How to build a book tracker with gallery view in Notion? ( + free template)

A simple Notion book tracker can be built around one gallery-view database, then made genuinely useful with a handful of well-chosen properties: author, genre, reading status, and a single-star rating. The result is a dashboard where each book appears as a card with its cover image, key metadata, and a structured place for notes, quotes, and summaries—without needing to click into every entry.

The build starts on a fresh Notion page titled “Simple Book Tracker,” then adds a cover image and a matching icon theme. The core step is creating a gallery database (via “/gallery” → “New database”), named “My books.” Each gallery card is customized so it shows the page cover (not a placeholder) and fits the image, which sets up the visual “book shelf” feel.

Next comes the card setup. Default properties are removed and replaced with custom fields. “Author” is added as a multi-select so books with multiple writers can be tagged at once. “Genre” is also multi-select, letting a single title belong to more than one category. Reading progress is handled with a “Status” property whose options are renamed to fit the tracker workflow: “Want to read,” “Reading,” and “Finished.” A “Rating” property is added using a star icon and emoji-based options from one to five stars. Because a book should only have one rating, “Rating” is set to a single-select (not multi-select).

To make the gallery cards more informative at a glance, the card “Properties” display is adjusted so author, genre, status, and rating appear directly on the card. Each book page also gets a reusable template for writing. A “book entry” template is created with headings for “Summary,” “Quotes,” and “Note,” plus dividers for clean formatting. A date property is added as well—split into a “Start” date and an “End” date—so reading timelines can be recorded (e.g., read from one date to another).

After the structure is in place, books are added as individual cards. Covers are pulled from image URLs (the transcript uses Google image search and “copy image address,” then pastes the link into Notion’s cover settings). Example entries include “Atomic habits” by James Clear (self-improvement, status: want to read), “The Hobbit” by JRR Tolkien (fantasy), and “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed (memoir).

The tracker becomes more powerful through views. A “View all” gallery is duplicated into genre-specific tabs using filters (e.g., filter genre to show only fantasy). Another approach duplicates a view and uses “Group by” genre, producing collapsible sections for each category—useful for quick scanning, though it can make the page longer.

Overall, the method is a practical blueprint: build one gallery database, add a small set of metadata properties, standardize note-taking with templates, then create filtered or grouped views so the same database can act like multiple shelves at once.