Reading Together

Everyone on a BookOrbit server reads the same copy of a book, so that copy can carry notes from everyone who has read it, like a paperback passed between friends. Reading together builds on that: clubs and buddy reads for reading a book at the same time, passing a book on to one person with a note, shared notes and reactions left in the book for whoever reads it next, and a way to see who else on the server is reading it.

All of it is cooperative. There are no rankings or leaderboards, and nothing leaves your server.

The spoiler fence

Everything here follows one rule: you only ever see what sits before your own position in the book. A note someone left in chapter 12 appears when you reach chapter 12, a section’s discussion opens once you have read past the end of that section, and reactions further on are hidden too, including their counts. A cluster of gasps at 80% is a spoiler, so even the number is fenced.

Your position for the fence is the furthest point you have reached while actually reading, and it never moves back:

Re-reading or resetting progress does not hide anything you already unlocked.
Jumping ahead with the table of contents or the progress bar does not unlock anything. Only reading there does.
Finishing the book, including marking it read yourself, unlocks everything in it.
Audiobooks unlock at the end of each chapter you have listened to. A read-along EPUB gives an exact position instead.

Notes may arrive a little late, but never early.

Who can see what

What	Who sees it
A club, its members, and its books	Its members. An open club’s name, book, and member count are listed only to people who can open that book.
Your position in a club read	Members of that club, exactly or only by section if you choose.
Club discussions	Members, each section once they have read it.
A note you share with a club	Members who can open the book, once they reach it.
A note you share with everyone	Anyone on the server who can open the book, once they reach it.
Replies to a note	The same people as the note itself.
Your reactions	Your club inside a club read; elsewhere, everyone or only you, as you choose.
That you are reading a book	People who can open the same book, only while you share your reading in detail and choose to show it.
Your pace planner	Only you.
A note shared with the people you passed the book to	Each person you passed it to with your notes, once they reach it.
How far you have read, for someone who passed you a book	Nobody, unless you agree: then they hear when you reach their notes and when you finish.
Your ballot when the club chooses its next book	Nobody. Only the count, round by round, is shown.
Poll answers	Members who answered the same poll, as counts. Predictions stay sealed until each member’s debrief.
Your rating in a club debrief	Members who finished the book by reading it and have rated it too.
Your profile picture	Other readers on the server, once you appear in reading together: in a club, shown as reading a book, or as the author of a shared note or reply. Everyone else sees your initials.

Opening a book always means the same thing it does everywhere else in BookOrbit: library access plus any tag or genre restrictions. Reading together never gives anyone access to a book they could not already open. A club can only pick books that every member can open.

Clubs

Open Clubs in the sidebar to see your invitations, the clubs you are in, and open clubs you can join.

Click New club, give it a name and an optional description, and choose who can join:

Setting	Meaning
Invite only	Only people you invite can join. This is the default.
Open to this server	Anyone on the server who can open the club’s book can find and join it.

The person who creates a club is its host. Only the host can invite people, pick and schedule books, and remove members. A host can hand the role to another member from the member’s menu.

Picking a book

From the ⋯ menu on the club page, the host chooses Start a book or Queue a book. The book search lists only books every member can open; if a member cannot open the book you want, an admin can fix their library access.

A club read is either scheduled or open:

Scheduled: set a finish date and BookOrbit splits the book into weekly sections that end on chapter boundaries. The host can also edit the sections by hand from Schedule in the same menu, each with its own due date.
Open: no finish date. Members read at their own pace and talk after the book.

The club page

A club’s page is built around the book it is reading now: its cover and title, the current section and when it is due, and Continue reading, which opens the book where you left off. Below that come where everyone is, the discussions, your pace, and the notes from other readers you have unlocked. Books queued next and books the club has finished are listed beside them. Click the members’ faces to see everyone in the club; the host invites, removes, and hands over the host role from there.

Discussions

Each section of a scheduled read has its own discussion, which opens to a member once they have read past the end of that section. There is also an After the book discussion for members who have finished. An open read has only the after-the-book discussion.

Members can edit and delete their own posts. The host can hide a post from members.

Polls and predictions

Any member can ask the club a question from a discussion with Ask the club: a question and two to six answers. It sits at the top of that discussion, so members see it once they have read that far.

