BookHoard

For readers who buy too many books (as if that's possible)

iOS

Privacy

Books

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Hi Product Hunt, I built BookHoard because my own shelves got far enough out of hand that I'd started buying books I already owned, which is a humbling thing to discover when you are back in front of your shelves. I wanted a catalog I'd actually keep up with, which meant the cataloging itself had to be nearly effortless, so the whole app is built around two ways of adding books that don't involve typing: you can scan a barcode and have the book on your shelf in a few seconds, or you can photograph a full bookshelf and let it read the spines and add everything at once. Once the books are in, it does things to make book acquiring easier. It warns you before you buy a duplicate, tells you which volumes are missing from a series you're partway through, remembers who borrowed your copy of whatever, and can estimate what the whole collection would cost to replace (which turns out to be important if you ever have to explain a home library to an insurer). It also helps you find more places to get books. There's a finder for libraries and bookstores near you (in the US), and for Little Free Libraries. You know, those small boxes on posts that somebody's neighbor's, sister-in-law keeps stocked. The part I didn't expect to build is the Banned tab. While I was working on this, the number of books being pulled from American libraries kept climbing and I couldn't find a single live source for it, as the good reports are all annual. So I built the database too: bannedindex.org, an independent index of US book bans with the sources behind every entry. BookHoard checks your own shelves against it, which lets you know which of your books someone banned, and where. The part I care about most, though, is privacy. Your library stays yours. No ads, nothing sold, no algorithmic feed, and nothing public unless you decide to share it. I don't need a record of what someone reads. It's free for your first hundred books, with a 30-day trial of everything else. I'd really like to hear where it breaks, especially the shelf scanner on stubborn old paperbacks, so don't be gentle.