Book Dragon FAQ

About Book Dragon

What is Book Dragon?

Book Dragon is a personal and household book library for cataloging the books you own. It can organize physical books, ebooks, and audiobooks, help you find a specific title or edition, and keep a shared collection in sync between household members.

Who is Book Dragon for?

Book Dragon is for anyone who wants a dependable inventory of their books, especially households that share shelves, collections, or reading plans. It is designed for people who care about the details: different editions, multiple copies, series order, where a copy is stored, and who has read a book.

Is Book Dragon a reading app?

Book Dragon is primarily a library and ownership catalog, not an ebook reader or audiobook player. You can record reading status and notes, but the app does not replace the service or app you use to read or listen.

What devices does Book Dragon support?

The current app targets iPhone and iPad running iOS or iPadOS 26 or later.

Does Book Dragon require a Book Dragon account?

No. Book Dragon does not use a separate proprietary account for the core library. Your personal library is stored locally on your device. iCloud is used when you choose to synchronize or share a collection.

Is Book Dragon free?

Book Dragon is designed to be free to use, without advertising or arbitrary feature restrictions. Features that depend on an external service with a real ongoing cost may be treated differently in the future.

Organizing a library

What can I catalog in Book Dragon?

You can catalog physical books, ebooks, and audiobooks. A record can include its title, contributors, publisher, publication date, language, page count or duration, format, identifiers, ownership details, location, condition, notes, and more.

What is the difference between a work, an edition, and a copy?

A work is the underlying intellectual work, such as a novel. An edition is a particular publication of that work, such as a 2022 hardcover, a paperback, an ebook, or an audiobook. A copy is the individual item or license you own. This structure lets Book Dragon distinguish several editions of the same title and multiple copies of one edition.

Can I track multiple copies of the same book?

Yes. You can add additional copies of an existing edition and record copy-specific information such as quantity, condition, location, acquisition date, price, signed status, inscription, and notes.

Can I track different editions of the same work?

Yes. Book Dragon keeps editions separate when details such as format, publisher, publication date, language, page count, or identifier distinguish them.

Which formats can Book Dragon track?

Book Dragon supports hardcover, paperback, mass-market paperback, library binding, board book, ebook, audiobook, PDF, EPUB, braille, large print, and other or unspecified formats.

Can I record where a book is stored?

Yes. A copy can have a location, such as a room, shelf, box, or other place you choose.

Can I record signed books and inscriptions?

Yes. Copy details include signed status and inscription text, along with free-form notes.

Can I record purchase information?

Yes. A copy can include an acquisition date, purchase price, and currency. These fields are optional.

Can I catalog books I do not own?

The current inventory is focused on owned copies. Reading-list functionality is designed to support owned and unowned works or editions, including books you may want to acquire later. More extensive list and wishlist workflows are planned.

Adding books

How do I add a book?

You can add a book manually, scan its barcode, capture a title or copyright page with the camera, or describe the book using the in-app voice assistant. Every method ends with an editable review step before anything is saved.

Which barcodes can Book Dragon scan?

Book Dragon can recognize ISBN, EAN, and UPC barcodes, including ISBN-10, ISBN-13, EAN-8, EAN-13, and UPC-A values. Valid ISBN values provide the strongest path to automatic book metadata.

Can Book Dragon scan a book without a barcode?

Yes. The camera workflow can recognize strong evidence from a title page or copyright page. OCR is performed on the device, and the extracted title, author, ISBN, publisher, year, edition statement, or LCCN can be reviewed before saving.

What happens after I scan a book?

Book Dragon first checks your local library. If the book is not already cataloged, it queries appropriate public metadata catalogs, reconciles the possible matches, and presents the result for your review. You can edit any field, choose a different match, continue manually, or cancel without creating a record.

Does scanning automatically add a book to my library?

No. Scanning and metadata lookup create a draft. You review the suggested information and explicitly confirm the Add Book form before the work, edition, and copy are saved.

Can I add a book manually if metadata lookup fails?

Yes. A provider failure, no-match result, missing internet connection, or unresolved barcode never prevents manual entry. Book Dragon preserves the information you already entered so you can complete and save the record yourself.

