Stop scanning books one at a time.
Photograph a shelf. ShelfGem reads every spine, prices each book against your own buying rules, and outlines the ones worth taking — on your picture, so you can walk up and grab them.
Runs in the browser, on the phone you already have.
The arithmetic
A shelf you'd never bother scanning
At five seconds a book — finding the barcode, waiting, moving on — a shelf of 120 is ten minutes of standing still. Most people simply skip the shelf.
120 books, one scan each, hands busy the whole time. Then the next shelf.
Seconds to take, about a minute to come back — and you're already photographing the next shelf while it works.
Five seconds a book is your number, not ours — count your own and the shape holds. What we measure is the other side: about 120 books from one picture, priced in around a minute.
How it works
If you can take a photo, you can use it
A visit is the unit of work, not a photo — you walk the aisle shooting shelf after shelf, and the answers catch up with you.
Start the visit
Say where you are and what you're paying per book — once, at the door. Every shelf you shoot inherits it.
Photograph shelf after shelf
Take the picture and move straight to the next one. Each shelf is checked in the background while you keep shooting.
Shelves come back numbered
In the order you shot them, so a report still matches the physical shelf when you walk back to it.
Open any shelf as it lands
The buys are outlined on your own photo. Tap any book for the numbers behind its verdict.
Some spines can't be read — a cracked title, a book turned the wrong way, a cover with no text. Those come back marked in amber to scan by hand, so you know exactly which few to check rather than wondering what was missed.
Two ways to scan
The same answer either way
A whole shelf at once, or one book in your hand. Both run through exactly the same rules — a book can never get two different answers depending on how you scanned it.
Shelf photo
For a full table, a donation pile, or a wall of stock. One picture, every book priced, the buys outlined where they sit.
Single book
Point the camera at a barcode, or type the ISBN. Buy, buy-if-new, or skip — with the cover shown so you know it matched the book in your hand.
No signal? Shoot now, upload later
Basements and church halls have no bars. Take the photos on your normal camera and add them afterwards — where and when you took them comes from the pictures themselves.
Your rules, not ours
Every rule is three questions: which offer to price against, what it has to earn, and which books it applies to. Change one and the next scan obeys it.
Working with us
Two ways in
Go and find books, and we'll pay you for them. Or run a book sale, and we'll buy from it.
Get paid to find books
Go to the sales you already go to. Scan what's in front of you, buy only what the app says to buy, and hand it over. You're not guessing, and you're not carrying the risk.
- What you paid, backYou type the shop's price before you scan. That exact number is refunded to you.
- $1–$2 a book on topMost books pay the dollar. Better books pay more — you find out as you scan.
- Paid on what we receiveYou're paid for the books you actually hand over, not for everything the scanner approved.
Turn the good donations into funding
Most of a donation pile is worth pennies and a few books are worth real money. We find the few and buy them, so a sale earns more than table prices — and volunteers of any age can run it from a phone.
No shipping, no accounts to set up, and nothing for your volunteers to learn beyond pointing a camera.
Talk to us about your saleStraight about the money
Type the real price you paid
The price you enter does two jobs: it's what we refund you, and it's taken off what a book earns before we decide whether it's worth taking.
You get the whole price back, plus your commission on every book.
A few more books get approved — and you're short on every single one of them. It never comes out ahead.
That's not a warning, it's just how the arithmetic lands. There's nothing to police because honest is also the best-paying answer.
We're opening this up soon
Leave your email and we'll tell you the moment you can use it — or apply to scout and start getting paid for the sales you already visit.
Join the waitlist