Ongoing Strategies
As you become more and more familiar with Readerware you will doubtless
develop your own ways of using it and strategies for keeping your
Readerware
database up to date. To get you started here are some key strategies
that
we have found useful.
Online Ordering
There are many ways you can use Readerware for secure online ordering.
I find The Readerware Shopping Cart provides
the easiest way to order and track your
purchases
from any of the online vendors.
Want Lists
The Readerware Shopping Cart also provides a great way to build your
want
lists. But here is another approach. If you have a title that you are
looking
for you can add it to your database. You can keep track of your want
list
a number of ways. The easiest is probably to create a Rating
of "Wanted" or some similar term and then select that rating for all
titles
on your want list. You can then select all your want list titles using
a Ratings search and even print them out
in
any of the Readerware report formats, or publish
then on your web page. You can also set Copies to 0,
to indicate a wanted title. Again you can easily search on 0 copies.
Bookstore Cheat Sheet
Online retailers are great, but I still love searching for finds at my
local used book stores. Any other fans of The San Francisco Mystery
Bookstore out there? Readerware has a powerful built in reporting
facility. You can print the results of a search in a number of
different
formats. You can create an especially useful report for taking on your
trips to your local bookstores. Of course you can also use Readerware
for the Palm Pilot for this too.
Create a table view with just a
few
column, the ones you need like author, title, format, first edition
etc.
Keep the columns as narrow as possible. When printing
this report, select a small font, say an 8 point font. Check the Two
Sided and Break on Author options. Adjust the Tables
on Page slider to meet your preferences, the goal is to
get
as many columns as possible on the page. Try experimenting with
portrait
and landscape modes. This will list the maximum number of titles per
page.
Depending on the font size you select you can get well over a hundred
titles
on a single page, sorted by author.
Remember that you can print the results of any search, so you can
print
multiple reports. If you are using a want list as described above you
can
easily print that out. You can also print out a report of your entire
library.
You may be surprised at how few pages it takes to print out your entire
library. The report can include key information such as the format you
have, signed, first edition etc. So when on a shopping trip and you
come
across a first edition of a favorite title in excellent condition, you
can easily tell if you have it, if you only have a paperback edition
etc.
All the information you need to make a purchase decision at your
fingertips.
Your Strategies
So how are you using Readerware? What are your favorite strategies.
Please
let us know, this will help us improve the product and we can pass your
tips along to others. Please send e-mail to feedback@readerware.com.
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