Introducing Shelves! A New Way to Save and Curate Books on Pango

Published by PangoBooks, Dec. 1, 2023

This week on Pango, we’re excited to announce a new way to save, arrange, share, and curate books.  With Pango Shelves, you can create your own custom lists of books under any heading. Whether it's books you’re saving to buy later, favorites you’ve already read, or books grouped by any other topic, Pango Shelves is your place to express your unique taste!

One of our goals with Shelves is to create a new and flexible way for Pangoers to share books and discover new reads. We have an amazing community of passionate readers on our platform and we genuinely cannot wait to see all the shelves you all create! 

How do shelves work? 

At its root, Shelves is essentially an expansion of our wishlist feature. With wishlists, you could save any individual book listing to a single list to revisit later. Shelves takes that concept and expands it by allowing Pangoers to make as many different custom lists as they’d like. 

To save a book to a shelf, use the heart icon on the listing as you would with the wishlist. You’ll now have the option to add the book to your wishlist (a default shelf for everyone) or to create a new shelf entirely. Click the plus sign to add a new shelf to your collection.

All your shelves (including your wishlist) will be visible via the heart icon at the top of our website or the bottom of our app. From here, you can view all your shelves, create new ones, move books around, and more! 

What’s the difference between saving titles versus individual copies?

When saving books, you now have the option to save an individual copy of a book or the title more generally, independent of the individual listing. For example, if you want to save a specific, unique edition of a book or maybe a copy that’s listed at an especially good price, it would make sense to save that individual listing. If instead, you’re curating something like “My All-Time Favorite Biographies”, it would make more sense to save the title since that selection is not connected to any individual listing. 

You can set a default mode for this on your account or for a particular shelf, and you will always have the option to go back and forth when saving different books. 

How can I share my shelves? 

On any individual shelf page, you’ll find a share option next to the title that will allow you to share the shelf via email or by copying a shareable link. This is a great tool if you want to share your wishlist with someone ahead of the holidays or just show off an immaculately curated collection you’ve created.

Can I make a shelf private?

You’ll be able to toggle any shelf between public and private. If set to public, your shelf will be discoverable by the PangoBooks community on your account page and elsewhere. Setting any individual shelf to private will prevent others from seeing it.

Other things to know about Pango Shelves

• There will be a link to all the public shelves you’ve created on your Pango account. Browsing other users’ shelves is a great way to discover new reads! 
• You can also browse all the shelves that other users have created via a link on their account page. 
• You can browse all shelves created by other people on Pango on this page.
• For more information on how shelves work, visit this article in our Help Center! 

If you have any questions or run into any issues using this new tool, please let our team know. We’re so excited to see how folks use shelves and would love to hear your feedback!