BookBuddy Pro: Library Manager Reviews

by Torioreo92

I love the concept of BookBuddyPro , but there are definitely some streamline changes to be made (too many clicks to get to changing the status-reading the book is the only purpose it serves, so it should be as easy tapping a toggle next to the name of the book) & some feature I'd like added. There needs to be a way to put a book in two categories-I'd love to keep my books sorted by genre or author while also having a list of current reads or TBRs. The developers said I should use tags for this but that takes too many clicks and is hard to find too, you can't see how to add a tag to a book without clicking edit first or if you try to add a book to the tag itself, you have to rescan it- you can't just add it from your list of books already in BookBuddyPro . Also, I knocked off a star bc the developers were a condescending I their reply to my previous use, I know how to use BookBuddyPro , thank you very much, I just think it could be streamlined.

by WanderMisr

BookBuddyPro fits by needs by far. It can catagorize books by, name, price, publisher, etc. BookBuddyPro gives you unlimited amount of books in you personal library. The best benefit of BookBuddyPro is the barcode scanner. It can always find the name and other information about your book just by scanning the barcode! If your book can't be scanned, they even give you a little internet to search for your book. If it isn't on the internet or it can't scan on the barcode scanner, you can add it manually. I only had to do this once for a local book I bought. As you might see, I did take off a star. I took of this star just because it costs money. I don't think it is necessary to cost money. Newsflash, you're not going to make a lot of money with BookBuddyPro! They even have a free one that I originally had, but it only let you have forty books in your library. Guess what?! They didn't even tell you about the forty books only rule. Consequently, when I had took my time to scan 40 books, it shut me off! Telling me only 40 books! Anyways, that is their problem. The rest of BookBuddyPro was really good, if I could I would give it a four in a half rating. But now I'm happy to give it a 4 out of 5 star rating!

by Nicklerunner

This is a great app for simple and moderately detailed organization of one’s books, because I work in a library, I am particularly specific for the abilities of BookBuddyPro. I am pleased that I can find my imported books in the database (sometimes needing some editing). I would give it 5* if I could save the book’s information without authors, using the editor’s name instead. I love the export ability for backups and using the camera to get isbn/barcodes to pull info quickly. The process gets faster the more books I put in because of familiarity and BookBuddyPro pulling info from prior entries.

by Beachdaisy

BookBuddyPro is nearly perfect in organizing books among my children, students and myself! I love the options of organizing my books into professional, personal, and children categories; I love that I get the option to add more categories or edit the ones already provided. I also LOVE the loaned out option; you can assign a book as loaned out/returned.

I would give BookBuddyPro five stars if I could access my library online, but also if the loaned out option would be more streamlined, such as, you could click on "loaned out" and it would automatically assign the current date. It just requires too much clicking to assign a book as "loaned out" and then you have to toggle to the current date. I wish you could just scan or click a book and it would automatically assign it as loaned out and include that day's date, maybe provide a default option in settings?

Hopefully, those features will be added later. I plan on keeping BookBuddyPro and hope these changes can be made or that some other developer will include these options. Until then, it's the best library app out there!

by Mrskatie

I am finally getting around to categorizing my books. We are a book loving family and between the 10 of us (8 kids and 2 parents) we have acquired a nice sized library. I’m still figuring out how this works, but my main disappointment is that scanning the isbn of a book does not identify if it’s a paperback or hardback. Since all books have a unique isbn for either one, I’m disappointed that it’s not known. Also, it surprises me how many books are not in the system yet and we have to manually add, but maybe this will get remedied over time.

Overall, I am happy with the product.

by Juldragon30

My family reads a lot. My child owns over 550 books with many series. I’ve tried to keep track of the books he has read and struggled with a couple of different apps. This is the best app and for the money it is great. I would give it 5 stars if when I search my books it did true keyword combinations instead of being exact phrase. So if I was looking for warriors: graphic novel I could put in warriors graphic or warriors novel and the books would come up. I love that you can apply tags in groups. I also love if the book cover can’t pull up I can take my own picture or if the cover I have for the book is different I can override what is there. Since the system is so good I’m going to start entering my 5000 books. Then after that my husbands.

by MomOfGradeSchoolAgeKids

I have several kids who all love to read. Our book collection is overwhelming and BookBuddyPro makes it easier to keep up with them and to be able to make sure each kid is reading books appropriate for their level.