Can I add several books quickly?

Yes. The scanning flow is designed for a rapid scan, review, add, and continue-to-next-book workflow.

Can I add a book by voice?

Yes. The in-app voice assistant can turn a spoken request such as “Add two paperback copies of Dune by Frank Herbert to the living room shelves” into an editable book draft. You can also edit the transcript or type it yourself.

Does the voice assistant save books automatically?

No. Speech recognition and interpretation only prepare a draft. The result is shown in the regular editable Add Book form, and the book is saved only after you confirm it.

What if voice recognition or Apple Intelligence is unavailable?

Voice entry can fall back to a deterministic local parser, and the transcript can always be edited or entered by hand. Microphone and speech-recognition permissions are required for recording, but typed entry does not depend on them.

Does Book Dragon invent missing book details?

No. It asks for a title when one cannot be established and does not silently invent one. Provider data is presented as a suggestion, while values you supplied or confirmed remain authoritative.

Metadata and accuracy

Where does Book Dragon get book information?

The current keyless metadata workflow uses Open Library as the primary source, with the Library of Congress for LCCN lookup and catalog verification, and Crossref for relevant scholarly, academic, and technical books. Cached results may also be available offline.

Do I need an API key for book lookups?

No. The initial metadata providers are keyless public catalogs. Book Dragon still respects provider throttling, caching, cancellation, and temporary failures.

Can I correct imported metadata?

Yes. Imported values are suggestions, not locked facts. Your corrections and explicitly confirmed values take precedence over later automatic suggestions.

How does Book Dragon handle conflicting metadata?

Book Dragon keeps work-level and edition-level information separate, compares evidence from multiple sources, and surfaces material conflicts for review. It does not silently replace a user-confirmed title, contributor, publisher, date, or page count.

What happens with an ISBN that has no catalog result?

The identifier remains attached to the draft or saved edition, and you can complete the rest of the record manually. An unresolved identifier is not discarded.

What happens with a UPC that is not an ISBN?

Book Dragon preserves the UPC or EAN on the record for future reference or later provider support. Non-ISBN retail barcodes may not have enough public book metadata to resolve automatically.

Are cover images and OCR text stored?

Book Dragon may retain a cover reference when metadata supplies one. The camera workflow does not store the page image or the raw OCR transcript as part of the scan process.

Search, duplicates, and cleanup

How can I find books in my library?

You can browse and search by title, author, series, or genre, then sort and filter the results.

Does Book Dragon detect duplicates?

Yes. Duplicate detection is collection-scoped and considers local identifiers and bibliographic evidence. When a possible duplicate is found, Book Dragon gives you explicit choices such as adding another copy, adding another edition, restoring a removed item, or creating a new record.

What happens if I remove a book by mistake?

Removing a book is non-destructive. Book Dragon moves it to Removed Items, where it can be restored rather than being immediately erased.

Can I restore a removed collection or book?

Yes. Removed collections and catalog records are retained in a restorable state and can be restored from the app’s Removed Items workflow.

Reading, series, and collections

Can I track whether I have read a book?

Yes. For each work, your reading status can be Not marked, Currently Reading, or Read. A Read status can include an optional completion date and note.

Can people in a shared collection have separate reading statuses?

Yes. Each participant has an independent reading status and optional note. Book details can show the statuses other participants have chosen to share, while each person edits only their own status.

What does “Not marked” mean?

It means no reading status has been recorded. It does not mean that Book Dragon knows the person has never read the book.

Can I organize books into series?

Yes. Book Dragon supports series entries, reading order, sequence labels, notes, nested series, and overlapping series memberships. A work can belong to more than one series when that reflects how the books are actually organized.

Can Book Dragon help find missing books in a series?

The series detail view can search public catalog data for possible missing titles. Results are uncertain suggestions and are never added until you select them. Selected missing entries remain distinct from owned inventory.

Does Book Dragon currently include wishlists and borrowing?

The data model and roadmap include reading lists, wishlists, borrowing, acquisition links, and insurance-related integrations, but these are future expansion areas rather than promises of the current release. Website copy should label them as planned until their workflows are publicly available.

