It’s time to dig in, get your hands dirty, and build your book club’s Library! In this guide, we’ll tell you everything you need to know:

The Library within the application is essentially a list of titles that the Champion has approved for members to read as a part of your book club. Rather than assigning one book for everyone to read, we encourage companies to let team members choose for themselves from a list of approved titles. It’s a win-win: team members don’t feel like they’re being assigned homework and companies know that their employees are reading relevant books.

Note: The application itself does not house e-books or audiobooks.
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We encourage you to start simple with your club’s Library—you don’t have to add every single title in one sitting! You can simply add titles as you go so the Library is continually growing with fresh new titles. There are a few ways to go about populating the Library:

Keeping true to the customizable nature of BetterBookClub, this is completely up to you! Typically, companies will add titles that are generally business related, industry-specific, or aim to promote personal and professional growth in some way.

Tip: Before rolling out to your company, encourage your leadership team to add their favorite business books to your book club’s library. Once you’ve rolled out the program to the rest of your employees, ask them to suggest their favorite business books to the Library as well. You’ll populate the Library with relevant titles, while also getting your team engaged with the program. Win-win!
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While the Library within the application does not house the books themselves, there are a number of ways you can provide books to your team members.

Physical Bookshelf
If a majority of your employees work in your office, we highly recommend having a physical bookshelf from which your book club members can borrow books. Ideally, this would be in a highly trafficked area of your office to help keep the program top of mind for members and encourage participation. Not to mention this is a great talking point for visitors!

Start Your Bookshelf
Much like your online library, there are many ways to get your physical bookshelf started.

Note: Your physical bookshelf does not have to mirror the online Library. For example, you can have 100+ titles in the Library online but only have 25 books on your physical bookshelf, and that’s perfectly fine.

Budget
Maintaining a bookshelf does not have to be budget-breaking. We recommend setting aside a small monthly or quarterly budget to help keep your bookshelf updated and fresh. Something as small as $50-$75 a quarter can be a great place to start—this is totally up to you.

Upkeep & Organization
There’s no need to go crazy with organizing your bookshelf. Simply grouping books and audiobooks by topic or author should do just the trick.

In order to keep your bookshelf in tip-top shape, we recommended purchasing hardback books over paperbacks. Hardbacks will last longer and get you a lot more bang for your buck.

Companies with Remote Team Members
Your company may have some remote workers, or perhaps your entire organization is strictly remote. You can still provide your book club members with books—it just may look a little different than the bookshelf we talked about earlier.

If your company only has remote workers that ‘check in’ to the office from time to time, have them borrow a book when they come in and then bring it back the next time they return.

If your organization is solely remote, there are a few different things you can try:

As you start adding new titles to your Library, you’ll need to begin thinking about your Point system and how you’ll reward your team for reading. Read our next guide about Points & Rewards for ideas and best practices!