Privacy

Your shelf is your business.

You do not need an account, name, or email address to search for books or browse recommendations. We collect a limited amount of information about how the site is used so we can make it work well and improve the books we suggest.

What we remember while you browse

When you visit, your browser creates a random visit ID. It is kept in session storage, which normally disappears when you close that browser tab. The ID helps us understand one visit from beginning to end without knowing who the visitor is. We do not use it to create a named reading profile.

Activity we save

We record searches, recommendation pages viewed, recommendations shown and selected, movement from one book’s shelf to another, shelves created in response to a search or selection, and clicks that leave the site for a retailer. We may also record the referring website, a general device type such as mobile or desktop, and a broad region such as a continent.

This activity record does not intentionally include names, email addresses, precise location, or IP addresses. Like other websites, The Same Shelf uses Cloudflare to deliver and protect the site. Cloudflare receives ordinary network information, including IP addresses, when handling a request, but we do not copy IP addresses into our book-discovery activity records.

How we use this information

We use it to understand which searches and recommendations are helpful, improve movement between related books, decide which shelves to build or review next, measure retailer-link activity, prevent abuse, and diagnose technical problems. One click never changes a recommendation by itself; we look for broader patterns over time.

Contact messages

If you use the contact form, we save the name you provide, your email address, subject, message, and anonymous visit ID so we can prevent abuse, understand the request, and reply. We do not add contact details to book-discovery activity or use them for marketing.

Optional Google Analytics

Google Analytics is used only for general traffic reporting and loads only after you choose “Allow optional analytics.” If enabled, Google may receive information such as pages visited, approximate location, browser, and device details, and may set cookies such as _ga. Saying no does not limit search or recommendations. Your choice is saved in local storage on this browser and can be changed below.

Retailers and other service providers

Cloudflare processes requests to host, deliver, and secure the site. If you follow a Bookshop or other retailer link, that company receives the normal information sent when opening its website and handles it under its own privacy policy. The same applies to Google when optional analytics is enabled.

How long we keep information

We keep anonymous visit, search, recommendation, shelf-building, navigation, and retailer-click records so we can understand long-term reading and discovery patterns. We may combine older records into summary statistics or remove information that is no longer useful. Contact messages are kept for up to 180 days so we can reply and resolve the issue, then they are automatically deleted.

Questions

If you have a privacy question, please use the contact form. Last updated July 21, 2026.