date: 'Monday, August 26 2024' title: 'Bookshelf Review' description: 'A start-up competitor to more well-known e-reading apps like Goodreads, Bookshelf bills itself as privacy-first and AI-enhanced to differentiate itself from similar offerings and to emphasize its ease of use and cutting-edge design philosophy.' image: 'bookshelf_kgjqp6' author: 'Amy Blain Mayo' editor: 'Brenda Zhang'

category: 'discover'

Bookshelf Review

Written by Amy Blain Mayo • Edited by Brenda Zhang

Intro to Bookshelf

Bookshelf is an AI-assisted reading app that helps to track progress in, and organize your library of, ebooks. A start-up competitor to more well-known e-reading apps like Goodreads, Bookshelf bills itself as privacy-first and AI-enhanced to differentiate itself from similar offerings and to emphasize its ease of use and cutting-edge design philosophy. Quote the Bookshelf site:

"Bookshelf is for the book lover in all of us. Whether you already love to read, want to build a better reading habit this year, or aspire to become a more well-rounded person, there's something for everyone with Bookshelf."

Bookshelf Features

Bookshelf includes features like:

• "Beautiful, intuitive design (unlike Goodreads)"
• Ability to add any book and organize your library
• AI recommendations for books similar to the ones in users' libraries
• Save highlights and quotes from books you own
• Tracking features to encourage you to expand your reading habit
• Quick add to "Build your library by searching through millions of books, scanning any book's barcode, or adding your own"
• AI chat feature to generate summaries, flashcards, discuss key ideas, and more
• Daily reviews and reminders

What Are People Saying About Bookshelf?

Reviews on the Bookshelf site include:

"I can't believe this app is free! I downloaded so many other apps that were way too expensive for what i can afford and finally found an app where you can take so many notes and is truly useful! I'm now motivated to read more books thanks to "Bookshelf"! Cheers to the developers."

"The app is fantastic and it's very useful. The UI is simple yet very pleasant to look at. Book research via QR or ISBN is super quick and always works. Statistics let you quantify your progress in reading speed. Support is great too, I had a minor issue with my account and the developer contacted me personally and fixed it in no time."

Jenny for jenjenreviews writes:

"I only use the app for cataloging my physical books, so what I've done is I've created two shelves on it: one for all the books I own and one to serve as a shelf that I add new purchased or gifted books to as I receive them. Once I scan those books in, I export the CSV file and move the books to my main shelf.

"My partner and I spent a long time trying to find a user friendly book cataloging app that would allow us to keep track of what we own, and Bookshelf proved perfect for that task! It's available for iOS on the App Store, so definitely check it out if you're interested!"

Bookshelf Pricing Plans

Bookshelf is free, with an optional membership feature to remove limitations from the app. With a paid Gold membership, you can enable iCloud syncing and get free token refills for certain paywalled AI features. Gold comes in three payment plans:

• Monthly at $5.99 per month
• Yearly at $29.99 per year
• And lifetime, a one-time purchase of $69.99

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