While I can definitely agree this would be useful, maybe a toggle to change whether an individual book is invisible would be nice? I don’t mind the stuff I want to add being visible, and a cover and all the other usual stuff would really fill out the entry, I think.
Fandom etiquette is like the unspoken rules of how to behave in fandom. It’s kind of hard to explain to someone who doesn’t have experience with Japanese fandom culture, but I’ll try and give a few reasons.
Etiquette isn’t written in stone so there’s nothing explicitly saying “don’t do this” and some creators/fandoms may not care, but doujin works are supposed to sort of “stay in their space” (that being the space of “fandom”) and many creators will request that readers don’t even resell their books, so to post the title and especially cover of a fanwork to another site without the author’s consent would be going against that. Especially if you’re reposting the cover of a fan-made manga for others to see, as that would essentially be reposting art. Japanese artists famously hate reposts and don’t even like quote retweets on twitter because it makes a new post and removes agency from the creator, and this would be a step further than that. It’s taking a fanwork and putting it into a space where they have zero control - I worry that a Japanese creator could stumble upon their work on Natively, not know what the site is and worry that it’s an illegal reupload or see negative reviews of a piece they created out of love for their favourite media.
I understand why people would want custom books to be visible if they’re non-fanworks, but I’d imagine that if VNs get added as a feature a lot of blank book entries would be fanworks or original comics on Pixiv, etc. where again you may run into issues with copyright and reposting people’s work.
I hope that clears things up a bit, it’s hard to explain as it’s more of a “feeling” than anything written in stone - I’ve been hanging out in tight-knit Japanese fandom spaces for the last 5+ years but my experiences are, of course, only my own.
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I had (togglable) written down originally but removed it for brevity actually, so totally agree there.
While covers being uploaded and public for some works would be fine (like the books that Megumin posted in this thread), I worry that Natively would run into issues with smaller creators not wanting their work to be reposted to what is in their eyes, a random English language site that they’ve never heard of. Then you have to start thinking about handling takedown requests, which is unlikely but not impossible. I’m not sure what the best way forward would be here other than hiding info from other users, honestly, because I’d like to be able to set covers too, but it could be opening Natively up to problems.
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Thank you for the detailed explanation.
I guess I can see the worry about the cover art, but even the title?
I can’t believe that no one ever tracks the stuff they read.
What’s the typical policy about adding stuff to Bookmeter (which has the blank book feature discussed here)?
Well, there’s a precedent. The authors of “Crystal Hunters”, a manga aimed at Japanese learners, asked for it to be removed from the site (they fought that the difficulty grading was too high and would deter potential customers).
I mean… from a legal point of view, Natively would be fine if the cover is available for free on the Internet. Of course, that doesn’t mean people will not be angry about it, but assuming that you properly link to where to buy the thing, it seems more like free advertising, though 
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…only if it’s available on the internet under a suitable license. Lots of images are on the internet for free and so in practice copyable but not legally speaking copyable.
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I wanted to imply that, yes (plus the fact that reuse is free for Natively).
Edit: basically, I’m just saying that if Bookmeter can do it legally, we can too.
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