# New books

> Bring new book files and new Calibre books in through one pass you review, and shelve the books offered to your shelves.

When a book arrives, Library Hub can do the routine work for you: add it to Calibre, make its note, look up its details and find a cover. Nothing happens until you say so, and every step can be undone.

## Bring in new books

Choose a folder for new books in **Settings → Library Hub → Library → New books**. It is a folder outside your vault where your book files land, such as EPUB, PDF, AZW3 or MOBI. Library Hub looks at it every minute and only reads it. Nothing is downloaded.

Books that appear in Calibre by other means (added in Calibre itself, say) are noticed at the next sync too. Turn **New books in Calibre** off if you don't want that.

When new books are waiting, a notice says so, and the Library panel shows **new books to bring in** under **Needs you**. Select it, or run **Sync: Bring in new books…**:

1. Each new file and each new Calibre book is listed, ticked. Untick the ones to leave.
2. **What happens** lists the steps that will run.
3. Select **Bring in ticked**. Or **Dismiss ticked**, and they won't be offered again.

The steps, each of which you can turn off in settings:

| Step | What it does |
|---|---|
| **Add files to Calibre** | Each file goes through the [write queue](changes-to-calibre.md): Calibre reads its title and author, and a book it has already is not added twice. Needs the Content Server to allow changes. |
| **Make a note** | A book note for each book that has none, as a sync makes it. |
| **Look up metadata** | The [metadata lookup](metadata-review.md): confirmed changes are queued for Calibre, the rest wait for your review. |
| **Find a cover** | From Calibre, then online if that is on. |

Finding the shelves a new book suits, by what it is about, needs Topic Map: **What happens** says **Install Topic Map to offer each new book to the shelves it suits.**

The notice at the end has **Undo**: notes, covers and review rows go back, and removing the books added to Calibre is queued for you to write.

## New books' shelves

With [Topic Map](https://insurgently.com/docs/topic-map/) installed, a new book can be offered to the shelves it suits. Offers wait under **Needs you** as **new books to shelve**, or run **Shelves: Review new books’ shelves**, or select **Review offers…** in **Settings → Library Hub → Shelves**. Each book is listed with its shelves, ticked, and why each fits. **Shelve ticked** puts the book on them (undoable); **Dismiss ticked** drops the offers.

Without Topic Map, no book is offered a shelf: **Install Topic Map to offer new books to the shelves they suit.** Put a book on a shelf by hand from the Shelf view, or with **Add a book to this shelf**.

## Other plugins hear about it

Plugins such as Topic Map are told when books are added, changed or removed, so they can keep up. See [For developers](developers/index.md).

## Related

- [Build shelves](shelves.md)
- [Grow a shelf](grow-a-shelf.md)
- [Changes to Calibre](changes-to-calibre.md)