Kind	How it works
Poll	Answer to see how the club answered. You can change your answer.
Prediction	Only in a section’s discussion. Everyone’s answers stay sealed until the debrief, and yours is final once given. Predictions close for you when your debrief opens.

The member who asked, or the host, can remove a question.

The debrief

When you finish the book by reading to the end, a Debrief opens above the After the book discussion. Marking a book finished without reading it opens the discussion but not the debrief.

Ratings: rate the book with one to five stars to see how the club rated it, with the average. This is your own rating of the book, the same one shown everywhere else in BookOrbit.
Predictions: every prediction from the read, and who picked which answer.
Where everyone reacted: the reactions across the whole book, now that nothing is ahead of you.

Where everyone is

The club page shows the whole book as one track, cut into the club’s sections with their due dates, and puts each member’s face where they are, like runners in a race. Members who have finished gather at the end. A dashed line marks where the schedule expects you to be today. Behind your own position, small bars show where readers reacted; ahead of you the track is hatched, because the fence hides even that.

In the reader, members’ faces appear on the progress bar the same way, and the club members button lists their positions.

If you would rather not show your exact position, open the members list from the club page and turn on Hide my exact position. Other members then see only which section you are in, and your face sits in the middle of that section instead of at your exact place.

Your pace

On a scheduled read, a ring on the club page shows how much you need to read to stay on track: about how many minutes a day to reach the next due date, or how far behind you are if a section is overdue. The estimate uses how fast you have been reading this book, or your recent reading of other books before you have started. Only you see it.

Choosing the next book

The host can let the club choose what to read next with Choose the next book together on the club page. A round has three stages, and the host moves it from one to the next:

Nominating: each member nominates up to two books, with a note if they like. A book must be one every member can open. When the host can request books, members can also search for books the server does not have yet.
Voting: each member ranks the books they would read, best first. Ballots are secret, and you can change yours until voting closes.
Decided: the host closes voting. The book with the most first choices wins if more than half of the counted ballots chose it; otherwise the book with the fewest drops out and its ballots count for their next choice, until one book has a majority. Everyone sees the count round by round, but not who ranked what.

The winning book goes onto the club’s list, or starts if the club is not reading anything. A winner the server does not have is requested by the host and joins the list when it arrives. The host can cancel a round, and start a new one at any time.

Leaving and closing

Leaving a club keeps what you wrote visible to the club, and you can come back if you are invited again. The host can remove a member, mark a book finished or stop reading it, and close the club. A closed club and its discussions can no longer be opened.

Buddy reads

A buddy read is a club of two, for reading one book with one person. Open a book and choose Read along, then pick someone. BookOrbit starts an open read of that book and invites them.

If you already read the book with that person in a club, Read along takes you to that club instead of starting another.

Passing a book on

Pass a book to one person on your server, like lending a paperback. On a book’s page, choose Pass it on from the actions menu or from the Reading together band, pick someone who can open the book, and add a note if you like.

Share my highlights and notes goes with it unless you turn it off. Every highlight on the book you have not shared yet becomes visible to the people you pass the book to, and each one appears when they reach it, like any shared note. Notes you already share keep their audience.
They are notified, and the book waits for them in Passed to you at the top of Home with your note. They can put it away from there.
On the book’s page they see your note, and are asked once whether to let you know how they get on. Only if they agree are you told when they reach your notes and when they finish. They can change their answer from the band’s ⋯ menu.
Take back from the band’s ⋯ menu removes the pass. Notes you shared as passed stop reaching that person, but still reach anyone else you passed the book to.

Passing a book never gives anyone access to it; you can only pass a book to someone who can already open it.

Shared notes

Your highlights and notes are private unless you share them. You can share each one with a club you are in, with everyone on the server who can open the book, or, once you have passed the book on with your notes, with the people you passed it to. Inside a club read, the club is the suggested choice; elsewhere, only you is.

You can share in two places:

In the EPUB reader: when you highlight a passage, choose who can see it from the selection toolbar.
On the book page: the Highlights tab has a Shared notes strip. Share highlights opens a list of your highlights for that book, where you can share several at once or stop sharing them. This works for EPUB and PDF highlights.

Comics and audiobooks cannot hold notes, so they have no shared notes.

