19 July 2026 · Book Assembly Team · 4 min read
A rating on its own doesn't tell you much. You gave a book four stars, but was that generous? Did everyone else find the middle section a slog too? Until now, Book Assembly could only tell you what you thought. With public profiles in place, it can start telling you what everyone else thinks as well, without giving away anyone's privacy.
Every book now has its own community page. It brings together what readers here make of it: how many people have it, its average rating, and a breakdown of how many readers gave each star rating, so you can see whether that 3.5 average is everyone shrugging or a split between love and loathing.
The page also gathers the moods readers picked ("adventurous", "emotional", "tense" and so on), how they found the pace, and the reviews people have chosen to make public. It all counts across every edition of the book, so the paperback, the hardback and the audiobook pool their readers instead of each sitting on its own.
Content warnings work the same way. If readers have noted warnings for a book, the page shows them grouped and counted, so you can see at a glance what comes up most often. It's useful if there's something you'd rather go into a book knowing about.
Below that you'll find:
About this book. A short description, with longer ones folded behind a "Show more" link.
Other editions. The different ways the book has been published, from Open Library, with covers, formats, years and publishers. That includes editions no one here owns yet.
Reviews. From every reader who has made theirs public, each linking to that reader's profile. Spoiler warnings are kept, and a review can be reported if it breaks the rules.
All of this is anonymous. Community details only appear once at least a couple of readers have added them, so nobody can work out a single reader's rating, moods or pace from the numbers. Content warnings wait until enough readers have flagged the same thing. Your own notes and reading progress are never part of it.
Your own book page hasn't changed its job. It's still about your take: your rating, your review, your moods. There's now a link from it to the community page when you want to see how your opinion compares.
There's a new Discover section for browsing what the community is reading. The front page shows the most-added books, the highest rated and the recently added, with a link through to each book's community page. It's also on the welcome page, so anyone thinking about signing up can see real books from real readers.
Discover only includes books that at least one reader has chosen to share publicly. If you keep your library private, none of your books will appear here.
It has its own tabs:
Books. Browse and search the whole community library by title or author, and sort by most read, highest rated or title. Results come in as you type.
Genres. Browse by the kind of book rather than a title you already know: fantasy, science fiction, history, biography and the rest. Each genre opens with a short, plain description of what it covers, and has the same search and sorting as the Books tab. A book's community page lists its genres too, each linking straight to that genre.
Series. Series and their reading orders, with each book linking to its community page where readers here have it. Searchable by series or author.
Lists. Curated lists (award winners, staff picks) alongside public reading lists from readers here. Search them by name, filter to just one kind, and switch between a grid and a list.
The information on a community page belongs to no single reader, so if a cover is wrong or a description is for a different book, use the "Report incorrect book info" link on the page. It comes straight to us to fix, and nobody's own library is touched.
The numbers on community pages grow as more people use Book Assembly and share their books, so they'll get more interesting over time. If you've turned on a public profile, making a few favourite books public is the best way to help. And if you haven't, nothing changes for you: your library stays exactly as private as it was.
