asked a few people and no luck yet, but fingers crossed something happens soon. By the way if you or someone else you know would like a stab at it, let me know (reply in a comment here or send me a message from the WSB Site).
• You may have noticed the changes to the scores on the site, it now includes your swap total as well. This is taken from the amount of feedback you have, so if you have a lower swap score than you thought you should have, this is why. It’s based on the amount of swaps you have feedback for, not just the amount of swaps. Feedback is not mandatory so sometimes the scores won’t match. Also I hope it will encourage everyone to leave feedback after each swap.
• More promotion. You may have seen our ads in Facebook and Gumtree. Over the next few days I will be adding a StumbleUpon icon on the front page of the site, any suggestions for any others?
• The Edinburgh Book Festival is on the way
• As is the new forum. My 9-5 job at the moment is super hectic so I’ve not had the change to build the forum as quickly as I would like. However I do think this would be a big addition and improvement to the community feel on the site so hopefully I’ll get a chance to work on it soon enough.

Other than that, nothing much to tell. I’ll post a couple more not site news posts on this blog, more thoughts from this old head of mine.

If you know anyone with a load of books, books they don’t want anymore or even just books they’d like to recycyle and they’re in the UK, then please tell them about our site at www.weswapbooks.com

Any comments, questions, suggestions, I’m always glad to hear from you.