The question readers keep asking
Is there a Letterboxd for books?
People have been asking since 2014, on every forum where readers gather. We asked it too, and then we built ShelfLife. This page goes through what people mean by it, how ShelfLife measures up, and the places where books and films part ways.
Download the appWhy the phrase stuck
Letterboxd began life describing itself as Goodreads for movies. At some point the comparison flipped, and now readers are the ones looking over the fence. What they see is a site that leads with the films you love, puts them at the top of your profile, and fills the home page with what your friends watched this week.
One blogger put it well: discovery is a publisher's problem, while tracking and sharing are the reader's. Most book apps are built around discovery. The people asking for a Letterboxd for books want the other half, and that is what we built ShelfLife around.
What people mean when they say it
Read enough of the threads and the same wishes come up in the same order. Here they are, with what ShelfLife does for each.
- Favorites at the top of the profile
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Letterboxd opens a profile with four posters. People want the book version: the ones that define you, seen first.
On ShelfLife: Top 12. Twelve books, no more, each wearing a gold band on the shelf. They are the first thing on your profile, and they export as their own card.
- Half stars
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The single most repeated request in every thread. A book that is a 3.5 should be allowed to be a 3.5.
On ShelfLife: Half stars, on every read.
- A diary, not a database
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Dates for each watch, rewatches kept separate, a history you can scroll back through.
On ShelfLife: Each time you read a book it gets a separate entry, with start and finish dates, a rating, and a review for that read. Reading it again does not overwrite what you thought the first time.
- Lists with personality
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The lists people love on Letterboxd are the odd ones, like movies where women talk about feelings while eating, or the most pretentious films ever made.
On ShelfLife: Shelves. Make as many as you want and name them anything: books for a rainy Lisbon, the ones you would hand a stranger on a train, a shelf for a year you would go back to. Each one is arranged by hand and can be shared or kept to yourself.
- Reviews that can be one line or an essay
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On Letterboxd a review can be a joke, a pull quote, or two thousand words, and nobody minds.
On ShelfLife: Write a full review, or drop a short take or a favorite quote in the Peanut Gallery on any book's page. Mark a passage as a spoiler and it stays hidden in excerpts until a reader chooses to reveal it.
- Follow people for their taste
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You do not need to know someone to follow them. You follow them because you keep agreeing with them, or keep disagreeing in an interesting way.
On ShelfLife: Follow anyone whose shelves you like. Your home feed shows what the readers you follow just finished, in the order it happened. Nothing is ranked and nothing is sponsored.
- A year-in-review worth posting
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Letterboxd's annual stats get screenshotted and shared. Readers want the same, and Goodreads' version is a bare number.
On ShelfLife: Month in Books: a designed card of what you finished this month with one crowned favorite, twelve times a year instead of once. It only appears at the turn of the month, so it stays an occasion.
- Not owned by Amazon
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Independent, no ads, and still being worked on by people who use it themselves.
On ShelfLife: ShelfLife is built by Fisherbird, a two-person studio in Northern Virginia, with no ads and no outside capital. Free on iOS, Android, and the web.
The model, mapped onto books
Feature by feature. Most of the differences come down to books taking longer to get through than films.
| Feature | Letterboxd (films) | ShelfLife (books) |
|---|---|---|
| Favorites | Four Favorites on the profile | Top 12 on the profile, gold band on the shelf, exports as a card |
| Rating | Half stars, one half to five | Half stars, one half to five |
| Logging | A diary entry per watch; rewatches logged separately | A session per read with its own dates, rating, and review |
| Reviews | Any length | Any length, plus short takes and quotes in the Peanut Gallery; spoiler passages masked in excerpts |
| Collections | Lists | Shelves: named, arranged by hand, made of spines |
| Following | Follow anyone | Follow anyone |
| Home feed | Activity from people you follow | What the readers you follow finished, in order; no ranking |
| Queue | Watchlist | Want to read |
| Recap | Year in review, with Pro | Month in Books, a monthly card (yearly not built yet) |
| Recommendations | Friends' activity, lists, editorial picks | Book Signal: ask readers whose taste overlaps yours |
| Your library as a place | A poster grid | A shelf of spines you arrange, decorate, and export |
| Bringing history in | CSV import | Goodreads or StoryGraph CSV import |
| Price | Free with ads; Pro and Patron remove them | Free, no ads, no subscription |
The part Letterboxd cannot do
Films do not sit on a shelf. Books do, and you can tell a lot about a reader from one: which books are there, which ones sit next to each other, which spine is cracked from being read four times. ShelfLife draws your library that way. Books stand as spines in the order you put them, in front of a backdrop you picked, with a plant or a clock tucked in wherever you want.
