I'd kinda like to get a good list together of questions everyone has about bookshelves, because they really need a full section in the FAQ. Here are a few that come to mind:

How do I create a bookshelf?

Hover above the Library button and select "New Bookshelf". A menu will appear that allows you to choose an icon, icon color, name, and description for the bookshelf. You can also change its privacy settings between Private, Public, and Unlisted.

Other option are for whether you want to have the icon for the bookshelf show up on the quick add bar at the top of stories, if you want to know how many unread chapters there are in the bookshelf, if you want to see blogs for stories in the shelf, and if you want emails about updates on the stories.

There's also a 'New Bookshelf' button below the list of bookshelves to the right when you are on the page for any bookshelf.

How do I delete a bookshelf?

Go to your library page and click the trashcan next to the bookshelf's name. Alternatively, go to the bookshelf itself and press the delete button on the sidebar.

What's the difference between a Private bookshelf, Public, and Unlisted?

Private bookshelves can only be accessed by you, authors are not notified when their stories are added, and they aren't shown in your library when other people look at it. Public bookshelves can be accessed by anyone and authors are notified when their work is added. Unlisted are like Private ones, but you can share the links to them with other people.

How do I change the order of my bookshelves?

Go to any of your bookshelves. On the right, there's a list of all the bookshelves in your library. If you move your mouse over them, a bar with three dots will appear on the right. drag that, and the bookshelf will move to whatever position in the list you want, and that will be the order it will show in the bookshelf button bar at the top of stories as well.

How do I only look at the unread stories in a bookshelf?

Click the red text next to the number of stories telling you how many unread chapters you have.

How do I change the way a bookshelf is sorted?

Click on "Filter", over to the right, change the order, then hit search. You can also make certain tags, characters, and search terms required, just like with a normal search, and change the way they are shown with the dropdown next to Filter.

How do I see someone's public bookshelves?
Check the little Menu bar next to a user's name, and click the "Library" tab on it. This'll bring you to a page listing all of their public bookshelves!

It says there are unread chapters that aren't there, or shows more stories then are in there!

Bookshelves are still a new feature and may have glitches. Try editing the bookshelf, turning off tracking, saving, and then turning back on tracking. Also, adding or deleting a story may help. If that doesn't fix it, you might have to either live with it or move everything over to a new bookshelf and delete the old one.

Unfortunately, you can only move stories one by one between bookshelves, and there is a limit to how many stories you can add to bookshelves in a day, though it's pretty high, and you're only likely to hit it if you are working with a thousand or more stories at once. If you stop being able to add stories to bookshelves, just wait, and they should be working again within twenty-four hours.

Any ideas what I missed? (The original answers for some of these are from SwiftTechnica)

Edit: I found The Library Update FAQ, so I'll probably borrow some questions from there.

--Sweetie Belle

How do I create a bookshelf?

Hover above the Library button and select "New Bookshelf". A menu will appear that allows you to choose an icon, icon color, name, and description for the bookshelf. You can also change its privacy settings.

How do I delete a bookshelf?

Go to your library page and click the trashcan next to the bookshelf's name. Alternatively, go to the bookshelf itself and press the delete button on the sidebar.

What's the difference between a Private bookshelf, Public, and Unlisted?

Private bookshelves can only be accessed by you. Authors are not notified when their work is added to one of these. Public bookshelves can be accessed by anyone and authors are notified when their work is added.

I don't actually know how unlisted bookshelves work. I assume that they aren't listed on the library page, but other users can still manually navigate to them, but I'm not sure.

4159231

Oh, actually I was looking more for more questions to add to the list. I just hadn't written answers yet. I'll use those ones, though!

I think unlisted bookshelves aren't listed and don't give notifications, but you can share the link with other users. I'll check...

--Sweetie Belle

4159231

I'm just adding some answers...

How do I change the order of my bookshelves?

Go to any of your bookshelves. On the right, there's a list of all the bookshelves in your library. If you move your mouse over them, a bar with three dots will appear on the right. drag that, and the bookshelf will move to whatever position in the list you want, and that will be the order it will show in the bookshelf button bar at the top of stories as well.

How do I only look at the unread stories in a bookshelf?

Click the red text next to the number of stories telling you how many unread chapters you have.

How do I change the way a bookshelf is sorted?

Click on "Filter", over to the right, change the order, then hit search. You can also make certain tags, characters, and search terms required, just like with a normal search, and change the way they are shown with the dropdown next to Filter.

It says there are unread chapters that aren't there, or shows more stories then are in there!

Bookshelves are still a new feature and may have glitches. Try editing the bookshelf, turning off tracking, saving, and then turning back on tracking. If that doesn't fix it, you might have to either live with it or move everything over to a new bookshelf and delete the old one.

Unfortunately, you can only move stories one by one between bookshelves, and there is a limit to how many stories you can add to bookshelves in a day, though it's pretty high, and you're only likely to hit it if you are working with a thousand or more stories at once. If you stop being able to add stories to bookshelves, just wait, and they should be working again within twenty-four hours.

--Sweetie Belle

What's the difference between a Private bookshelf, Public, and Unlisted?

Private bookshelves can only be accessed by you, authors are not notified when their stories are added, and they aren't shown in your library when other people look at it. Public bookshelves can be accessed by anyone and authors are notified when their work is added. Unlisted are like Private ones, but you can share the links to them with other people.

This answers something that has been bugging me lately. I saw the number of libraries that carried one of my stories, but I kept thinking to myself: "There is no way I got that many notifications." It made me think FimFic was glitching or something.

Thanks for the explanation!

4160669

That one was adopted from one of SwiftTechnica's answers which I expanded, but figure that when we first got bookshelves, your "Read Later" list became a private bookshelf, and nopony got notifications from stories being added to "Read Later". It's just now you can make your main bookshelves the same way, if you don't want anypony to know what you're reading.

That's one reason I started this, though, is I wanted there to be somewhere to go for answers, and the faq is out of date and missing stuff.

--Sweetie Belle