Category Archives: Recommended

Have a Clever Christmas with Booko: Beating the rush this Christmas

2021, Booko, Christmas, Gifts, How to Guide, Recommended, Shopping, Top Tips, ,

With only 8 weeks to go until Christmas, it’s time to start thinking about gift lists and pressie ideas. While it may seem like plenty of time to get things sorted, COVID has impacted delivery times both locally and overseas. Fear not, we have a few tricks up our sleeves to help you have a Clever Christmas. Firstly we’ll be updating our handy annual delivery date table that notes the shipping cut off times around the world. Make sure you keep an eye out, and be sure to follow our social media channels (instagram, facebook, pinterest and twitter) as we’ll be posting it there. 

Last week we launched our super handy new feature which allows you to follow lists suggesting books from all sorts of genres, interests, reading levels and favourite books. If you missed it, you can read about that here. 

One of our favourite parts of Booko is the ease in buying for friends and family who live overseas. Today we’re sharing a little refresh to show you how you can cut out the middle person, purchase a DVD or book in the local currency and the gift gets shipped directly to the recipient living overseas. This allows you to avoid the dreaded international postage fees and shipping times, and makes Christmas clever.

Start by jumping online to Booko.

In the top right hand corner, there is a flag (it’s usually your local country flag).  Click on this and all the countries that Booko works with will appear.  Select the country’s flag that you want to send a book to.  When you choose a different country, both the shipping charges and times are automatically changed and are specific to that country (so it’s easy to make sure your gift will make it in time).

You can see from the image above we have selected the UK.  From here, you will have a range of online booksellers that you can purchase from. All prices and delivery charges have now been converted into the British Pound. You can also see the shipping times involved.

Then simply select the retailer you are happy to buy from. You’ll then be taken directly to their website to purchase. In this example we have chosen Amazon UK.

See, it’s super easy and postage-panic free.

Be sure to keep an eye out on delivery times and availability. While many booksellers ship internationally, you may find your presents will arrive sooner when buying from the local store to your recipient. It makes sense to get the book delivered directly to your family and friends, it saves on postage costs, postage times and gives you greater security that it will arrive before the big fellow in the red suit!

Happy shopping and let’s all get all the presents sent so we can sit back and enjoy Summer. 

Enjoy. 

Making lists just got fun, social and super clever

2021, Booko, Christmas, Community, Gifts, Hacks, How to Guide, Lifestyle, Lists, My Next Read, New Feature, Organisation, Recommended, Top Books, Top Tips

We are all about clever shopping at Booko, whether that’s finding the best price, shopping internationally, choosing second hand or setting your own prices. We have a brand spanking new feature on Booko that we know will make your lives a little easier. 

Sometimes we have no idea what to read and just need a recommendation, other times we’re looking for books to give as gifts but have no idea what the recipient would enjoy. Today, we are taking all of the guesswork away and are launching the ‘following’ function in our hugely popular list section. 

Now you can follow a number of lists which suggest books to read, movies to watch or even ideas for Santa. 

Let’s start by having a look at our current list function. 

When you log into your Booko account a drop down menu appears to the left hand side of the site and you will see Lists and Following as options. 

When you click on Lists you are shown all of the lists you have created on Booko. 

You can also add more lists here. We often suggest making lists for all different reasons such as books for each course at uni, gift ideas, a wishlist of books that you’d love to read this summer, bookclub books, movies you want to watch oneday… the options are endless. 

You can change the settings on these lists by clicking on the little pencil icon to the side. Here you can choose to make your list private, sharable or discoverable. 

Private means only you can see what is on the list, sharable allows you to send a copy of the list via a link (super handy when you are giving Grandma ideas for Christmas presents) and finally, discoverable is our new option. It allows you to share your list with everyone and they can follow along as you add more books to your list. 

Because your privacy is super important to us, you can change the setting of your lists whenever you like, you can easily switch from private, shareable and discoverable by clicking on the pencil icon. 

When you click on Following in your drop down menu, it shows all of the lists that you follow, these include all of your own private lists, any that have been shared and sent to you via a link, along with any of the discoverable lists you have decided you’d like to follow. Again, you can unfollow any list at any time by clicking the ‘unfollow’ button to the right hand-side of the list. 

How to find a list to follow.

In the menu bar at the top of the Booko website you’ll see Blog, History, Alerts and Lists as options that you can click (along with the super handy country flag which allows you to shop in different countries and currencies). When you select Lists, a dropdown menu appears with Manage My Lists and Discover More Lists along with all of the lists you have previously created. Manage My Lists takes you straight to the list function above where you can change settings on your lists, along with adding and removing books, adding a description about the list and renaming the list. 

Discover More Lists is where you will find book recommendations galore. 

All of the lists that Booko and our community of users have set to ‘discoverable’ will show up here. We have made a few lists to get you started and will continue to add to them but it is also a space where the Booko community can share topics, authors, genres, gift ideas and favourite books. To follow a list, simply click on the orange ‘follow’ button to the right. If you’d like to take a closer look at the list, just click on the list title and a new page will open showing all of the books in the list along with their blurb. You can then click on the book image and add it to one of your own lists, set a price alert, or even buy it straight away!

As always, prices are constantly being refreshed behind the scenes so it doesn’t matter how old the book is, how long it has been on someone’s list, we will always show the most recent price. 

We were inspired by our book loving community to create this new feature, you have so generously recommended books in the past and we wanted to give you a space so that this can continue. So get clicking, make a list, add your favourite books to it, set it to discoverable and we’ll follow along.

As usual, we’d love your feedback on this new feature so we can make sure it serves our community’s needs best. Drop us a line at booko@booko.com.au with your thoughts and suggestions.

Enjoy!