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What is Ignatius?

Ignatius catalogs your book collection. Take two photos of a book (the cover and the copyright page) and Ignatius pulls out the metadata, figures out the edition and printing, and takes a crack at estimating market value. You can search, sort, and export your collection from any device.

Should I use my phone or my computer?

Use your phone to add books. You'll be snapping photos of covers and copyright pages, so your phone camera is the way to go. Once your books are in the system, you can browse and manage your collection from your phone or computer.

Adding your first books

Tap Add a Book to get started. There are two modes:

  • Single mode: Take two photos (cover + copyright page) and the book is processed and added to your collection automatically.
  • Batch mode: Upload a bunch of photos at once. Try to keep them in order (cover, copyright, cover, copyright). Ignatius pairs them up for you, but if it gets the pairing wrong you can tap to unpair and re-match them. Books process in the background, so you can leave the page once things get going.

Adding a lot of books at once

Once you've added a few books and have the hang of it, batch mode is the fastest way to catalog a big collection. Here's the recommended workflow:

  1. Take all your photos on your phone. Go through your shelves and snap cover, copyright page, cover, copyright page, and so on. Keep them in order — it makes pairing much easier.
  2. Switch to your desktop for the upload. Transfer your photos to your computer (AirDrop, Google Photos, USB, whatever you prefer). Dragging 50–100 photos into the batch uploader is much easier with a mouse than a phone screen.
  3. Open Ignatius on desktop, go to Add a Book, and select Batch. Drag your photos in. Ignatius will try to pair them automatically (cover + copyright page). Check the pairings — if any are wrong, tap to unpair and re-match.
  4. Hit process and give it some time. Books process two at a time in the background. You can leave the page or close the tab — processing continues as long as the browser tab was open when it started. For a big batch (50+ books), expect it to take a while.

Photo tips for batch: You don't need perfect photos, but make sure the copyright page text is readable. Avoid glare and heavy shadows. If a book doesn't process well, you can always delete it and re-add it with better photos.

What Ignatius is good at

Ignatius is strong at pulling details from your books: title, author, publisher, year, ISBN, edition, printing. It reads the copyright page to figure out if you have a first edition or first printing. All of that gets organized into a collection you can search and browse.

Where Ignatius is still learning

Pricing is a work in progress. Ignatius estimates the value of your books using market data and AI, but it gets it right sometimes and wrong other times. Think of the estimates as a starting point. Keep in mind that a book is only as valuable as what someone else is willing to pay for it, which is why Ignatius provides an easy way to see what similar copies of your book have actually sold for on marketplaces like eBay. More on that just below.

If you know what a book is worth, tap Edit and set your own value in the Value & Purchase section. Your number always wins.

Editing details and reappraising

Tap Edit on any book to fix anything Ignatius got wrong, or to add details like what you paid and when you bought it.

A few things Ignatius can't figure out on its own from photos:

  • Condition — Ignatius doesn't grade the physical condition of your books. You can set this yourself (Fine, Near Fine, Very Good, etc.) in edit mode.
  • Signatures — Ignatius can't tell if a book is signed. If you have a signed copy, tick the Signed checkbox.
  • Book club editions — These can be tricky to identify from the copyright page alone. If you know a book is a book club edition, you can flag it in edit mode.

The Reappraise button tells Ignatius to re-evaluate a book's value using its current details. This is handy after you've changed something that affects price. For example, if you mark a book as signed and then hit Reappraise, the estimate should go up.

Looking up books on marketplaces

Every book has a Look Up on Marketplaces section with links to search for your specific edition:

  • eBay Sold: What people actually paid for the book recently. The best way to gauge real market value.
  • eBay Active: What sellers are currently asking. Useful for seeing what's out there, but asking prices tend to run higher than what books actually sell for.
  • AbeBooks: A big marketplace for rare and used books. Good for finding comparable copies and seeing what dealers are charging.
  • ViaLibri: Searches across many rare book dealer sites at once. Helpful for harder-to-find editions.

Confidence badges

Each book gets a colored badge: green (high confidence), amber (worth a look), or red (probably needs correction). If you see amber or red, it's a good idea to check the details and edit anything that looks off.

Grouping books into sets

Got a trilogy or a multi-volume series? You can group those books together. Tap Edit on any book, scroll to Actions, and tap Add to Set. Sets get their own page with combined marketplace links.

Your data

Your collection is private. Only you can see your books, and your data is never shared with other users. Ignatius uses AI to process your photos and extract book details, but your images and collection data are not used to train any AI models.

Your data is stored in Supabase, a hosted database platform with row-level security, encryption at rest, and SSL encryption in transit. Every query is scoped to your account, so there is no way for one user to access another user's books. You can export your full collection as a CSV at any time, and you can delete individual books whenever you want.

Beta limits

  • You can catalog up to 300 books during the beta.
  • Each book can be reappraised once every 7 days.

Exporting your collection

On desktop, there's a CSV link at the top of your collection page. It downloads a spreadsheet with all your book data: titles, authors, ISBNs, edition info, values, the works.

If something goes wrong

If a book doesn't process correctly, you can edit the details by hand, or just delete it and try again with better photos.

Bugs and feedback

You're one of the first people using Ignatius. If something breaks, looks weird, or could be better, please let us know.