How it works

Abridgedly is a map of the books near you: neighbours' shelves, little libraries, bookshops and public libraries. This page goes through what you can do here and what happens when you do, in the order you are likely to meet it. It describes what is built today and nothing else.

The map

Open the map. You do not need an account. It opens on roughly where your connection says you are, or on a ZIP, postcode or town you type. A pin is one of four things: neighbours' books, pinned at a spot snapped to roughly a kilometre rather than at anyone's door; a little library; a bookshop; or a public library. Search finds books by title or author and places by name.

Tap a book to open its page. Every book is coloured by how it is offered: free, borrow, rent or buy. Grey means the owner has not said yet, and you can still ask for it. Places have pages too, and so does a city once two or more people have put themselves on the map there.

Looking sets nothing in motion. Asking for a book is the first thing that needs an account.

Your shelf on the map

Join with your email address, or with Sign in with Apple. We email you a link to get in; you can set a password later in Settings if you would rather have one. You pick a handle and a name, both of which can wait, and every account starts with a shelf.

Put books on it by photographing the shelf and letting us read the spines, by scanning a barcode, or by typing a title. You can try a shelf photo before you have an account and keep the result when you sign in. If your library already lives on Goodreads or StoryGraph, import it from Settings.

For each book you say how it is offered: free, borrow, rent or buy. A book you have not decided about shows grey and can still be asked for. Free and borrow never cost anything to list. Rent and buy are the commercial ones: once 100 of your books are for sale or rent, listing another takes Abridgedly Plus, at $10.00/month. We take no cut of what you sell; the money is between you and your neighbour. Where a book's page carries a Bookshop.org link for buying it new, any commission on that link is ours, except on a shelf whose owner is entitled to their own: a verified shop or library, or a subscriber, with their own affiliate id and a name in Settings. A box's copies always carry ours. It helps pay for the servers.

What listing shows

Your books sit on the map at a spot snapped to roughly one kilometre, so the pin is never your door, and the book's own page draws that area rather than a point. We never ask for an address. A pickup spot you name for a handover is kept at the same precision, under whatever name you give it. The shelf you start with is private until you publish it; a shelf you add later is public unless you say otherwise, and you can change either at any time. The privacy page has the detail.

Your profile shows your handle, name, bio and photo, your public shelves and lists, the public clubs you run, what you have actually done here, and how neighbours have rated you, notes included. Where it is switched on, you can also chip in as a supporter from Settings; it buys nothing, it is thanks.

Asking for a book

You ask. On the book's page, ask for it. The owner is told, on the site and by email or push unless they have turned those off, and nobody else can ask for that copy while your request is open.
The owner answers. They accept or decline. Accepted, the book is marked as spoken for, and you settle a spot and a time by message. You can message any member from their profile at any time. Messages are seen by the two of you, and by us only if one of you reports the conversation; you can block or report anyone at any point.
The handover. The owner marks the book handed over and you both confirm. A free book or a sale is finished there. A borrowed or rented book stays on loan until the owner marks it returned.
The rating. When it is finished, each of you can rate the other: stars, and a short note if you want to leave one, both changeable for a day. Ratings appear on profiles as an average and a count, with the recent notes.

Your exchanges page keeps the record, by year, and a book that comes back can be relisted with one press.

Little libraries

The book boxes on street corners. Most came from OpenStreetMap; the rest were added by people who walk past them. Nobody owns one here. A box belongs to whoever tends it, so there is no account behind it to approve you and nothing to join before you can stock one.

Finding one. Boxes are pins on the map, a city page lists the boxes near it, and a search for a book finds its nearest copy, in a box or on a shelf. A box's page lists what has been reported into it, with photos and comments from passers-by, and you can follow it to hear when it is stocked.

Reporting what is in it. Standing at the box, signed in, add the books the way you add them to your own shelf: a photo, a barcode or a title. Each book names who reported it, and the box's page counts how many people have kept it stocked.

Confirming a neighbour's sighting. Scan a book the box already lists and that counts as a sighting, whoever reported it first. Once a book has been seen a second time, its row says how many times it has been confirmed and when it was last seen, so a box that is tended reads differently from one that is not. When you scan, the books we can match to what is already in the box arrive ticked, so what you are deciding about is the new ones.

Stewarding. Report to a box and you are tending it: the boxes you stock get a page of their own on your profile, which you can hide, and adding a book to one goes straight to the box. A box you put on the map yourself is yours to correct, within limits once others have added to it. You can delete it while nothing has been added to it; after that you can delist it instead; once a host has been recorded for it, neither. If a box sits on your property, you can ask to be recorded as its host. Once we approve that, you can have the box taken off the map and put back, and nothing more: the box's page never names you.

Book clubs

Starting one. Create a club and it gets a page, a join link, a QR code and a printable sheet. Anyone with the link is in; anyone who finds a public club's page without one, or holds a recently replaced link, can ask to join and the organiser answers. Invite people by email too. There is no directory, though a public club shows on its organiser's profile. Organisers moving a club from somewhere else have a page of their own.

The reading list. Point the club at one of your public reading lists. The club page then carries, in this order, the next meeting, any open vote, the book you are on now with the previous one under it, the reading schedule, the discussion, and the list itself.

Meetings and votes. Say when and where you next meet and members get a calendar file. To choose the next book, put two to six from the list to a vote: one vote each, changeable while it is open; the organiser sees the count as it goes, and everyone sees the totals once it closes, unless the organiser picks the winner while it is still open, which ends the vote. The day before it closes, anyone who has not voted is reminded. The organiser picks the winner from the results, before the deadline or after it, which is also how a tie is settled, and that book becomes the current read.

Reading two books together. Any choice on a vote can be a pair, two books from the list voted for as one. If the pair wins, the club reads both, side by side under Reading now, and the organiser can set a companion read by hand from the same picker that sets the current book.

The reading schedule. The organiser lays signposts through the current book. Members mark where they have got to, and once two have, the page shows who is at each signpost; nobody is ranked. Alongside the signposts the organiser can switch on folding: a comment pinned to a signpost then folds for anyone else who has not reached it yet.

Reading lists and wants

A reading list is a shelf of books you want rather than have. Add to it by typing a title, by pressing Want on any book's page, or through the Goodreads or StoryGraph import, and tick a book off once you have read it. A list is private until you make it public; a public list has a page you can send to anyone, account or not.

When a book on one of your lists is listed near you, we tell you, once per book. You can switch that off list by list, or stop the emails and pushes for all of them in Settings.

Following

Follow a neighbour's shelf from their profile, and a public reading list or a little library from its page. You hear when a book lands on a shelf or list you follow, and when a box you follow is stocked, photographed or commented on.

Notifications arrive on the site, by email and by push. They come in six groups, exchanges, messages, things you follow, clubs, wanted books and notices from us, each with its own email switch and push switch in Settings. The shelves you follow and the clubs you are in sit on your shelves page.