One of the great things about this template is that you don’t have to consider yourself a bookworm to make use of it. Regardless of how much you read, it never hurts to keep tabs on what you’re reading. At the same time, if your goal is to read more, this Book Catalog template provides a great foundation to encourage you to read more, digest what you read, and couple it with personal notes as desired. Here are a few template features and highlights, by table:

Books

The flesh and bones of this template. Every helpful piece of information surrounding any book you could ever want to read is here, structured in a way to keep you reading more and scattering across books less.

Fields

• Book title. The most iconic part of the book. After all, what’s a book without a title?
• Author(s). Most books tend to have just one author, but you never know. There’s room for multiple authors if applicable.
• Cover photo. You’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but let’s be honest—we all do it. Drop a photo in here, but try to minimize your judgement. 😜
• Publisher. The publisher of the book.
• Synopsis. This multiline field allows you to write a synopsis of the book of your desired length. Keep it as long or as short as you want with this flexible field.
• Language. At least half of the world is bilingual, so if you fit into this huge category, this is a useful field to remember which language you have the book in.
• Pages. The length of the book in pages. Sometimes us bookworms are looking to get lost in a complex story, and sometimes we’re looking for something short and sweet. This field is helpful in estimating how long the book might take to read.
• In possession? There are multiple ways to acquire books—buying from a store/marketplace, renting from a library, or simply borrowing from a friend/family member/coworker. This field allows you to track if the book is in your possession and ready to read, regardless of how you acquired it.
• Format. The same way in which there are multiple ways of acquiring books, there are also different formats. This field denotes the book’s format so you can track and see if you need to carry it physically, or if it lives on your mobile device if it’s a digital format.
• Status. A selection field to denote if you’ve read the book already, currently reading, or still need to get around to reading it.
• Personal notes. Use this field to write as much or as little as you want about the book.

Views

• All books. Displays all books in your catalog without filters, sorted by Book title alphabetically.
• Acquired, not read. Displays all the books that are in possession, but have not been read yet. Fellow book hoarders will make great use of this view!
• Book suggestions. Displays a form view that lets you capture book suggestions from the entire the world! Anyone you share the form link with will be able to fill out the form and add their recommendation to your Book Catalog automatically. You can also show the user a message, or redirect them to a URL after submission.
• Library. Displays a gallery view of the collection from the Books table, sorted alphabetically by Book title from A to Z.
• Reading progress. Displays a kanban view of your book reading progress, stacked by the book’s Status.

Authors

Every author is different, we should celebrate that. With their unique writing styles and use of figurative language, this Authors table allows you to keep track of which authors you’ve explored and which ones you may not have explored yet. Many also have fascinating life stories, which you can recall easily here.

Fields

• Name. The author’s full name.
• Photos. Images of the author.
• Bio. A useful field in reading about the author’s bio and other personal anecdotes and such.
• Books. This is a linked field to the Books table that allows you to match each author to their written literary works.
• Personal notes. Use this field to jot down any important and/or memorable notes about the author.

Views

• All authors. Displays all authors without filters, sorted alphabetically by Name.
• Authors gallery. Displays a gallery view of all authors, sorted alphabetically by Name.

Publishers

Certain publishers are known for their high-profile works. Many are responsible for surfacing iconic books which we as a society know and love. This concise table helps connect books with publishers so that you can start creating links between them and discover new books from publishers previously read.

Fields

• Name. The name of the publisher.
• Website. The publisher’s website.
• Books. The publisher’s books. This is a linked field to the Books table.

Views

• All publishers. Displays all publishers without filters, sorted alphabetically by Name.