I’m using BookBuddyPro to keep our large book collection organized and want to be able to search books by age appropriateness or things like a grade level required summer reading. It would be a huge time saver if we could make bulk updates to a selected set of books and if more fields auto populated. I’m especially interested in the AR related fields. I have 300 or so AR books that I’d like to search through based on AR level, and points!

by Houseworking

I’ve been using the paid version of BookBuddyPro for ever a year to catalog my 1000+ book library. I love it—it’s easy to use and logically laid out. My only issue is that there is no way to access a saved library online (or outside of the device). I recently had an accident in which my iPhone was completely destroyed. When I setup my new phone, I was surprised to find that my iCloud backup had failed and, because there was nowhere for me to access my catalog, I lost all of my BookBuddy data. I’m now in the process of re-cataloging my collection, which is fun but incredibly tedious. I can’t help but think that if I could have logged in somewhere and insured data backup outside of my iPhone, I could have saved myself a lot of time.

by Jacksw71

This is by far my favorite iOS/iPadOS app, using it almost daily to catalog my entire collection. While not as extensive as some, I’ve added about 850 titles so far with lots more to go. I’ve added each one manually, since online search frequently pulls in incorrect information uploaded from other sources (not BookBuddy’s fault!). Some features I particularly appreciate are the attention to detail and the amount of information that’s able to be recorded for each book. I am actually considering using the Library of Congress Classification system for my library and BookBuddyPro supports it! If I have any suggestions for BookBuddyPro ’s improvement, they would be the following:

- Multiple authors per title. This could be extended to translators, editors, etc. Having only one author results in some co-authors being difficult to locate in the database.
- BC dates!!!!!! This is a must have, since all my titles published “pre-Jesus” are listed as year 1, with a note at the bottom documenting the correct year. Those with a lot of Plato, Homer, etc. will go crazy.
- It would be nice if the Date Added and Purchase Date fields could be stored as year only, consistent with all other date fields. This is my OCD nature coming through, but I’d like to be able to document books I purchased decades ago, but obviously don’t remember the exact dates.

by Tlo Girl

We are an elementary school PTA using BookBuddyPro for a lending library of over 1,000 books. It is really easy to use and BookBuddyPro developer is very responsive. That’s important because we didn’t want to invest our time and energy scanning the books into an app that was not well-supported (or might be discontinued)! Syncing via Dropbox allows multiple volunteers to check-out books to kids at the same time. Our big request would be to have BookBuddyPro populate GRL and Lexile level when adding books to the catalog, as we need all books to be leveled for the kids!

by Snelsonbookgirl

I did not want to pay for an app to organize my books, so I tried about 10 different free methods and apps. Hated every single one of them. Someone on a Facebook group suggested Book Buddy, even sent me a video of them using it, I was cautious but within a day I was in love. Easy to scan in new and old books, create separate libraries for your kids, keep track of loaned books, and best of all, you can personalize the categorization of your library! Need a 1,000 word novella, no problem. Need a grade 12 standard, no problem. I am loving it. Only downside is textbooks. But to be honest only a few of us are likely to keep to many of them anyway, and you can always manually search by title, author, or isbn. And you can link up with other app users, so yeah. I kinda recommend if you have more than 100 books, after that I couldn’t memorize them well enough, but hey. You do you. But seriously, why try a free app that limits the books you can catalogue when Book Buddy is cheap enough and worth so much more. Bask in the glory of a well catalogued book collection!

by Hildela

This is totally awesome!! I use it for my classroom and its so, soo easy to use!! I can enter each book, and digitally keep track of who checked it out. Note: to all teachers, do not cover the ISBN barcode on the back of a book with a label. It makes scanning the book impossible and
You have to use the search online feature to locate the book, which means messing with the publisher if you cant find the right version or its from scholastic. The online search is easy to use, but adds an extra step to cataloging. Other than that, i totally recommend this!!

by UsborneAmy

I just used BookBuddy for five minutes and I am in LOVE! It is so easy to use, and you can try it for free up to 50 books. I’ll definitely be going to Pro version when I get to book 51. It’s only five bucks! Plus, I can feel great that all my data will be safely backed up in my Dropbox. I am over the moon! Oh, and EVERYTHING can easily be done from my iPad or iPhone.

