Is there an easier way to add books to your library

The method by which you add books to your library seems pretty convoluted. Why can't you just add the book when you push "add book" as opposed to going through that extra step. Also, it would be neat if you could view an author and be able to check off books without going through that multitude of steps.

In essence: because this is a cataloging site - edition info being valuable. The "add book to library" used to work like that though, a long time ago. But because of poor user editing of info - for example changing a title without changing the ISBN - it lead to a lot of bad data on the site. So it was disabled on purpose.

No there isn't.

The reason why there is an extra step is to allow people to choose a cataloguing source for all the extra data that libraries accompany with a book - details about that precise edition, it's binding, publishers, subjects et al.

It's a much requested feature that a 'generic edition' function be implimented, for those who don't care about which edition is entered into their catalogue. Wishlist books are a prime example. However although Tim is vaguely recpitive towards the idea, it has yet to happen.

also, as you might have noticed you aren't really adding the book you were viewing. It is much simpler to go directly to the 'Add book' page and do your search there saving you a step. Searching by 'ISBN' is the easiest if you have it available.

here we go again.

The easiest (and non-convoluted) way to add a book is by using the Add Books page (see the tab at the top of every page) and searching for it there. As readafew mentions, searching by ISBN will give you the best results, but you can also use words from the title, author, publisher, etc.

The feature you're talking about - the "add books button" on the work pages - was a feature introduced later, and has been a source of much confusion and complaint. There have been many suggestions to improve it. It is really not a good way of adding books, as you've noticed.