A Brief Review of Book Tracking Apps - and the Winner
I’m a messy reader. I’ll start a book, put it aside for a bit, and either abandon it or look at it again a few months later. Or I’ll pick up a book and binge it, and its sequels, in a matter of days.
What I’d like to do is track these books so I can see how much I read. My Kindle would automatically post to Goodreads for me, and I could update the rest. But ever since I left Kindle for Kobo, I don’t have that anymore. (Or is there a Kobo alternative? Stay tuned!)
Like most apps, I half-heartedly commit to them and wander off again. I only started using Asana to track my productivity and goals rather than random notebooks and apps when I undertook a productivity challenge with a friend. So based on this experience, I plan pick a book tracking app, and by golly, stick to it like glue until I've had a chance to use it all.
Anyway, I have Goodreads. It’s a bit old and clunky, but everyone uses it. It’s beige. If it was a book genre, it would be the old magazines in your doctor’s surgery. However, before I commit to it, I thought I’d do a whirlwind tour of some other apps. These are more like impressions than full-on reviews.
StoryGraph. It’s white. There are lots of charts. Seems to be the most popular Goodreads alternative. Reminds me of a glossy coffee table book with lots of photos. You can make your own challenges, which is great. So if I wanted to read ten books by African sci-fi authors, I could set up a challenge and also pick and choose what books I would use for the challenge. You can also search for other readers’ challenges, which is handy for tracking your progress through an epic fantasy series.
Pagebound. This is a pastel blue and pink app. If it was a genre, it might be romantasy. Another small project by indie developers. Seems to be aimed at Booktokers or Instagrammers who want a place to record their TBR and reviews. It’s also very chatty. I mean, it wants you to chat about the book. But when I added a book to my pile, I was deluged with endless posts by other people who were reading the book. People at a certain percentage, people who had finished the book. An endless stream of excitement! You can customise the posts that appear in your stream, but I found it a little bit chatty for my tastes. You can also do challenges, which Pagebound calls ‘quests’. Has a No AI policy, which is appealing to quite a few people.
Hardcover. It’s blue. Lots of lists and features. Another small development team. If it was a book genre, it’d be science fiction or LitRPG. It looked interesting, with lots of lists and nerdy features. Then I discovered something wrong with one of the entries. I went to fix it … and couldn’t. You’ve got to be a paid subscriber to add to the database. Sadness. You can make tiny changes, but not add a new book entirely without privileges. I read lots of indie books that may not be in a database like this, and it seemed a bit more effort than it was worth at this stage to use the app regularly.
But then I discovered I could link it to my Kobo! This is via NickelHardcover. This was the killer feature that sealed the deal.
Although it was a bit twiddly to set up, things went smoothly once I found out how to get my API key off Hardcover. Now I can link my Kobo books to Hardcover, and tracking is automatic (well, mostly - I had to manually link a few books). And for book reviews, you can link to your blog rather than sticking it in the app, which is nifty. So far, Hardcover is winning for me.
(I'm at kellshaw on Hardcover.app if anyone wants to be reading buddies)
I’ll let you know how it all goes.