Sharing and iCloud

Can I share a library with another person?

Yes. A collection can be shared through Apple’s CloudKit sharing system. The owner can invite participants with read-only or read-and-write access.

What can a read-only participant do?

Read-only participants can browse the shared collection but cannot add, edit, remove, restore, scan, use voice entry to mutate the collection, change series or wishlist records, or change reading-status records.

What can a read-and-write participant do?

Read-and-write participants can use the normal inventory controls for the shared collection, subject to the same review and confirmation steps as the owner.

Do shared changes sync automatically?

Book Dragon uses CloudKit synchronization and remote-change processing to keep private and shared collections up to date. Changes made on another device can refresh while the app is open, and the visible local snapshot remains usable if a temporary sync operation fails.

Can I use a shared library offline?

Yes. Book Dragon is local-first, so the most recent local snapshot remains available without a network connection. Changes made while offline can be synchronized after connectivity returns, although full multi-device offline acceptance continues to be tested for the release.

What happens if two people edit the same book?

Book Dragon uses deterministic conflict and history handling so changes can converge without silently discarding user-confirmed data. User corrections take priority over imported metadata, and removals, stale editors, relationships, and temporary failures have defined recovery behavior.

What do I need to use iCloud sharing?

Participants need to be signed in to iCloud on a compatible Apple device and have an active internet connection when accepting or managing an invitation. Book Dragon includes an iCloud Status view to help distinguish signed-out, restricted, unavailable, and temporary failure states.

What if a sharing invitation expires or fails?

The local library is preserved. Book Dragon explains whether you need to sign in to iCloud, reconnect, retry, or request a new invitation.

Privacy and data ownership

Is Book Dragon local-first?

Yes. The local database is the primary working copy for the app, which keeps browsing and core cataloging useful when the network or public metadata services are unavailable.

Does Book Dragon send my entire library to a metadata provider?

No. Metadata lookup uses the identifier or bibliographic details relevant to the current draft. The voice assistant receives only the current book-entry conversation, available formats, and relevant collection names; it does not receive the full library or Removed Items.

Is voice processing private?

The voice workflow is designed so the structured interpretation can use on-device understanding when available, with a deterministic local fallback. Speech and generated output never save a book directly, and the user must review the result first.

Does Book Dragon have its own advertising or tracking server?

The product is designed without ads and without a proprietary server for core library functionality. Public metadata services and Apple iCloud are used only for the features that need them.

Can I take my data with me?

Yes. Book Dragon can export the library, reading data, series graph, and related records as a relational CSV ZIP archive. The export is intended to be inspectable, portable, and useful for backup or further processing.

Does export include removed items?

The export can include reversibly removed records when the Removed Items data is included in the export request.

Troubleshooting

Can I use Book Dragon when metadata providers are offline?

Yes. You can continue with manual entry, use cached metadata when available, or retry later. Provider failures do not clear information already entered or block saving.

Can I use Book Dragon when iCloud is temporarily unavailable?

Yes. The current local snapshot remains readable. You can retry synchronization, sharing, or invitation acceptance after the connection or iCloud account issue is resolved.

What if a save fails?

Book Dragon keeps the draft retryable and avoids leaving a partial work, edition, or copy graph behind. Refresh the library and retry the save rather than re-entering the book from scratch.

What if an export is cancelled?

Cancellation returns you to the library without publishing a partial archive or presenting a stale share sheet. A previously valid export is not overwritten by a cancelled export.

Where should I report a problem?

Use the Book Dragon support page. Include your device model, iOS or iPadOS version, Book Dragon version, and the steps that caused the problem when possible.

Future features

What features are planned for Book Dragon?

The roadmap includes richer reading lists, borrowing and lending, wishlists and gift lists, acquisition links, more edition grouping, expanded ebook and audiobook ownership, Siri and App Intents, and optional insurance-partner integrations. Planned features may change as the core household inventory experience develops.

Will Book Dragon support retailer links or book purchasing?

Acquisition links and retailer destinations are planned. If introduced, affiliate links may be used where they help Book Dragon support the service; they would not change the ownership catalog itself.