Organize a book as a group gift

A book everyone writes in.

For a wedding, a milestone birthday, a farewell.

A great idea as a group gift: everyone gets their own double page, and at the end the person it is for holds a book full of stories from the people who matter most to them.

Before that, though, the book has to make it around to all of them.

• Who is actually taking part?
• Who has the book right now?
• Where does it go next?
• And on whose shelf has it been sitting for weeks?

I know that one well. The very first Poesiealbum der Freundschaft was a wedding present for my brother, and I have walked a few books through circles of friends since.

First with a spreadsheet, then with a SaaS tool, then with various kinds of WhatsApp group chat. All of them worked, more or less, and all of them made the job simpler. The organizing effort stayed high, and it sat almost entirely on one person's shoulders:

• Updating the lists by hand.
• Asking and reminding, over and over.
• Losing track.

So something better had to happen: "The Round".

A free online tool. No sign-up. Password-protected and entirely in the browser, with a constantly updating picture of where everything stands: who is where and when, where the book is.

The Round: your book gift, organized online

The Round is a free tool on our website. Friendship book, poetry album or guest book: one person sets it up, everyone else joins through a password-protected link.

Out of that comes one overview for all of you: who is taking part, who is where and when, who has the book right now and who is already in it.

No account, no app. Only the people with the password can see the round. (And your round's data deletes itself 8 weeks after your deadline.)

How it works, in four steps

1. Start a round

Who are the books for, when does everything need to be finished, which password does the group get? Takes a minute or two.

After that you get a ready-made group description with link and password, plus a group picture. Both go into your group chat (on WhatsApp, say).

2. Everyone adds themselves

Each person creates their own row: name, where they live, and which book they are joining. Anyone who will be elsewhere before the deadline, at a bachelor party or traveling, adds that too.

From that, The Round generates the best ways to pass the book on. (You can sort your round by "where & when" in the tool.)

3. Prepare the entries

Good entries happen when people take their time. If everyone leaves it to the party or the day of the deadline, it is too late.

So everyone prepares their own entry online beforehand, with the tool that belongs to the book (the Poesiealbum tool or the MEMENTO tool). On your phone, from anywhere: the train, the bathroom, the couch. The answers arrive by mail.

Once someone is ready, they move their status in the round from 👋 (I am in) to 📲 (I have prepared my entry online).

4. From hand to hand

Every book has its own card in the round: who has it right now, and who is still missing.

Whoever passes the book on records who has it next. Once the entry is in the physical book, it gets the check mark ✅ (My entry is in the book).

The group progress circle fills up with entries written into the book (✅) and entries prepared online (📲).

If someone forgets to update their status, anyone in the round can update it for them, which keeps the overview current without a lot of back-and-forth about where things actually stand.

What has worked for us

• Prepare your entry online. Then the book itself can be filled in quickly, and still with good entries: one to three days per person is plenty when the entry is ready.
• Print your photos beforehand, easiest as small prints at a photo kiosk.
• Extra pictures into the shared cloud. While people prepare entries and dig out photos, a lot of gems turn up that might not make it into your own entry, but would make someone else's, or the shared pages. Put them in your shared photo folder. That is what makes the collaboration pages in the middle of the friendship book outstanding. You can add the cloud link to the round, at the start or later.
• Keep the status current. Then everyone sees in the overview who is already in the book, who has prepared online and who is still missing. And nobody wants to be the person the book is waiting for. That usually helps more than asking. Just human.

Questions or ideas about The Round? Write to us on Instagram: @das_ist____

P.S.: We also make the matching friendship book for adults and guest book ツ