A 42-follower BookTok account pushed a bookshelf app to No. 5 in German Books (Free): Novely and a template market that's already crowded

In 2026 Oct 28, a TikTok account called Sophia posted a video captioned "Omg 😟 die App heißt Novely by the way" (by the way, the app is called Novely), tagged "Werbung" (ad). The account had 42 followers, and the video reached 17.7k views. Three days later, on Oct 31, Novely climbed to No. 5 in the German App Store Books (Free) chart and No. 4 in Austria. It had been out for less than a month and had only a dozen or so ratings worldwide. Below: what it is, whose account this is, why the German-speaking charts are so easy to enter, who it's competing with, and whether it's still worth following.

That account used to promote a different app

The account is now called @sophiatalea.booktok, with a bio reading "my digital bookshelf ↓ Novely App". In Oct 17 it was still called @lessscrollingwithsophia and posted videos like "I thought my Instagram was broken 😭", a phone-quitting theme tagged #bildschirmzeit (screen time), also tagged "Anzeige" (ad). Back then it promoted useLess, a screen-time app.

useLess and Novely are made by the same company: DaDaMa UG in Munich. When useLess launched in February, one video from its official account @useless.together reached 2M views, and they also run a German account @useless_de and several smaller ones. So this team already relied on TikTok short videos for acquisition. For the new product, they simply renamed and re-personalized the old promo account and kept posting.

Since Oct 28, the account has posted a Novely video almost every day, all tagged "Anzeige": 10-29 "Novely came at the right time, it's autumn now 🍂", 2,563 views; 10-31 "that's so cool 🥹", 1,242 views; 11-04 "why has nobody shown me Novely before??", 842 views. Apart from the first, views ran from a few hundred to a bit over two thousand (TikTok, 11-06). Not huge, but enough for this chart.

What it is

A virtual bookshelf. You photograph the spines of books on your shelf, the app cuts each book out and places it at its real height and thickness on a wall it draws, and the store page says "a fantasy doorstopper looks like a doorstopper." Every shelf can be made into an iPhone home-screen widget. You add books by scanning barcodes, searching titles, or sharing book-recommendation videos you saw on TikTok or Instagram, and it recognizes which book the video is about.

The rest is standard for this category: reading timer, reading room with white noise, yearly and weekly reading cards (Story format, easy to share), friends' shelves, Goodreads and StoryGraph import, and AI recommendations (powered by Google Gemini). Two features are its own:

• German book data. Book info comes from the German National Library catalog, giving German editions, publishers, and page counts. Similar English-language apps mostly use Google Books or Open Library, which often lack covers and page counts for German books, and German readers feel that right away. Version 1.0.13 of 11-01 also connected the French National Library and started handling French editions.
• Reading lock. This was carried over directly from useLess. The other is 1.0.13's new "what is your bookshelf worth" feature, which generates a share image with the three most expensive books.

The paywall is strict: there is no free tier. You have to buy Novely Club on first open, at 8 € per week or 35 € per year (the yearly plan has a 3-day trial), or buy it outright. If you don't renew, your books and basic styles stay, but the rest of the walls, decorations, stats, recommendations, and the reading lock are locked.

A dozen ratings, so how did it reach the top 5

Here is its trend on the German Books chart (App Store Germany):

A video went out on 10-28, and it hit the top of the charts 10-31. By 11-06 it had only 15 ratings worldwide, 14 of them in Germany, averaging 3.67.

This shows how low the bar is in the German-language book charts. Compare it with 11-06 on the German Books chart: the homegrown German reading community READO has 17.7k ratings and ranks #8 in Top Grossing; Novely ranks #25 in Top Free, already ahead of SlowRead (57), TBR (59), Bookology (82) and Margins (117). One video with 17k views, plus a steady stream of small videos, can push a new app to #2 in this small category.

It charts in Top Grossing thanks to a hard paywall. Downloads are few, but the people who come in and pay mostly buy weekly or annual subscriptions, and a handful of purchases is enough to push it into the top 30 of Top Grossing. The cost shows up in the reviews: one 11-02 one-star review reads, "The app looks nice, but why should I pay 8 € a week or 35 € a year for a few unnecessary extras?" The five-star reviews cluster between 10-21 and 10-31 and read like ads ("I use it every day", "the home-screen widget is worth it", "I bought the lifetime version right away"). Whether they were prompted is impossible to tell from the outside.

