Six house styles modelled on real dealer and auction catalogues, a note field that knows what a hook line is, and a Word file you can still edit. For the Dealer plan.
What It Is
The Catalog Generator turns a selection of your books into a Word document in the tradition of a professional catalogue: numbered entries, the author in small capitals, the imprint, a description in the trade voice, provenance and references, the price where the tradition puts it. You pick the template, the order and the sections; Shelvd sets the type.
The result is a .docx, not a PDF. Every part of the document uses a named style, so a change in Word's Styles pane restyles the whole catalogue at once. Print it, export it to PDF, or hand it to your designer as a starting point.
The Six Templates
Each template follows one real tradition, studied from the catalogues themselves rather than invented at a desk.
| Template | Tradition | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Scholarly | The continental dealer catalogue | A hook line in italic, 12. BROWNE, Sir Thomas., the price flush right on the description, the photograph floated beside the essay, references in small italic |
| London | The English house style | The plate above the entry, the number light on its own line, the author bold with the imprint in italic, letterspaced running heads, the price left and your stock number right |
| Fair | Fair lists and highlight catalogues | Landscape, one item per page, the photograph on the left, a grey display headline, the lead paragraph in bold |
| Auction | The auction house | Two columns, the lot number in red, the estimate flush right, the essay in italic, one running head per section |
| Paris | The catalogue de luxe | A centred hook and imprint line above the entry, a boxed number, the author in small capitals, the plate centred, a price list at the back |
| Short List | Quarterly and fair lists | One paragraph per item with a dot leader to the price; no cover, contents or indices |
The template sets the defaults: paper, price mode, photograph mode, running heads, what goes in the front and back matter. Every default can be changed per catalogue in Settings.
Building a Catalogue
- Open Catalogs and choose New catalog. A title and a template are enough to start.
- Add books: search your library in the dialog, add a whole collection, or select books on the Books page and choose Add to Catalog.
- Put them in order. Sort by author, year, catalog ID or price; add sections with an introduction; move items with the arrows. Numbering runs on across sections from the first number you set.
- Check the Ready column. A missing price prints as "Price on request" and a book catalogued in another language gets its entry regenerated in the document language. Nothing here blocks generating. Wishlist books cannot be added at all: they are not yours to sell.
- Generate builds the file and keeps the latest version for download.
The Catalogue Note
Every item has a note: the paragraph that argues why this copy matters. It carries a small markup, because catalogues have conventions that a plain text box cannot express:
- A first line starting with
#becomes the hook line above the entry: The rarest of the Browne first editions, with the errata leaf. Continental catalogues set it in red italic; the London style in small capitals; Paris pairs it with the imprint, centred. **bold**and*italic*inside the text. Titles of other books in italic, a fine point in bold.- A line starting with
>becomes a quotation, indented and in italic. - A blank line starts a new paragraph.
An entry text for this catalogue only replaces the description of the book for one catalogue, without touching the book itself. The heading, author, title and imprint, always comes from the book's fields.
Photographs
Three modes. None prints text only. Boxes gives every item a generated plate with its number, so you replace it in Word with Change Picture and the layout stays put. Thumbnails and Plates embed the book's own photographs, scaled for print; items without a photograph still get their numbered plate.
What Never Goes In
Internal notes, storage location, purchase source and your e-mail address never appear in the document. Your own stock number is off by default and prints beside the price only when you switch it on, as English dealers do.
Front and Back Matter
A cover with your logo, name, title and issue; a contact block from your profile or your own text; memberships; your own conditions of sale, kept in the Dealer section of the settings and printed in every catalogue, with a sample text in the ILAB tradition to start from and a per-catalogue override; a foreword; a table of contents on item numbers. At the back: indices of authors, printers and publishers, and provenance; a separate price list; a colophon; and a production-notes page that tells whoever opens the file how the styles work. Delete that last page before printing.
See also: Cataloging to Sell · Trade Catalog Conventions · PDF Catalog Sheets · Tiers and Plans