The guide
How ShelfKeepr finds the books you're missing
You add the books. We watch every marketplace we cover, hunt harder for the rare ones, and email you the moment a copy matches your price and condition.
- Every 30 min
- a last copy, on Hunter
- 2
- marketplaces searched
- £0
- to start — no card
Hunting
You add the books. We do the rest.
A hunt is a standing search. It runs until you buy the book or stop it — finding a copy doesn't end it.
- 01
Add the books you're hunting
Search by title, author or ISBN. Set a max price and a condition, and choose whether any edition will do or only the one you picked.
- 02
We hunt harder for the rarer books
Every book gets its own schedule, set by how many copies are actually listed. A book with one copy left is checked far more often than one with forty.
That's the whole trick — a last copy gets sniped in minutes, a common paperback doesn't.
- 03
You hear the moment it matches
We email a link straight to the listing. If that copy's price drops, or a cheaper edition turns up, we email again — and if someone buys it, the card says so.
The queue
How the free plan queues your books
Watcher hunts one book at a time. Everything else waits on your list, ready to swap in — nothing is deleted and nothing is lost.
- Horus RisingHunting
- The Name of the WindPaused
- NeuromancerPaused
- One hunting, up to ten on the list.
- A new book you add waits in Paused until you swap it in.
- Swap once every 12 hours.
- Picking a paused book to hunt pauses the current one. The cooldown stops one slot being churned through a whole list.
- Buying frees the slot.
- Mark a book bought and it moves to your shelf, and the next book starts hunting on its own.
- Hunter removes the queue entirely.
- 100 books hunting at once, 500 on the list.
Adding books
Three ways to get a book on your list
Most books are already there. For the ones that aren't, you have two more doors.
From the catalogue
Type a title, author or ISBN. Pick the edition you want, or tick “any edition” and we'll take the cheapest printing that matches.
Request a book
Type the 13 digits from the back cover. We look it up and add it to the catalogue for everyone, usually in seconds.
No ISBN at all
Older printings, small presses and rulebooks often have no ISBN. Add the title, author and edition yourself and the hunt starts from that.
Your collection
How your shelf and collections work
The hunt is what you're missing. The shelf is what you already have.
The copies you own
Add a copy straight from a match once you've bought it, or by hand for anything already on your shelves.
Grouped however you like
By series, by author, or by the shelf they physically sit on. A collection can hold another collection.
Volumes versus copies
A book you own twice counts once as a volume and twice as a copy, so duplicates never inflate how much of a series you have.
Cadence
How often we actually check
Scarcity sets the schedule, and your plan sets the pace. These are the real intervals, per book.
FAQ
Questions people actually ask
Yes, and there's no card. Watcher hunts one book at a time, holds ten on your list, and searches every marketplace we cover — the same searches Hunter gets, just less often.
Hunter hunts 100 books at once with no queue, holds 500 on your list, checks a last copy every 30 minutes instead of every hour, and unlocks the must-be filters — signed, first edition, hardback, illustrated, annotated.
A used copy typically costs about 60% less than a new one. Find one book and the month has paid for itself.
eBay and Etsy today, in your own region, on every plan including the free one. When we add another, every existing hunt picks it up automatically.
We email you a link straight to the listing. The hunt keeps running — we'll email again if that copy's price drops or a cheaper edition turns up, and the card tells you if someone else has bought it.
If you're tracking several books, one scan sends one email covering all of them, not one per book.
Pick the exact edition and untick “any edition” and we'll match on that ISBN alone. Leave it ticked and we'll take the cheapest printing of the same title.
On Hunter you can also require an attribute — signed, first edition, hardback, illustrated or annotated — and listings without it are ignored.
Request it by ISBN and we'll look it up and add it for everyone. If it has no ISBN at all — an old printing, a small press, a rulebook — add it by hand and the hunt starts from what you typed.
You keep Hunter until the end of the month you've already paid for — nothing changes before then, and there's no further charge.
After that you're back on Watcher. Your shelf, collections and every book stay. Books past the free cap pause rather than disappear, and start again the moment you resubscribe.
Some listing links are affiliate links, which means we may be paid a small commission if you buy through one. It never changes the price you pay, and it never affects which copy we show you — the cheapest match wins either way.
No. One email per scan, however many books moved, plus the occasional account or billing email. We only write when something actually changed.
Start your first hunt
One book, no card, every marketplace. Add something you've been looking for and see what turns up.