Writing a book is hard enough. Managing one shouldn’t be.
Publishing isn’t just about writing and uploading. It’s a chain of decisions, tasks, tweaks, and waiting games. You start with a rough draft, then you revise, get feedback, fix typos, update metadata, convert files, upload to vendors, check proofs, write blurbs, schedule announcements… and somehow keep track of all of it across multiple platforms and formats.
Most of the time, progress lives in your head—or scattered across notebooks, apps, or spreadsheets. It’s a fragile system. One that relies on memory and energy you don’t always have.
MetaShelf gives you something better: a visual, customizable, intuitive way to track how far along each book really is.
Progress that adapts to how you work
At the heart of MetaShelf’s progress tracking is a simple idea: you define what complete looks like.
In Settings, you can choose which metadata fields matter to you. If you want every book to have a title, subtitle, author name, publication date, and ASIN before it’s considered “ready,” you can mark those fields as required for progress. MetaShelf will watch those fields for you.
As soon as you start filling them out, the progress bar begins to move. And when you’re missing something? You’ll see exactly what’s left. There’s no guesswork. No “Did I update the description for the print edition?” panic.
It’s not just a bar—it’s clarity.
Task-based tracking, too
Progress isn’t just about fields. Sometimes it’s about checkboxes.
You can assign tasks to any book, format, or translation. Things like “Finalize back cover,” “Upload to Kobo,” or “Send to beta readers.” As you complete them, the book’s progress bar fills in.
MetaShelf blends these two types of tracking—metadata completeness and task completion—into a single progress percentage. That means you can always see, at a glance, how close a book is to being done. Not just written, but actually ready to publish.
If you want more control, you can even weight the importance of certain fields by choosing which ones to include in the calculation. Want to ignore the subtitle for now? Just uncheck it in settings. Your books will no longer be “penalized” for missing it.
The result is flexible, author-defined progress that reflects your workflow—not someone else’s checklist.
What progress looks like
Each book in MetaShelf displays a dynamic progress bar based on your settings.
Hover over the bar, and you’ll see a custom tooltip showing you what’s left to complete—missing fields, uncompleted tasks, anything still standing in the way. It’s a quick, transparent way to know what needs attention without clicking through menus or opening the book record.
You can filter your dashboard to show only in-progress books, sort by completion percentage, or surface books that are stalled. If you’ve got a catalog of 20+ books in different stages, this becomes your new control center.
Instead of bouncing between tabs or trying to remember what’s done, you can just check the bar.
Need to move a project forward today? Filter by “Least Complete” and start there.
Planning without overwhelm
Progress tracking isn’t about pressure. It’s about pacing.
You don’t need every book to be 100% right away. But you do need to know where everything stands. That’s what MetaShelf gives you: a quiet pulse check on your catalog.
You can use it to plan your week, prioritize your next move, or decide which books are closest to launch. You can give your assistant access and instantly communicate what’s next. You can open your dashboard and immediately see momentum—or the lack of it.
That’s what progress is for.
A system that grows with you
The more books you publish, the more important structure becomes. What’s manageable at three books gets overwhelming at ten. Without a clear picture, things start slipping through the cracks—an outdated description here, a missing ISBN there, a forgotten file upload that delays your print release.
MetaShelf’s progress tracking was built for that moment—when your author career stops being a series of one-offs and starts becoming a catalog.
It doesn’t just help you finish the next book. It helps you manage the ones you’ve already finished, the ones that are half-done, and the ones that are still just ideas.
You stay grounded, even as your catalog grows.
Because progress isn’t just about writing
Progress means: Is this book ready? Is it complete? Can I publish it confidently?
That’s not something you should have to guess. And it’s not something you should have to track manually.
MetaShelf gives you a system where completion is visible. Clear. Under your control.
You still do the work. You still make the decisions. But now you know where you are.
And sometimes, that’s all it takes to move forward
