Help Center
Guides for starting your collection, organizing it as it grows, and managing it with the people who keep it over time.
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Getting Started
What AllMyBooks is, your library, and the fastest way in.
Adding Books
The ways to get books into your library — scan, search, type them in, photograph a shelf, or import a whole list — with a guide for each.
The Phone App
What the phone app is for and how to sign in, with a guide for each job at the shelf: scanning, browsing and re-shelving, correcting, lending, photographs, whole shelves, and working without a signal.
Organizing
An overview of keeping a growing collection in order — shelves, copies, details, labels and views — with a guide for each job.
Sharing a Library
Your library is shared — invite people, assign roles, and keep control with admins.
Sharing Your Library
Open part — or all — of your collection to people outside your Library: a curated public link, or a full public catalogue anyone can browse.
Lending
Lend a copy to someone, track what’s out, and see what’s actually on the shelf right now.
Value & Insurance
What your collection is worth, broken down by currency and condition, ready to hand to your insurer.
Selling & Letting Go
Find what to release, check resale value, and — when your library allows it — see where to buy or sell, all through outbound links.
Data & Account
Exporting, backing up and restoring your library, what is private, and managing your account, with a guide for each.
Pricing & Supporting AllMyBooks
What’s free (everything you need), and how the supporter plan works.
Collector guides
Plain-language guides to the questions collectors ask most — identifying printings and editions, basic book care, and cataloguing for insurance. Rules of thumb, honestly caveated, with no valuations.
How to tell if a book is a first printing
How to read the copyright page — the number line, the edition statement and points of issue — to judge whether a book is a first printing, with worked examples and the publisher exceptions that trip people up.
What is a Book Club Edition (and why it matters)
What a Book Club Edition is, how to recognise one, and why collectors track it separately from a trade first printing — described plainly, without value claims.
Book care basics: foxing, mould, and safe storage
Conservative, practical basics for keeping books in good condition — telling foxing from mould, sensible storage, and when to call a professional conservator.
Cataloguing a collection for insurance
How to build a clear, exportable record of a book collection for insurance or estate purposes — what to capture per copy and why an export you control matters.
How to stop buying books you already own
Why duplicate purchases happen even to careful collectors, how to check a book before you buy it — including the edition and retitling traps a barcode check misses — and what to do with the duplicates you already have.
What an ISBN tells you about a book — and what it doesn’t
How ISBNs work, how to read the barcode on the back of a book, why the paperback and the hardcover have different numbers, why a reprint usually has the same one, and what to use for a book printed before ISBNs existed.
What is the Dewey Decimal system? A guide for home and church libraries
How Dewey numbers work, how to read one and shelve by it, where to find a book’s number without looking it up, and whether a home or church library needs Dewey at all.
Readerware fields: what transfers to AllMyBooks and where it lands
A column-by-column reference for a Readerware book export: where each column lands in AllMyBooks, which columns are not transferred, and how to keep the user fields with custom fields.
Choosing a library app
Weighing AllMyBooks against LibraryThing, Libib, CLZ Books, or Goodreads? Our comparison pages state each product's pricing and features in its own terms, dated and sourced — including what the alternatives do well.
Frequently Asked Questions
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