Photograph the spine of a copy you own and that is the spine on your shelf. When you are done arranging, export a 1080 by 1350 card and post it. Other readers browse public shelves in Explore and can like yours. How you arranged it says as much as what is on it.
That is why we did not copy the film model wholesale. Four posters on a profile tell people something about you. A whole shelf you arranged yourself tells them a lot more.
Recommendations from people, not engines
The other thing readers say about Letterboxd is that their best recommendations came from one particular person whose taste they had come to trust. ShelfLife has a feature for that. Post a Book Signal describing the mood you are after, in your own words, and readers whose taste overlaps with yours will answer. Someone out there knows the exact book that feels like In the Mood for Love. There is no match score anywhere in the app. You see the person who answered, and that is the point.
Where the analogy stops
Books are slower than films. A film is two hours and then a rating. A novel can take three weeks, with a stall in the middle and a restart, and you may feel differently about it at the end than you did halfway through. ShelfLife is built with that in mind: a separate session for each read, a want-to-read pile that nobody is judging, and a recap that comes monthly rather than nightly.
Letterboxd has a long head start and a community that has settled in. ShelfLife launched in 2026. A bestseller here has far fewer reviews than a blockbuster there, and some shelves you find in Explore will belong to readers who joined last week. You can help with that by bringing your own.
If detailed reading statistics are the main thing you want, other apps do that better, and we say so on our comparison pages. There are stats in ShelfLife, but the shelf is what it is built around. And a few things, including Explore, spine photos, and the Peanut Gallery, are in the mobile app first.
Questions about a Letterboxd for books
Is there a Letterboxd for books?
ShelfLife is built to be one. It has the things readers usually mean when they ask: favorites at the top of your profile (a Top 12 rather than four), half-star ratings, a separate entry for each read of a book, reviews of any length, the ability to follow anyone, a shareable recap, and an independent studio with no ads. It also has something Letterboxd does not: your library drawn as a bookshelf of spines that you arrange and share.
What is the book equivalent of Letterboxd's Four Favorites?
On ShelfLife it is the Top 12: exactly twelve books that define your taste. They wear a gold band on your shelf, sit at the top of your profile, and export as their own card for Instagram or wherever you post.
Does ShelfLife have half-star ratings?
Yes. Ratings go in half-star steps from a half star to five, on every read of a book.
Can I keep rereads separate, like rewatches on Letterboxd?
Yes. Each read-through of a book has its own start and finish dates, its own rating, and its own review. Your earlier reactions stay part of the book's history instead of being replaced.
Is there a year-in-review like Letterboxd's?
ShelfLife does a monthly one. Month in Books is a shareable card of the books you finished that month with one crowned favorite, and it appears only in the last days of a month through the first week of the next. A yearly recap is on the list but not built yet, so we are not promising it here.
Can I bring my Goodreads or StoryGraph history?
Yes. Export your library from either service and import the file. Reading statuses, ratings, start and finish dates, and written reviews come with it, and the import never touches your original account.
Is ShelfLife free, and is it independent?
Yes to both. Free on iOS, Android, and the web, with no ads, no subscription, and no in-app currency. It is made by Fisherbird LLC, a two-person studio with no outside investors and no connection to Amazon or any retailer.
Is ShelfLife affiliated with Letterboxd?
No. Letterboxd is a film service made by a different company, and this page uses its name only because readers use it to describe what they want. ShelfLife is an independent product of Fisherbird LLC.
Come say what you wish it had
The threads asking for a Letterboxd for books are full of good, specific requests, and we read them. If you have one, the fastest way to get it in front of the two people who build this is our Discord or r/TheShelfLifeApp. Half stars were on that list once too.
Free, and about five minutes
Pick your Top 12 and see what it says about you.
Your Goodreads or StoryGraph history can come with you, so the shelf does not start empty.
Download the appHow the shelf is drawn Compared with Goodreads
Letterboxd is a trademark of Letterboxd Limited. ShelfLife is an independent product of Fisherbird LLC and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Letterboxd.