4 July 2026 · Book Assembly Team · 3 min read
Until now, Book Assembly has been entirely private. Your library, your data, nobody else can see it. That's still the default, and it always will be. But starting today, you can choose to share parts of your reading life if you want to.
You can turn on a public profile under Dashboard, then Profile. Once enabled, you get a web address you can share: something like bookassembly.co.uk/@yourname.
Your profile page shows the things you'd expect: your bio, reading stats (books, pages, what you've read this year), your top genres, what you're currently reading with progress, and your recently finished books. If you've set reading goals, your progress ring shows up in the header.
But here's what's important: your library stays private by default. Turning on a public profile doesn't suddenly make everything visible. You choose which individual books, lists, and reviews other people can see. Everything else, including your notes, reading progress, and any book you haven't explicitly made public, stays hidden.
You can now mark books as favourites. When your profile is public, your favourites appear in a prominent row near the top of your page. Five covers that tell visitors what kind of reader you are. It's the most personal section of the profile, and the one that tends to spark the best conversations.
Even if you don't use a public profile, favourites work as a private feature too. Pin the books that matter most to you.
Each book has a visibility setting. Make a book public and your rating and review (if you've written one) become visible on your profile and on that book's page within Book Assembly. Your private notes, reading progress, moods, pace, and content warnings stay private regardless.
Lists work the same way. You can set each list to "Only you", "Anyone with the link", or "Anyone". The wording is the same everywhere, and each option explains exactly what it means, including whether it can appear on search engines.
The key principle: you always know what's public because you made it public yourself. Nothing is shared by default. Nothing is inferred. No surprises.
This is a quiet addition, but a useful one. Book pages can now show community statistics: how many Book Assembly readers have a particular book, and its average rating across those readers. The data is fully anonymised. Nobody can see who owns a book unless that person has chosen to make their copy public.
If you've ever wondered "am I the only person who gave this a 2?" or "how many other people have actually read this?", now you can see. The numbers grow as more people use Book Assembly, and they'll become more interesting over time.
If you delete your account, your contribution to these counts is removed. Your data doesn't linger.
If you see a public profile, list, or review that breaks the rules, you can report it in a couple of taps. Our team reviews every report.
We thought carefully about how to add social features without compromising the privacy-first approach that defines Book Assembly. The answer was simple: make everything opt-in, be explicit about what each setting does, and never default to public.
Your library is yours. Sharing it is your choice, not ours.
