Is this something anyone else does? I have no idea. But with my obsession of spreadsheets lately, I decided to revamp my Book Inventory sheet. And honestly, it needed an update. I was a little behind on adding books into it, so I had no clue of exactly how many books I have. Honestly, I love keeping track of my books and knowing how many I own, as well as the ratio of how many I’ve read versus what I haven’t.
So, if any of you interested in keeping an inventory of your own, here’s the basics of how I track mine.
As you can see, I divided my books into categories. Maybe I used too many, maybe I didn’t. But for now it works for me, so this is how it’s staying. The sections I have are as follows:
- Print Fiction
- Digital Fiction
- Manga
- Print Nonfiction
- Digital Nonfiction
- Poetry
- Reference (writing books, library science books, etc.)
- Language (language learning/books in foreign languages)
- Stats (of my library)
So I only include simple information, such as the Title, Author, and whether I’ve read the book or not. I used to include more info like the publish date of the book, when I got it (if I even knew), and more like that. But I found it to be tedious after a while, so that got cut from the new sheet.
When it comes to the Reference and Language books, I don’t count if I read them or not. Why is that? I figured that most books under this category are ones that I use more on occasion than actually read through, which is also why I don’t count these in my Reading Challenge for the year. I skip around in these books, so it’s rare that I read them all the way through.
Now for the stats… nothing too complicated. Again, I wanted this to be pretty simple. I mainly only have this to see how many books total I own, along with how many of my collection (minus Ref & Language) that I’ve actually read. As you can see… I have over 100 books I haven’t read yet. To be fair, I’ve been terrible this month with buying books, otherwise it would’ve been under.
So that’s pretty much how I keep track of the books I own. It’s simple, but it works for me. And if anyone wants to use my template, I’m leaving a (mostly) blank copy below so that you can customize it however you wish!
>>Get the Book Inventory Template here!<<
Have a great day my fellow book nerds!
Genie in a Novel 
I love your level of dedication! I’m just lazy and have an ‘owned-physical-copy’ and ‘owned-ebook’ shelves on Goodreads and update it when I remember.
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Haha, thanks!😅 That’s how I was too, but I just deleted them on there and did this because for some reason it’s harder to keep track on there than on Google Sheets.
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this is so cool! i’ve been wanting to keep track of mine but haven’t gotten around to it yet. i’m excited to give your template a shot. 🙂
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Thanks! And I hope it works out for you! I find that it’s quite addicting to watch the stats 😂
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i’m obsessed with stats so i think i’ll love it!
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this is so cool!! im obsessed with stats and keeping track of my books so this is like the best of both worlds lol. have u heard of librarything before? its a website that i use to keep track of all the books i own – you can edit ur editions and tag ur books and everything and its like a lil library directory for all ur books ☺
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Thanks! I think I have heard of it before, but I’ve never actually looked it up or anything. I might have to check it out! 🙂
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I tried making one of these last year but then I never updated it and I’m not great with spreadsheets, but I’d love to try and make another because it’s a great way to keep track of unread books. Thanks for the tips!
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It is. I love watching the numbers change when I update it! 😀
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Whoa! This is amazing! Thanks for sharing a blank template, I’m gonna try to use it 😀
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Hope you like it!
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