Reading others’ notes

In the EPUB reader, when the window leaves room beside the page, notes sit in the margin next to their passage, folded into the faces of the people who wrote them. Click one to read the note, see its reactions, or open its replies. A note you reach while reading opens by itself for a few seconds and is marked New, then folds away; one you opened yourself stays open until you fold it.

On narrower screens, passages with shared notes are marked in the text instead, and tapping one opens the note. The reader sidebar’s Shared tab, in both the EPUB and PDF readers, lists every note you have reached, in reading order, with who left it and where. From a note you can jump to its passage or open its replies. The book page’s Highlights tab shows how many notes from other readers you have unlocked, and Read notes opens them without opening the reader.

If you prefer a clean page, turn off Show others’ notes in the text in the Shared tab. Nothing is lost; turn it back on at any time.

Replies

Anyone who can see a note can reply to it. Replies are one level deep and follow the note’s own fence. The note’s author, and everyone who replied before, is notified of a new reply.

Changing your mind

Stop sharing makes a note private again. Deleting a shared highlight asks first, because the readers you shared it with will no longer see it, and the replies under it are hidden too.

Reactions

React to a passage with one of five reactions: Gasp, Laugh, Love, Sad, or Fire. In the EPUB reader, select text and choose React. In the audiobook player, react to the moment you are listening to; reactions then appear along the scrubber.

Reactions collect into a small badge beside the passage, or into the margin next to that passage’s notes when the reader shows notes there. Open it to see the counts:

In a club read, reactions go to the club and show the names of the members who reacted.
Elsewhere, reactions shared with everyone are anonymous counts.

The first time you react outside a club read, BookOrbit asks who should see your reactions. You can change the answer later from Your reactions outside a club in the reader’s Shared tab. If several of your clubs are reading the same book, you pick which club sees your reactions on it.

Who is reading

When a club you are in is reading a book, or other people on the server are reading it, its Details tab shows a Reading together band: one track with a face for each of them and for you, the same as on a club page. Club members appear where they are in the club read; other readers where they are in the book, and those who finished at the end. Below the track, Continue and Open club take you back into a club read. Without a club, Read along with someone starts a buddy read with them, or opens the club you already share.

The Reading on this server shelf on Home shows books other people are reading right now. It only ever lists books you can open yourself. Add or remove it from the shelf settings like any other shelf; see Dashboard.

“Reading now” means read in the last 14 days and not finished, paused, or abandoned.

Showing others what you read

Nobody sees what you read unless you choose it. You appear to other readers only while you share your reading in detail and have turned on Show my reading to other readers, both in Settings > Privacy & Sharing:

Choosing Share detailed insights there turns it on, because the confirmation lists it.
If you already shared in detail before reading together arrived, you agreed to share with administrators only, so you stay hidden from other readers until you turn the switch on yourself.
Turn the switch off to stop appearing while still sharing in detail with administrators. Choosing Private or Share summary also stops it, and coming back to detailed later asks again.

The same page has more precise controls:

Control	Effect
Keep these libraries private	Nobody sees you reading or having read books in those libraries, and you cannot share notes or reactions on them.
Hidden books	Books you hid from their own page. Show again undoes it.

To hide a single book, choose Hide my reading of this book from the ⋯ menu on its Reading together band. Hiding a book or keeping a library private stops new notes and reactions on it, but notes and reactions you already shared stay until you delete them.

Notifications

Reading together has its own Clubs notification category. You are notified when you are invited to a club, when a club starts a book, when a reading section is due, when someone replies to your note, when notes from other readers unlock as you read, when your club starts choosing its next book, opens voting, or picks one, when someone passes you a book, and, if they agreed, when someone you passed a book to reaches your notes or finishes it. Turn the category off in your notification settings if you do not want them.

For admins

Everyone can read together unless an admin restricts them. Two permissions in the user editor control it:

Permission	Effect
No social features	A restriction. The account cannot see, create, or appear in anything on this page, and is hidden from everyone else.
Moderate shared notes	Hide any shared note or reply on the server from other readers. The author still sees it, marked as hidden.

Club hosts do not need a permission to hide posts in their own club’s discussions. Authors can always delete what they wrote. Deleting an account removes everything that user wrote.

See Users & Permissions for the full list.