My Shelf-Portrait
The books that inspire me
A stack of books that changed your outlook.
- 1Add nine books — search for them or browse a list.
- 2Then change the covers. Each book arrives with its best-known one; a tap on it shows the others — pick the one you love.
- 3Share the picture.
The books that define you — each with the cover you love, and where to find that edition.
Three examples to start you off — keep them, change the cover, or take them out with ✕.Tap a cover to change it for your favourite. Drag ⠿ to move it.Click a cover to change it for your favourite. Drag a cover to move it.
Questions
▸What is a Shelf-Portrait?
A picture of the books that inspire you — three, six or nine of them, each with the cover you love. You put it together here and share it wherever you like.
▸Do I need an account?
No. No account, no e-mail address, no app. While you build it, your board lives in the address of this page — reload it, and it is still there.
▸My book, or my cover, is not there.
The search asks Open Library, an open catalogue. Try the original title or the author’s name. A cover nobody has scanned yet cannot be shown here. You can add it yourself: Open Library is free to edit with an account — add a missing book, or upload a cover on the book’s page there. Once it is there, it can be chosen here too.
▸What do I get to share?
A picture for a story (1080 × 1920) or for a post (1080 × 1350), on a ground made from the colours of your covers, on a mosaic of small covers or on paper, with or without titles and authors under the covers. And a link: posted, it shows as a card with your covers.
▸Is my name on the picture?
Only if you type one. Without a name the picture says “My Shelf-Portrait”. A line of your own under it is optional too.
▸Can I change it later?
Yes. Open your link and choose “Start from this one”. A changed board gets a link of its own; the old link keeps showing the old board.
▸What is stored?
When you press “Done”: the books, their covers, and the name and line you typed, so that the link can show them. Nothing about you, and no cookie.
▸Where can I buy these editions?
Each cover on a shared board leads to its book’s page: the printings that carried this cover and where to find them, new or used, online or locally.
▸Whose covers are these?
The scans come from Open Library, the Internet Archive’s open catalogue. The designs belong to their publishers and artists; Buy Its Covers shows them so that you can tell one edition from another and find the one you mean.