How I Built a Book Reading Tracker in Notion (with Template)

Keep track your booklist & reading notes in 1 place

5 min readFeb 28, 2020

As a product builder↗️, I built micro tools to solve my own problems. For example: article tool, portfolio tracker, SaaS tracker, habit tracker, and personal finance tracker.

I’ve always been an avid reader and I love reading about startups, business, & mindset. I wanted to be able to track my reading list, notes, and progress.

Today, I will share my steps on how to create your own book tracker.

1. Starting point 💡

Before this, I used Goodreads to track my reading progress. I also tracked my book notes on a separate Google Doc. However, I wanted a solution that combines both.

✅ To begin, I list down the parts I want to build

Track reading progress
Record reading notes
Sort the reading list by category
Include a cover image for each book entry
Track the number of times a book read by date

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2. Set up Notion 💻

Go to Notion and sign up for a free account.

✅ Getting started

Start a new workspace in Notion
Name your document “Book Reading Tracker”
Create a database by choosing the “Gallery” option

Notion will create sample data in your Gallery. You might want to delete the sample entries including property “Created” and “Tags” per card entries to start from scratch.

3. Create a book entry 📚

Fill up the book titles in each of the “Untitled” areas. Click the “+ New” button to add a new entry. For example:

4. Add a book image 🖼️

Next, add a book cover image for each of these books. This will make your reading tracker visually richer in each card display.

✅ Create an image property

To attach an image to your book entry, go to any card block,

Right-click on “Property”
Select a Property Type > “Files & Media”
Rename the property as “Image”

✅ Embed book image link

Google a book cover photo, copy the photo link by Image Address
Paste it into your “Image” using “Embed link” option
Click “Embed link”

✅ Show book image via Properties

By default, the embedded book image doesn’t show up in the Gallery unless you customize it. To display the book cover image:

Go to “…” icon near the top right “New” icon
Select “Properties” from the dropdown
Click on “Card Preview” and select “Image”

You can also edit your Card size by “Small”, “Medium” or “Large”

5. Create a book category 📦

I love to organize my book list with relevant themes. It helps me to identify a specific knowledge area I’ve studied and what books to read next. In this case, I’ve used tagging.

✅ Add a tagging property

Click “+ Add a Property”, right-click on “Property”
Select a Property Type > “Multi-Select”
Rename the property as “Category”

✅ Create your category tags

Go to “Category” field and start typing your category
Hit enter to save a tag, create more tags if you want
You can also change the color of the tags

You can also enable your Category to display on the Gallery using the Properties settings in Step 3.

6. Track reading progress 📈

I created a “Progress Code” property to track my reading progress. For example, 2019 #07 means the sixth book in the year 2020. An entry that contains 2 progress codes means it’s been read 2 times.

You can also enable your Progress Code to display on the Gallery using the Properties settings in Step 3.

7. Reading date 📅

Adding a “Done Date” can enhance searchability. For example, I can sort my reading list by the year 2019, 2018, or 2017. You can create a “Date” property to track this parameter:

8. Filter & sort 🔍

One way to use this book tracker is to use the filter/sort in Notion. You can search for a specific book based on the parameters we’ve set: book titles, category, progress, done date, etc.

✅ Filter reading list by category

Let’s filter a list of books that are related to the money category,

Go to “…” icon near the top right “New” icon
Select “Filter” from the dropdown
Set: “Category” — “Contains” — “Money”

✅ Sort reading list by category

Let’s clear the Filter and try to Sort the book list by book titles.

Go to “…” icon near the top right “New” icon
Select “Sort” from the dropdown
Set: “Name” — “Descending”

9. Take reading notes 📝

I take reading notes in the forms of key lessons, framework & inspiration. In this reading tracker, I can simply type my book notes within each book I track:

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