Custom Bookshelves

[Niteshkamat11]

It would be great if OpenReads allowed users to create their own bookshelves (like “Favorites”, “Sci-Fi”, “To Buy”, etc.). This is one of the most useful features in and having it in OpenReads would make organizing and tracking books much more flexible.

[mateusz-bak]

Hi @Niteshkamat11 thanks for the submission!

I like the idea and have thought about already but I'm not sure about the best implementation. Can you tell me about your vision of how this could beimplemented?

Should it be as a status like another options for Read, In Progress, etc...?
Or shelf should be independent? In this case how should this be displayed in the UI?
Or some other thoughts?

[Niteshkamat11]

Hi! Thanks for the response. Here’s my clear vision of the feature:

1. Shelves should be independent from reading status

The existing statuses (Finished, In Progress, For Later, Unfinished) should stay exactly as they are.
Custom shelves would be a separate organizational feature, not a new status.

2. How shelves appear in the UI

Custom shelves could be shown as scrollable tabs next to the existing status tabs, for example:

[Finished] [In Progress] [For Later] [Unfinished] [Favorites] [School] [To Review] ...

This keeps the UI familiar and clean while allowing many shelves.

3. How users assign shelves

On the book details page users can select one custom shelf for the book.
(Simple to implement and can be expanded to multi-shelf later if needed.)

4. Shelf management

In Settings → “Custom Shelves”:

Create new shelf

Rename shelf

Delete shelf

Optional: reorder shelves

Ui can be made Good according to your preference this is just a features i thought would be great in openreads.

[rafaelalvessa]

I'd quite like this feature too, and I agree with @Niteshkamat11's specification. However, I think it would be nice to be able to add a book to multiple shelves. For instance, a book could be in 'Finished' and in 'Books Owned' (as opposed to borrowed books).