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If you’ve used MyBookTable for any amount of time, you probably already know that it’s an easy way to organize and sell books through your website.

But did you know that there are ways to simplify the process even further?

Built directly into MyBookTable is a special shortcode system, which allows you to quickly generate a list of all your books in a certain series or genre –at once– on any given post or page, among other things.

How Shortcodes Work

When you create a new book, series, or genre in MyBookTable, a “slug” is automatically created for that item.  This slug is editable.  It is also what you will use when creating a shortcode for the item you want to display.

book slug

 

Here is a list with some of the shortcodes possible in MyBookTable:

  • List all your books: [ mybooktable]
  • List all the books in a particular series: [ mybooktable series=”lordoftherings”] Note that you must use the slug of the series, not the name.
  • List all the books in a particular genre: [ mybooktable genre=”fantasy”] Note that you must use the slug of the genre, not the name.
  • List all the books written by a particular author: [ mybooktable author=”jrrtolkien”] Note that you must use the slug of the author, not the name.
  • Show a single book: [ mybooktable book=”the-fellowship-of-the-ring”] Note that you must use the slug of the book, not the name.
  • Display a single book summary:[ mybooktable book=”the-fellowship-of-the-ring” display=”summary”]

 

Inserting any of these shortcodes into your page or blog post will automatically cause the desired MyBookTable listing or display to show in the body of the page/post once it is published.

Example:

Here, an author shortcode has been generated and placed in the body of a page in edit mode.

author shortcode

 

When the page is published, it looks like this. All the books by this author are displayed at once:

books

 

Another way to insert any of these shortcodes, as well as a few others, is to use the “Insert Shortcode” button that should appear above the text editor box when you are in edit mode for a post or page.  This will put a whole realm of shortcodes at your disposal.

text editor

Here is what the Insert Shortcode menu option area looks like.  Here, you can select which shortcode you would like to generate and insert in your post/page.  This assumes, of course, that you’ve already assigned a series/genre/tag/author to the book(s) you are wanting to display.

shortcodes

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