Novelist

76 Quality Score

Active Installs

14/30

With only about 1,000 active installs the plugin is niche, but it stays inside the rough ballpark of other specialist author plugins.

Update Freshness

25/25

It was updated in August 2025 and is tested against WordPress 6.8.5, but the score reflects that updates have been infrequent relative to more actively maintained alternatives.

User Rating

15/15

It holds a perfect 100 out of 100, though that comes from only nine ratings so the sample is small and easy to move.

Support Health

8/15

Zero support threads opened is a good sign that it has not broken for anyone yet, but it also means there is no public track record of responsiveness to issues.

WP Compatibility

15/15

It runs on WordPress 5.0 or later with PHP 7.4, which is reasonable, although it does not advertise testing with newer PHP 8.x releases.

Scores higher than 46% of indexed plugins

About

Easily organize and display your portfolio of books.

Active Installs 1k+

Rating ★★★★★ 5/5

Last Updated 2026-08-29 12:49pm GMT

Requires WordPress 5.0+

Tested Up To 7.1

Requires PHP 8.0+

Security History

3 known vulnerabilities, all patched

3 Medium

Most recent: March 27, 2025

View details ▸

What It Does

Novelist is a custom post type and taxonomy plugin that lets you organize and display a portfolio of books on a WordPress site. It registers book entries with details like author, cover, and publisher metadata, then provides templates or shortcodes to present the catalog on the front end. The Goodreads tag in its profile hints at integration with external book data sources.

Who It's For

This plugin is best suited for authors, independent publishers, literary agents, and small bookstores who want a straightforward way to present a curated book list without buying a full e-commerce solution. It fits the workflow of someone who treats books as content rather than products to sell and checkout against. Sites with only a handful of titles will get the most value from its lightweight approach.

Who Should Skip It

If you need to actually sell books online, manage large publisher-scale catalogs with ISBN-level data, or run a multi-author reading community with reviews and ratings, this plugin will feel too thin and you should look at a dedicated bookstore or affiliate plugin instead.

The Bottom Line

Novelist is a small, focused tool that does one job: turning WordPress into a simple book catalog. Its tiny install base and zero support history make it a calculated choice rather than a safe default. If your catalog is modest and you are comfortable patching your own setup, the perfect rating from early users is encouraging, but anyone needing scale or commerce should look elsewhere.

Related Plugins

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Books Gallery 77/100

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Podlove Podcast Publisher 76/100

This is only relevant if your catalog is audiobooks or podcasts, since it is built for RSS and chapter publishing rather than print book metadata.

Osom Author Pro 76/100

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