Create beautiful book galleries and author pages on WordPress—without coding.
Pretty Bookshelf gives authors and book lovers a simple way to display books, share descriptions, and help readers find where to buy. Add a book by ISBN or enter its details yourself, then display it with a block or shortcode.
Start free with five published books and unlimited drafts.
See sample layouts:
Book gallery |
Author page |
Single-book page.
Everything you need to show your books
- Less manual entry. Look up book details and covers using Open Library, then review and edit the results.
- Ready-made layouts. Start with a bookstore gallery, author page, or single-book launch page.
- Your own purchase links. Add up to four retailer buttons per book, including your affiliate links.
- Update once. Edit a book in one place and its details update wherever you display it.
- Fits your site. Layouts inherit your theme’s fonts and colors.
Use a Pretty Bookshelf block in the WordPress editor, or choose display options and copy a generated shortcode from the Shortcodes & Layouts screen.
Need a larger collection?
The free version includes five published books. Plus supports 50 and Pro supports 500.
Compare the paid editions.
Documentation & support
- In WordPress, go to Plugins > Add Plugin, search for Pretty Bookshelf, then install and activate it. If you downloaded the ZIP, use Upload Plugin instead.
- Go to Pretty Bookshelf > Add Book. Enter an ISBN and choose Find Book, or enter the details manually.
- Review the result and choose Use these details. Check the cover, description, and retailer links, then publish the book.
- Edit a page and insert a Pretty Bookshelf block. Choose the book or collection to display, preview, and publish your page.
Publishing a book saves it for use in your displays; it does not automatically create a standalone book page.
For ready-made pages, open Patterns > Pretty Bookshelf in the block editor. Choose a layout, select your book or author, and replace the sample text. You can also copy a shortcode from Pretty Bookshelf > Shortcodes & Layouts into a Shortcode block.
Follow the illustrated Getting Started guide.
1.0.1
- Match the translation text domain to the approved WordPress.org slug, prettyplugins-pretty-bookshelf.
1.0
- Clear Plus and Pro upgrade options with direct Freemius checkout links.
- Added an upgrade page explaining purchase, installation and license activation.
- Basic remains free, with five published books and unlimited drafts.
0.9.6
- Restore the Pretty Bookshelf name and original text domain; retain the 0.9.5 updates.
0.9.5
- Add an author icon and replace shortcode lists with examples and a copyable shortcode generator.
- Support all="true" for automatic all-book shortcode galleries.
0.9.3
- Add Pretty Bookshelf All Books with an automatic published-book grid.
- Name the three blocks clearly and show book and author selectors directly in the editor.
- Match newly inserted books to gallery styling and simplify the gallery pattern.
0.9.2
- Explain when a selected book is unavailable because it is in draft mode.
0.9.1
- Simplify the Bookstore gallery introduction.
- Keep shortcode-based book cards visible in the block editor.
0.9
- Raise the Author edition to five published books, with unlimited drafts.
- Update publication messages, setup instructions, and directory screenshot captions.
0.5.5
- Add an optional three-step Getting Started guide with layout choices and practical troubleshooting.
- Simplify ISBN lookup controls and add an explicit manual-entry path.
- Preview imported descriptions and ISBNs before applying details.
- Clarify missing-cover recovery, edit preservation, and when changes are saved.
- Refine editor spacing and update product copy around ease of use and good design.
- Keep the Author edition at three published books and unlimited drafts.
0.5.4
- Add a Plus/Pro upgrade link to publication-limit notices.
- Remove shortcut links from the Author publication-count notice.
0.5.3
- Use the theme’s wide layout width for the bundled page patterns.
- Avoid a cover-fallback observer error while the block editor creates its preview document.
- Resolve Plugin Check findings and simplify the plugin name to Pretty Bookshelf.
0.5.0
- Introduce the Author edition: three published books and unlimited drafts.
- Enforce publication limits on regular saves, bulk publishing, scheduling and programmatic publishing.
- Add published-book counters and a selection screen.
- Preserve excess books as drafts when changing editions.
- Update publisher and support information to Pretty Plugins.
0.4.4
- Fix the title placeholder overlapping titles imported by ISBN.
- Keep book descriptions left aligned under themes that justify paragraph text and give gallery cards more room.
0.4.2
- Simplify setup, pattern, and shortcode instructions and remove outdated readme text.
- Correct the author layout description and generate advanced shortcode examples from the site's own books.
- Use cached ISBN results on repeat lookups and keep service errors distinct from an ISBN not found.
- Hide password-protected books from public displays and author lists.
- Hide empty gallery cards and launch-page frames when their books are unpublished.
- Give each book preview its own accessible label without duplicate heading IDs.
- Add translation support for editor and lookup messages and address Plugin Check findings.
- Improve shortcode fields and prevent justified text from creating uneven spacing in book layouts.
0.4.1
- Add an automatic Author Collection block and author-based shortcode.
- Add Pretty Bookshelf > Shortcodes & Layouts, with copy buttons for each published book and author, display options, and pattern instructions.
- Match published book author fields exactly, ignoring capitalization and extra whitespace, and sort by title.
- Use the automatic collection in the bundled Author page pattern. Existing pages and book records are unchanged.
0.4.0
- Bundle three optional block patterns: Bookstore gallery, Author page, and Single-book launch.
- Add scoped, responsive pattern styling and a local author portrait placeholder.
- Add the description word limit to block settings; gallery cards start at 45 words.
- Keep all book records, settings, and existing pages unchanged.
0.3.4
- Remove repeated publisher names during import, ignoring capitalization and extra whitespace. Keep the first spelling and preserve genuinely different publishers, including names with commas.
- Use a fresh versioned lookup cache so old imported duplicates are not reused.
- Leave all existing book records unchanged.
0.3.3
- Optional gallery description excerpts with accessible, keyboard-operable Read more / Read less controls. Full descriptions stay in the book records.
- Add description_words="45" to a shortcode to collapse longer descriptions after 45 words; omit it or use 0 to keep the full display. Short descriptions and empty descriptions never get an empty toggle.
0.3.2
- Validate ISBN-10 and ISBN-13 checksums in the editor before sending requests, so invalid input gets a clear ISBN message even on hosts that replace HTTP error bodies.
- Show a bundled neutral cover placeholder when a cover is missing or fails to load, including the editor, lookup results, blocks, and shortcodes.
- Keep existing saved cover URLs and all book records unchanged. The placeholder is only a display fallback.
0.1.0
First testing version.
Missing or unavailable cover images use an included SVG placeholder. It is served from your own site and never saved over a book’s cover URL.