At ISBNdb, we’re always excited to see innovative platforms transforming the way people engage with books. Inset Books, a sleek and user-friendly virtual bookshelf and reading tracker, is doing just that. Designed as a simpler alternative to Goodreads, Inset Books makes organizing, searching, and discovering books effortless for everyday readers.

We spoke with Sebastien Dehesdin, the founder of Inset Books, to explore how the idea came to life, who it’s built for, and how ISBNdb plays a key role in delivering fast, high-quality book data to power the experience.

How would you describe Inset Books, and what makes it valuable to the readers who use it?

“Inset Books is a book management platform. You can think of it like Goodreads but focused on the core functionality, and more delightful to use.”

How did the concept for this product take shape?

“My partner is a big reader and was looking for a way to keep a record of the books she reads throughout the year, but without the statistics aspect and all the extra fluff that some of the competing platforms have.

She gets frustrated by tech quite easily and was after a simple, beautiful and easy-to-use interface.”

What’s your background, and what drew you to working with books and technology?

“I have been providing technological solutions for bookshops for the last few years, in France and the UK. It’s a world that I find fascinating because a bookshop is essentially a small business, but selling hundreds of thousands of different product references. So it’s got its own challenges in terms of ordering, stocking, and selling, whether it’s online or in-store. Any technological solution around books will have to cater for the large number of references, an evolving catalogue, the recommendation aspect of it, so it’s great fun as a builder.”

How do you integrate ISBNdb into Inset Books, and what role does it play in your platform’s functionality?

“ISBNdb is providing the catalogue on Inset Books. I use it to feed a local catalogue in order to search through books instantly, and also as a look-up search if you type in the ISBN if a book isn’t in my catalogue already. It also provides good quality images that even some of the more expensive services don’t!”

What’s on the roadmap for Inset Books? Are there new features readers can look forward to?

“I plan to develop some of the social features of the site, but always keeping them optional: book rating, review, and shelf sharing. In the mid-term I also want to add some discovery tools, but really relevant to the user. Finally I’d like to build a more fun visualisation of a user shelf.”

Can you tell us a bit about the team and how the project is being built?

“I’m a solo founder so the team is just me at the moment! I have been building Inset Books as a side project when I get a pause from my client work as a developer. I work for myself, and enjoy that flexibility.”

Have any books influenced your thinking or inspired you recently?

“I have recently read The Mechanic and the Luddite by Jathan Sadowski which is an eye-opening book on the way capitalism and technology interact, and it’s helping me build ethically. The web is becoming worse and worse, so hopefully this is a small step in the right direction.

Another book that I really enjoyed recently is On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle. It’s fiction, and I recommend it if you like otherworldly atmosphere and really smart writing.”

Summary

Inset Books is proving that you don’t need a complex interface to offer readers a powerful tool. With the help of ISBNdb’s rich book metadata and high-quality cover images, the platform provides a smooth, fast, and intuitive experience for users.

We’re proud to support innovative projects like Inset Books as they redefine how readers connect with their personal libraries. Stay tuned—there’s more to come as Inset Books continues to grow and evolve.