I am seriously excited over entering just one book in there to try it. What took five minutes was trying to stand still long enough to show my family my new lovely thing!

by Sychaotik

In the past I’d often have to manually enter book titles because BookBuddyPro would be unable to pull up the information through the scanner but now I haven’t had to do that in forever. It’s been flawlessly producing the relevant info for the books. Only downside if you collect manga like me is that quite a few of the series just have the basic title so you end up having to enter Volume 1, Volume 2 in the title to prevent BookBuddyPro from claiming you already have this book. It’s not a major downside for me but it’s definitely something you’ll have to deal with if you’re scanning in a large number of manga titles in one go.

by Rachelskivich

I wanted a way to record every book I read, both for my personal library and for homeschooling purposes. I have a day each week dedicated to reviewing children’s books and I wanted an app that would 1) easily import book details via a barcode scanner, 2) store my personal notes for future access, and 3) organize titles by a variety of sortable tools. BookBuddyPro delivers.

I greatly appreciate how “tweakable” BookBuddyPro is. My usage of BookBuddyPro has changed since I honed in more on my specific library management needs. For example, I no longer consider BookBuddyPro to be a catalog of my physical library, but a log of every book I read and review. I am very pleased with the way the settings give me the freedom to customize my app experience.

I once panicked, thinking that BookBuddyPro lost one of my books. It didn’t. I had changed the title’s rating and forgot that the library was being sorted by rating, thus moving the book to a different section.

The backup and syncing settings give me great peace of mind that the hours I’m devoting to recording my book reviews will not be lost.

BookBuddyPro is worth every penny.

by Edanghe1

I tried other apps that I wasn’t nearly as impressed with. Instead of using the free app I just went for it and purchased BookBuddyPro , best thing I did! Very easy to use, I highly recommend BookBuddyPro. With that being said I have one recommendation (unless I haven’t found it in BookBuddyPro itself):

I wish they would add a category so you can scan/add books you want to purchase. It would be easier than carrying a notebook or putting it in notes on your phone. You could go to the category, open and scan the isbn while in stores and add to future purchases. Or if someone recommends a book you can add it and boom, there it is when you go to the bookstore.

Love BookBuddyPro !!!

by Emccono

The process of uploading my library has been a nice way to end my day lately. One shelf at a time and I actually don’t want it to end bc it’s been relaxing and meditative! I’ve decided I will upload my teens’ books (under their own categories) bc of course I’ve wondered if they have a book when I see a great one. I love the ‘condition’ field: I made one called ‘terrible, replace’ so if I see a better copy of a book it’s just a click away to see if I should bring it home.
I love my home library and I love BookBuddyPro!!
I asked about ‘original copyright’ date bc a scan will fill in the date of that specific books publication. I like to know the original date even more so for context...the after publications are not so important. They said that feature would be coming within the year.

by NorthDakota999

I still like and use BookBuddyPro. I recommend occasionally exporting your booklist. I had to buy a new phone unexpectedly and I thankfully was able to import my list back into BookBuddyPro . It was as though my account disappeared and I had to start over.

BookBuddyPro has been useful in organizing my reading collection. I mostly read professional or work-related books and lend to co-workers. I have a collection that’s half on my Kindle and half read books, with about 30% that overlap. I can track who has what, take notes/comments (especially useful for books not on Kindle).

Having a better way to add Kindle items would be useful, as well as tracking those items. I’m using the tags feature. There is a format; however, for the 30% overlap, this was not working well.

by Playtube....

BookBuddyPro lets you add books by scanning, typing in isbns, searching, or manually. Then you can edit any aspect of a books information, including picking the correct picture or taking one yourself, book location, and even the condition and price paid! The flexibility of the information input is the best of any app I’ve seen. The Dropbox sync and backup is great and quick, as is the pdf and spreadsheet export option. I love that these outputs are customizable in every way. I also like that the pictures are in the document. The best part is the ability to make separate libraries with each one having the ability to specify physical locations of books (shelf, etc.). I am so glad I tried BookBuddyPro and have since bought their movie and music apps because the interface is far better than any other apps that I’ve tried. So far I have scanned close to 900 books. Worth every penny!

by Bongeth

A great app! Fairly easy to import new titles. Some suggestions to optimize usability of the bookbuddy (and moviebuddy) app:

1) batch edit function. at present you can only edit items one at a time, field per field. provide for the ability, in list view, to select multiple items; then have the ability to apply an edit, to a single or multiple fields, to all selected items.
2) search query. at present the search function will only search the titles of items. provide a module that allows for a multi-parameter or multi-field search; for example by tag(s), genre, or combination of fields.
3) desktop app, or desktop web browser-based interface. a lightweight desktop app or desktop web browser interface that syncs with your mobile device(s). this would greatly aid in database management, as managing from the mobile device interface is clumsy esp. when needing to edit each record one at a time, field by field.