Physical Books

Physical books let you catalog books you own in print, without needing a digital file. This is useful for tracking your full collection in one place, even if some of your books only exist on a shelf at home.

Physical books live alongside your digital books in any library. They show up in search, can be assigned to shelves and Magic Shelves, and support full metadata editing.

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Key Differences from Digital Books

	Digital Books	Physical Books
File required	Yes (EPUB, PDF, CBZ, etc.)	No
Added via	Library scan or Bookdrop	Manual form or bulk ISBN import
Reader	Built-in reader	Not applicable
Cover generation	Extracted from file	Fetched via metadata or uploaded manually
Metadata fetch	Automatic or manual	Manual entry, then fetchable via metadata providers
Badge	Format badge (EPUB, PDF, etc.)	Purple PHYSICAL badge
Shelves & Magic Shelves	Supported	Supported

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Adding a Physical Book

Step 1: Open the Library Menu

Right-click (or click the three-dot icon) on any library in the sidebar. Select Add Physical Book from the menu.

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Step 2: Fill in the Form

The Add Physical Book dialog lets you enter metadata for your book. The only hard requirement is that you provide a Title or an ISBN (or both).

Fields:

Field	Required	Notes
Library	Yes	Pre-selected if opened from a specific library
Title	Title or ISBN	The book’s title
ISBN	Title or ISBN	ISBN-10 or ISBN-13
Authors	No	Type a name and press Enter. Autocompletes from existing authors in your collection.
Description	No	Brief description or summary
Publisher	No	Publisher name
Published Date	No	Accepts 2020 or 2020-05-15 format
Language	No	e.g., English
Page Count	No	Number of pages
Categories/Genres	No	Type a category and press Enter. Autocompletes from existing categories.

Click Add Physical Book to save.

Autocomplete

The Authors and Categories fields suggest values from books already in your collection, so you can keep naming consistent across your library.

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Step 3: View Your Book

Once created, the physical book appears in the library alongside your digital books. It will display a purple PHYSICAL badge on the book card so you can easily tell it apart.

You can edit its metadata, assign it to shelves, upload a cover image, or fetch metadata from online providers just like any other book.

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Bulk ISBN Import

If you have a large collection of physical books, adding them one by one can be tedious. The bulk ISBN import lets you add dozens (or hundreds) of books at once by providing a list of ISBNs. This is especially handy if you use a barcode scanner app on your phone to scan your shelves, then export the list.

Step 1: Open the Import Dialog

Right-click a library in the sidebar and select Import ISBNs from….

Step 2: Provide ISBNs

You can either paste ISBNs directly or upload a file (.txt, .csv, .tsv). The dialog accepts both ISBN-10 and ISBN-13 formats. For CSV/TSV files, it auto-detects delimiters and headers.

Select the target Library, then review the parsed results. The dialog shows how many valid ISBNs were found, how many were skipped (invalid format), and how many duplicates were removed.

Barcode Scanner Workflow

Use a mobile barcode scanner app (like Alfa ISBN Scanner) to scan your physical books, export the list as a .csv or .txt file, and upload it here.

Step 3: Import

Click Start Import to begin. Grimmory processes each ISBN sequentially, looking up metadata from your configured providers and creating the book entry. A progress bar and real-time status updates show which book is being processed.

You can stop the import at any time. Books already created up to that point are kept.

Step 4: Review Results

Once complete, you get a summary showing all imported books with their resolved titles. The books are immediately available in your library with whatever metadata was found.

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Filtering Physical Books with Magic Shelves

You can create a Magic Shelf that automatically collects all your physical books using the isPhysical rule field.

Example rule:

{
  "field": "isPhysical",
  "operator": "equals",
  "value": "true"
}

This makes it easy to see your entire physical collection at a glance, or combine it with other rules (e.g., all physical books by a specific author).

See Magic Shelf for more on creating rule-based shelves.

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Notes

• Physical books do not have a built-in reader since there is no file to open.
• Cover regeneration is skipped for physical books. To add or change a cover, use the metadata editor to upload one manually or fetch it from a metadata provider.
• Physical books count toward your library totals and appear in search results, filters, and statistics.