The Bookshelf is built so that when you add information about an individual book to your internal account—such as a title, author, cover image, and description—an individual book/product page is automatically created for that book to be displayed on your website and/or used to sell your book to visitors.
These pages are called "automated product pages" or "automated book pages" because once book information is successfully added and made live, a corresponding visitor-facing page is automatically created for use on your website or store. It's labeled as "automated" because every such page follows a pre-set format and layout, and pulls its design features from the Style settings you've already set for your website, meaning very few additional steps are required by you to then make the product page live and shoppable for visitors.
In this way, you can build a direct sales store for all your books in all their formats quickly and easily.
How to Add a New Book
Inside your Bookshelf account, click on the Books option in the left-side main menu:
If you haven't yet added any books to your account, your Books page will appear as blank, with zero books listed. To add your first book, click either the "Create a new book" button in the center of the screen, or you can click the blue "+Add book" button in the upper right corner. After you add your first book, you'll always click the blue "+Add book" button to add additional books:
When you select either of these options, it will take you to the "Add Book" page. Here, you will find ten different sections of information that can be filled out for your book:
- Book Title
- Series
- Cover Image
- Description
- Author(s)
- Publisher
- Genre
- Tropes
- Spice/Heat Rating
- Trigger Warnings
You aren't required to add information for all ten sections; only four (Book Title, Cover Image, Description, and Author) are required for completing a book and creating an automated product page.
Every section of information you fill out will correspond with the way that information appears for that book on its automated product page. This is why at minimum, every book needs a title, cover, description, and author—so that those four pieces of necessary information are provided for visitors exploring the book on your website.
Once you have all sections of information filled out that you would like to include for this specific book, click the blue "Add book" button in the upper right corner of the page.
Smart-Fill Sections
There are three sections on the "Add Book" page that will auto-fill with selections to choose from once they have been manually added at least once. This is so that you aren't having to re-type commonly repeated information for books every time you add them to your account. Those sections are:
Series
Author(s)
Publisher
For example, when you're adding a book for the very first time, and that book is part of a series that you will be adding additional books to, the Series section will appear like this at first:
You will need to type the full series name into the "Series Title" box, then click "Add [Series Name]" to add it not just to that book, but to your Books page's memory so that the series will populate in the full list of series options to select from going forward.
The Author(s) and Publisher sections both work the same way so that you only have to add multiple pen names or multiple imprints one time before you can just select them from your dropdown list going forward with additional books.
Genres and Tropes
Though they aren't required sections, selecting at least one genre and one trope to be displayed on your book's product page is great for helping potential readers to identify if the book is the right fit for their reading preferences.
To help keep things as specific and concise as possible, you can select up to three distinct genres to add to any single book. Genres are divided by Fiction and Nonfiction first, which you can toggle between, and then by overarching categories second. You can either search for genres using the search bar at the top of the section, or to see all the subgenres currently available in a category, just click the down arrow next to the genre name.
To add a genre to your book, just click on it. If you change your mind and want to remove a selected genre from your book, navigate to the top of the Genre section and click on the "x" next to the genre you'd like to remove:
Selecting Tropes works much the same way as selecting Genres. You can toggle between Fiction and Nonfiction, search for tropes, or see all the tropes currently available under a specific category by clicking on that category's down arrow. However, you can add as many tropes as you would like to a single book, but to help keep your book's content clear and concise for readers, we recommend adding no more than ten.
If you don't see a specific genre or trope that you believe you need in order to help properly identify and label your books, please feel free to email a request to our team at support@thebookshelf.io. We're always looking to add more options that may help an array of authors to better represent their books to readers.
Spice/Heat Rating
Adding a Spice Rating (also referred to as a Heat Rating) is a common practice for books with some level of physically romantic content included within them. Though these ratings are most often associated with books in an array of romance genres, they can also be included for books of other genres that may feature romantic themes, subplots, or scenes.
Every platform, author, and reader tends to maintain their own version of a Spice/Heat Rating scale, most often from 0 to 5, with 0 being nonexistent and 5 being highly explicit and sometimes graphic. The ratings and expectations in between those two can vary widely, meaning The Bookshelf's scale labels may differ from your own. When assigning a rating, just be sure to study each thoroughly by hovering over the associated chili-pepper emoticon to bring up its description:
- 1: Closed door: implied, off-page intimacy
- 2: Light/suggestive: light detail, limited scenes
- 3: Open door: moderate detail, on-page scenes
- 4: Explicit: detailed, frequent scenes
- 5: Very Explicit: graphic and/or central to the story
Remember, adding a spice/heat rating is not required for any book. But if the book you're adding is in any romantic genre or subgenre, or includes romantic scenes or subplots, it can be a very good idea to include a rating so that readers understand what type of content to expect.
Adding Book Formats
Once you've finalized the book you're adding by filling out the necessary sections and clicking the "Add Book" button, you will have created what is referred to as the "parent" book. This is the overarching book project where all the information about the book, as well as its various formats, will be housed. It's also the page you'll navigate back to anytime you'd like to make changes or updates to the book's information.
You have the ability to add four different types of formats to each parent book:
- eBook
- Audiobook
- Paperback
- Hardcover
While you can only add a single eBook or audiobook format per parent book, you can add multiple paperback and hardcover formats per book to help account for different editions you might have, such as a regular hardcover versus a special edition hardcover.
Anytime you add a format to a parent book, that format will appear as an available option to explore on the book's automated product page. The format's general details will always match the information you added to the parent book, and any format-specific information will also appear as needed when selected. And while you aren't required to add any format options or sales information for any books in order to create an automated book page, you do have the ability to add both direct sales information as well as retailer links (such as to Amazon) to any format of any book.
Automated Product Pages
Depending on how much information you add for each book, as well as how many formats of each book you add, your automated product page will look something like this example, which is also pulling its design details from this particular template's Style settings:
All the content that populates onto this page is dependent on your parent book's information, as well as any information you add per format. So you won't be able to adjust any of that content directly on the product page from inside the Page Builder, but you can always go back to your Books page to make changes to individual book content.
You also won't be able to change the layout of content or other action items like buttons, other than by adding additional formats (for which additional buttons will be automatically created). What you can change, however, is what information is displayed for all of your books on each product page, as well as the Style settings that contribute to the design of your product pages. To adjust each of these, you'll open your website in the Page Builder, and click on the Store tool in the left-side menu.
To learn more about the Store tool and how it affects your automated product pages, visit this support article.
Questions about adding a book, format, or adjusting your automated product pages? You can always reach out to our team directly at support@thebookshelf.io.