Lets Discuss: How do you keep track of books?!


Posted October 21, 2019 in Discussion Tags:

I have a confession to make…

I literally have NO IDEA how many books I have. I am not sure I could find a physical book if you asked for a specific one.

Some people have these beautifully organized bookshelves. Me? I have stacks of books in no particular order all around my house. Grouped by author? Ha! Alphabetical? Haha! Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone next to Priest by Sierra Simone? Yep. I wish I were different. Part of the problem is I don’t really have bookshelves. I have random furniture that I have turned into bookshelves. But the bigger problem…me.

Lets talk about ebooks first. You’d think that would be easy, right? Wrong. Thank GOD amazon tells me I already own a book before I buy it. But here is my problem: I buy books and they sit on my kindle and I forget about them. I really should document what I bought somewhere-put it on my TBR list on goodreads or something. But, my kindle is where books go to die in the void.

Now, my physical books are a different story. I have a very good record of WHAT books I have thanks to LibraryThing. I use their scan tool to log every book I get. Great-I know WHAT I have. I can’t find it to save my life!!

I have goodreads (of course) but that is really more a place to store my reviews. And obviously I use library thing to track my physical books. But here is where I need HELP!

  1.   What other apps do you use that keep you organized (bookishly speaking)
  2.   How do you organize your books when you have no shelves?
  3.   Do you organize your kindle books into collections? (that seems like a LOT of work)

Help your fellow book lover out! Also, I’m actually afraid someone is going to get hurt by falling piles of books when I am trying to locate specific ones.

Samantha
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11 responses to “Lets Discuss: How do you keep track of books?!

  1. I also have no idea how many books I own. Most of them are in drawers because I don’t have space for them anywhere else. I only have 1 unread book on my Kindle, so that’s easy to remember. I wish my books were better organized, but I have no idea how to organize them without any shelf space.

  2. I have a similar problem. I’ve tried over the years to find a way to keep up with my ebooks (physical are not a problem) and I’ve continually failed. If I don’t read it right away, it goes to my kindle to die. I actually have started not buying books unless I intend to read them immediately and that has helped. But if you get some good suggestions please write another post sharing the best ideas for those of us who share your problem. ?

  3. Well I am very organized because I can’t stand it if I’m not. My physical books are organized on the shelves primarily by genre, although I have a shelf in my nightstand for physical books I haven’t yet read. All my books, physical, ebook, audible, cirp, libro fm, physical CD / mP3 disc are in Goodreads on shelves to classify them (that’s a big long discussion, but I can share if you want to know.) Then I have a one page spread sheet which ties into a Google calendar where I keep track of all my blog posts for the upcoming 3 months and ARCs go onto it when I request them so I don’t over request for my schedule. I had to go to the spreadsheet because I have audio ARCs from about 10 different publishers, then there are things from publicity teams. I used to only have Netgalley which was simple. I update Good reads when I get them so it’s only 1-5 a day at most, even with freebies.

  4. My physical books I’ve got no issue with keeping track. I use the Libib app. You can scan the barcode in. Then you can organize them by author, series, or however you want.

    As for eBooks. I’ve not found a way to keep track of them. I wish their was an app or something, but I haven’t found it or a way to keep track of them. I am glad Amazon tells me that I own it, but what about nook or kobo. They don’t tell you if you own it, so I have to look. Man i’ve got 1,195 books and no way to keep track. I tried doing shelves, but that’s didn’t last long. =/

  5. Sam@wlabb

    Same. I have about 500 books resting against one wall of my room and close to 3000 ebooks on my cloud. I only catalog my ARCs, in a spreadsheet, and have no clue what books I have. I happened to be cross posting reviews to Amazon yesterday, and they pop up books you own after. I was shocked to see some of the books I owned. I had no idea. I think I took some of them out of the library at one point too. I guess I should track them, but there’s too many at this point.

  6. My physical books are in bookshelves. If it’s a series, it is organized that way. To be fair, I let go of all of my paperbacks and only kept hardcover, favorites, etc. Now my kindle and audio app. Always a surprise. Thankfully as you say, they alert you that you already own it. LOL

  7. I LOVE this post so much and girl you are NOT alone. Now I just bought some IKEA bookcases for my books. One for my religious and non fiction ones. And then one for my romance. Now being organized is different for each person. What is easiest for me is organize by genre. I am such a mood reader, so I organize by genre then author then title. I am OCD like that lol

    Now for ebooks I do collections and mostly I just do genre collections and a ARC shelf so I can see what books I need to get to for publishers or I forget completely about them.

    Now I LOVE goodreads and librarything. I actually have been working on getting my books and shelves into Library Thing. I actually think its easier to do shelves on LibraryThing. I have such problems with GR book shelves it always has glitches. But Library Thing is easier to input and to find and be organized. You can do so much more on L:ibrary Thing. If you are ever interested in how I organize on there….let me know and I can show you what I did. It works for me but it is work to get there.

    Hope you find a way to stay organized that works for you darling.

  8. OMG, we could not be more opposite, Samantha! LOL My bookshelves are in alpha order by author. I keep a spreadsheet listing of ALL the books I own and it is obsessively update with each and every purchase. I have another spreadsheet only for ebooks (Kindle, doc files from arcs, etc). Again, updated immediately after a purchase. Lists and keeping track is just my personality… I hope you find a way that works for you! 🙂

  9. Keeping track of my books is tough, especially as my Kindle ones are all over the place! I used to have a spreadsheet of purchases and what I’d read but I kept failing to keep track of it, Mostly, Goodreads tells me what I own (as long as I’ve kept on top of updating it). I wish I was more organised and had spreadsheets and such but I do not have time for that.

    Becky @ A Fool's Ingenuity recently posted: Sunday Summary // 22.09.2019
  10. I use the BookCollectorz app to record what I own in both print and ebook, with a notation of where I can find it eg Kindle, shelf, bluereader, floor (lol) etc. you can scan an isbn or manually enter books, and there are a ton of fields you can personalise. There is also a pc/Mac version, and a cloud version,
    I also use Goodreads, and LibraryThing but the app is the main way I track my personal collection.

    Shelleyrae @ Book’d Out recently posted: Review: The House of Brides by Jane Cockram

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