LibraryTechtonics

I love Target. *Love* Target. However, I’m not a big buyer of books, CDs, or DVDs, so I never really browse those departments of the store.

I think I was showing my SO a book that’s been a big hit with readers lately (for the life of me, I can’t remember the title, but I bet if I was standing at a circ terminal, I could type it in my sleep :D), and I saw a sticker on one of the books that had the logo of what apparently is Target’s book club.

Bookmarked [http://bookmarked.target.com/] is a book club site that offers everything from the list of bestsellers at Target to ideas for helping your book club stay connected.

To start a book club with your friends, sign up for an account, invite your friends to join, and you have your own online book club house, where you can keep a list of future books on the club’s agenda, create a poll for your group, add events (which could very well be anything from meeting at a friend’s house to logging in to the same chat room on IM or Skyping it), and see other book-related events all over the country (there’s a listing for a children’s book book festival sponsored by the Boston Globe at Faneuil Hall in Boston September 17).

Users can access the book reviews, book club meeting food and decor tips, and meeting theme sections of the site without a login. The Book Overview offers a summary of the book with a cover shot, as well as links to book reviews, author information, meeting and food ideas, and discussion questions. Clicking on the link to the author’s name or the genre shows you other titles with Book Overview listings, and each search result gives you Club Actions options to add the book to your club’s Book List, create a poll for your group, or simply email an item to a friend.

I was pleasantly surprised at how non-salesly this site is. It would be quite easy for Target to add “Buy Now” links to everything, but they don’t. Perhaps it’s an effort to a) not compete with their partner, Amazon.com, and/or b) get people to buy books in their stores. I’m just speculating.

The selection of Book Overviews seems somewhat limited to best sellers and items featured by Target, but you can manually add books to your list that aren’t in the Target book database, you just might have to come up with the summary and questions yourself, or, alternately, ask your friendly neighborhood librarian.
Also nifty is the Breakout Books section, a list of the books that aren’t your average best sellers, featuring new authors, contemporary topics, and award winners. The selection is very diverse genre-wise, which is nice, but it is very Literature & Fiction heavy, like the rest of the site.

The Promotions do show up as tasteful ads on different pages of the site, and are accessible through a link in the top navigation. Current contests include a chance to meet Jodi Picoult and winning copies of books for your book club.

The site is heavily chick-oriented, with gals pics on most pages. I’m hoping the target audience (no pun intended) isn’t an indication of why the site is lacking in non-fiction reading materials. I don’t actually know how long the service has been around, so I don’t know how long they’ve been growing things out, or where it’s headed, but it’s a nice free service, and I’d like to see it grow. Overall, I am quite impressed, and I’d love to hear from anyone who is using it, or has used it in the past.

Tags: reading, technology
|  Print This Post |

Both comments and pings are currently closed.