Revenue is not public. Based on ranking #23 to #29 in German Books Top Grossing with a few dozen ratings, my rough guess is a few hundred to a thousand-plus euros a month (estimate, unverified). The Android version shows 1,000+ downloads on Google Play.

Where users come from

1. Its own TikTok account posting one ad video a day (confirmed). That's the account from the opening. It's unclear whether team members appear on camera or hired UGC creators do, but it's confirmed paid promotion.
2. Built-in sharing hooks in the product (confirmed). Share a book recommendation video to identify the book, Story-format reading cards, a "What's your shelf worth?" share image, and friends viewing each other's shelves. Acquisition and usage both run through BookTok.
3. German keywords (inferred). The German store name is "Bücherregal & Widget", claiming both the "bookshelf" and "widget" search terms. Searching "bücherregal" or "bookshelf widget" in the German store puts it in the top 3. The US name is "BookTracker Shelf", and its US rating is 0.
4. Paid ads: not found. Meta and TikTok's European ad libraries show no records for Novely, DaDaMa or useLess, but not finding them doesn't mean they weren't run.

No press coverage, no discussion on X, no founder posting numbers. Right now, the only people who know it are German-speaking BookTok users who came across that account.

Who it's competing with: this template has been done by plenty of people for 2026 years

"Photograph book spines, arrange them on a shelf, put it on your home-screen widget" wasn't Novely's idea. It's a template that BookTok has repeatedly proven over 2026 years:

English is already a red ocean. The German-language market is seeing keyword grabs too: SlowRead, Booktrace, Shelfie and Tibby all use "Bücherregal" in their names. Novely is one of the followers in this wave, but it has localized more deeply than most and promotes more diligently. Its store listing already has a Spanish version, and it has connected the French National Library, suggesting it's moving next toward French and Spanish markets.

Three moves you can take

• Taking a visual template proven in English and moving it into a smaller-language market that has a public data source. The national library catalog is free and authoritative, and English competitors haven't bothered to integrate it. That's a real differentiator. Category charts in smaller languages have a low bar, so a few dozen downloads can get you charted.
• Promotion accounts can be reused. After one product is promoted, rename the account, change the persona, and move on to the next one. A short "Anzeige"-tagged video a day costs very little.
• Building the acquisition channel into the product. "Share a recommendation video into the app" makes TikTok both the source of users and the place where they use it every day.

If it were you

Verdict: This is an opportunity worth studying for its tactics, but not really worth copying as-is. The template is already crowded, and some German keywords are being grabbed. Novely charts because of low-bar small categories plus its team's existing TikTok playbook. The product itself has no moat, and estimated revenue is only a few hundred to a thousand-plus euros a month.

Who it suits: Small teams already able to produce "one UGC short a day" with existing promotion accounts, or people fluent in a smaller-language reading community (Dutch, Polish, Italian, Nordic languages) who can connect to a local national library or bookseller catalog.

Who it doesn't suit: Anyone without short-video acquisition skills who expects organic store search to bring volume. A large batch of new apps using the same template are stuck at 0 to 200 ratings. And anyone hoping to make serious money here should skip it: this category's ceiling is a small subscription.

How to build it: Pick a language Novely hasn't entered, where English competitors haven't localized either, and first check whether the local national bibliography has an open interface (openness has to be checked case by case, unverified). Focus on two things: accurate catalog data (local editions, covers, page counts) and a shelf good-looking enough to screenshot. Build the standard features for this category and nothing extra. You can copy its hard-paywall pricing to push into Top Grossing, but keep a trial entry point, or one-star reviews will drag your rating down.

How to get users: Local-language BookTok accounts, one video a day, with the first one explaining "what this app is called". Use the local words for "bookshelf" and "widget" directly in the app name. Make a good share card and let users spread it for you.

When to get in: The sooner the better. Autumn and winter are "stay in and read" content seasons, and pre-Christmas "how many books did you read this year" year-end cards also help. Once multi-language players like SlowRead and Novely cover your language, the window closes (inferred).

What would show you got it wrong: If Novely holds the top 30 of the German Books Top Grossing chart and its ratings climb into the hundreds within a month or two, then small-language shelf apps earn more in subscriptions than estimated, and it's worth building seriously. Conversely, if it drops off the chart as soon as the videos stop, the chart was being moved by a few subscriptions, and switching languages won't support a business either.