Press kit
Updated July 25, 2026. Everything on this page may be quoted or republished.
Press contact: [email protected]
Daniel Beckley, the developer, answers press email personally — usually same day.
The one-paragraph story
Home Library Companion is an iPhone app that catalogs a home library from photographs of the shelves. Point the camera at a full bookcase and it reads the spines, identifies every book, and remembers exactly where each one lives — which room, which bookcase, which shelf. The incumbent cataloging apps — Libib, CLZ Books, BookBuddy, LibraryThing — scan one barcode at a time. It also answers plain-English questions from the owner's actual collection ("which of my books cover rose care?"), shares one catalog across a household, and works on the web. It shipped July 10, 2026 in 13 languages, built by a solo developer whose day job is running an orchestra.
Fact sheet — Home Library Companion
| What it is | Personal library cataloging app: whole-shelf photo scanning, physical location tracking, grounded Q&A over your own books, household sharing, web access |
| Platforms | iPhone and iPad (iOS 17+); web library at homelibrarycompanion.com/app; runs on Apple-silicon Macs |
| Released | July 10, 2026 (App Store) |
| Price | 7-day free trial, then $39.99/year. No free tier, no ads, no data selling |
| Languages | English + 12 localizations, including right-to-left Arabic |
| Privacy | No third-party analytics SDKs, no tracking. Shelf photos are processed on our servers and not retained; details at homelibrarycompanion.com/privacy |
| Developer | Creative Sonar, LLC (Daniel Beckley, solo developer) |
| Site | homelibrarycompanion.com |
| App Store | apps.apple.com — Home Library Companion |
What makes it different
- Whole-shelf scanning, attached to a real catalog. One photo catalogs an entire shelf — around a minute for 40 books — and files each book with its location as it scans. The incumbent catalogers (Libib, CLZ Books, BookBuddy, LibraryThing) scan one barcode at a time. Barcode, copyright-page, and cover scanning are included for edge cases and pre-barcode books.
- Books get addresses. Location is a hierarchy — building, room, bookcase, shelf — not a tag. The app answers "where is my copy?" literally.
- Ask, grounded. Questions are answered only from books the user owns. It cites the actual books and never invents titles.
- One household, one library. Invite by QR or code; every member's phone and the web app see the same catalog.
Fact sheet — Bookstore Companion
The sibling app, for the other half of the problem: deciding what to bring home.
| What it is | In-store discovery app: photograph a bookstore section and it tells you which books are worth your time, with cited verdicts — an independent-bookstore answer to checking reviews on your phone |
| Platforms | iPhone (iOS 17+) |
| Released | July 13, 2026 (App Store) |
| Price | 7-day free trial, then $12.99/year |
| Site | bookstorecompanion.com |
| App Store | apps.apple.com — Bookstore Companion |
The two apps pair: find a book worth buying in the store, send it home, and it lands on your shelves in Home Library Companion.
About the developer
Daniel Beckley builds Home Library Companion and Bookstore Companion as a personal project under Creative Sonar, LLC. By day he is president and CEO of the Kansas City Symphony; by night he is the owner of several hundred books spread across too many rooms, which is where the app came from. He built it because he kept buying books he already owned. The apps are unaffiliated with the Symphony.
Story angles
- The product: an app that reads a bookshelf from a photo — camera-ML cataloging that replaces barcode-at-a-time, shipped in 13 languages by one person.
- The founder: a symphony CEO's nights-and-weekends side project for a very analog problem: too many books, no idea where any of them are.
- The book world: home libraries are having a moment (#BookTok), but the tooling for owning books — versus tracking reading — hasn't changed in a decade.
Assets
- Home Library Companion screenshots (iPhone + iPad, captioned, PNG)
- Home Library Companion app icon (1024×1024 PNG)
- Bookstore Companion app icon (1024×1024 PNG)
Need something else — the demo video, specific screenshots, an interview? Email and it will happen quickly.