Good Reads When I Finish a Book Can I Review It Later?
I started using Goodreads in 2009 when I was still in high school. I've used it off and on over the years, weirdly dropping off use around my final year of college, and so—inexplicably—picking it back up again to exercise a 52 books reading claiming in 2018. I've been a regular Goodreads user ever since. In good company, I'yard one of the 19 one thousand thousand others who utilize Goodreads today.
I primarily use the site for cataloging—it's my method for keeping rail of the books I want to read and the books I have read. That, and the handy reading challenge counter, help me runway my progress toward my yearly reading goal. But that's about it. For book discovery, community, tailored reading recommendations, I tend to look outside Goodreads because I've found at that place are places that serve these needs amend.
Additionally, I learned that Goodreads—like IMDb, Twitch, Whole Foods, Zappos, and more—is owned by Amazon. Amazon bought Goodreads in 2013, merely I find few users and readers are even aware of this today, in office considering Goodreads looks pretty much the same every bit it did pre-Amazon. What's the bespeak in being endemic by a (problematic) megacorporation if it doesn't even result in improvements to the platform?
All of this left me wondering most Goodreads alternatives. I know several other academic sites and apps exist, just hadn't explored their unique features because I've just e'er been on Goodreads. So, I decided to talk to other readers and users, also every bit those who've started "Goodreads alternatives," to see what else is out in that location!
BookSloth
BookSloth is focused on young adult lit and tailored reading recommendations.
BookSloth is a mobile app—with a web version hopefully coming early 2021!—for young adult readers to connect with 1 another and discover books. It's based in Puerto Rico and was founded by Xiomara Figueroa and Lincy Ayala in September 2017, in the wake of Hurricane Maria. After the hurricane, Puerto Rico didn't take telephone service or internet for weeks, or electricity for months, and Figueroa and Ayala found themselves turning to books equally an escape from their reality.
At the same time as books were their escape, they also realized how necessary information technology is to connect with other people during such difficult times. Books and connecting with others through reading became the driving forces behind creating BookSloth. Ultimately, Figueroa and Ayala left their full-time jobs in 2018 to work on BookSloth.
I asked what they thought Goodreads was defective. They felt the pattern was outdated and the recommendations were not specific enough, and these were two of the primary things they sought to change with BookSloth.
But they knew that as a start-upward information technology would be difficult to build the catalog and uses to compete with Goodreads. Many users—myself included—have stayed on Goodreads for all these years because it'south where our information lives. So, BookSloth built a Goodreads import tool, where users can link their account and automatically add all the volume history into their BookSloth Contour. They too focused on a clean, convenient design. Perhaps most importantly, they add new layers to reading recommendations.
Ayala says, "Our unique rating organisation adds a new dimension where readers tin can choose which elements they dearest about their books, similar the characters or globe-building, this allows u.s.a. to recommend books based on the elements that matter to them about."
Ayla says their goal is to create a very curated experience for users, which is something we've become accepted to in a world of algorithms and user tailored experiences.
Then, if y'all're primarily interested in young adult literature, and y'all're looking for more tailored reading recommendations, you lot may want to give BookSloth a try.
Bookly
Bookly is focused on building your reading habit.
Founded in December 2016, Bookly is an app for organizing your books and working on your reading addiction, available in both a free and premium (paid) version. Bookly is focused on improving your reading skill, helping you efficiently track your progress, and keeping you motivated to read.
There are all sorts of things you tin can rails with Bookly: your reading speed, the number of books read, hours read, etc. And, at the end of the month, you'll go a personalized report with your stats, so you tin see how your reading is improving over time.
Bookly helps readers build a habit, much like someone might utilise a fitness app to help build a workout habit. As Bookly founder Tudor Iancu puts it, "we like to say there'll be less reading slumps and more reading sprints for all our users."
In our conversation, Iancu wondered if readers would even consider Bookly an alternative to Goodreads, as it wasn't Bookly'due south intent to create a "Goodreads culling" at the showtime. Rather, they saw a gap in the marketplace for an app that aid you read more, and decided to create a solution to that trouble in Bookly.
But for some users Bookly could be the alternative they seek. For example, the but features I ofttimes use on Goodreads—creating a to-exist-read list, tracking books read per twelvemonth, and striving for a growing reading goal—are available in the free version of Bookly.
Ultimately, Bookly is in that location for you to help you read more than. If you lot're looking to foster your inner motivation to read, this could be the app for you.
Libib
Libib is focused on dwelling library management.
Founded in 2012, Libib is a home library direction app, available in a free standard version and a pro (paid) version, which tin can be used to organize media: books, movies, video games and music. The standard version is geared toward cataloging a home library, and the pro version includes the ability to circulate items, which is geared toward organizations that have lending libraries.
Libib founder, Javod Khalaj, says, "We're concentrating on cataloging at the moment, and moving away from the social media aspect, which we have explored in the past. I would say if a person wants to have a private catalog of their home library, Libib is a great culling to Goodreads. If they're primarily in it for the sharing and social aspect, Goodreads is likely the better selection for them."
When developing the app, Khalaj was personally interested in having a better interface for cataloging the books in their own home library, and so that remains Libib'due south cadre purpose today.
And if yous already have an extensive library of books on Goodreads, merely yous'd just like to have them better organized, you take the pick to export your Goodreads library to a .csv file, which tin can then be uploaded to Libib.
"Bookstagram"
Bookstagram is focused on edifice bookish customs.
Arguably, Instagram, especially the bookish corners of the app, often referred to as "Bookstagram," offers a community and social attribute that some might consider a better alternative to Goodreads.
Bookstagrammer Lupita Aquino of @lupita.reads is a Goodreads user, simply much like me she uses Goodreads just to track her treading, and not for recommendations or community. Rather, Lupita typically gets book recommendations from other users on #Bookstagram. "In terms of tracking books and sharing reviews, Goodreads does the job for me. However, in terms of community, I seek that out on Instagram," she says.
Aquino feels Goodreads is lacking in social functions she looks for from a reading app, such as group chat rooms for readers who are reading the same book to engage with each other, or other similar tools to facilitate book discussion.
"In that location is a huge customs of book lovers on Instagram that could also connect via Goodread, but ofttimes don't," she says. Aquino says she'south also used the app Litsy in the past, which allows users to upload a photo of a volume with a brusque review. Followers and other readers tin annotate on other users' posts. However, she thinks a lot of users are hesitant to engage with separate apps, peculiarly if they are already using Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, or Facebook to talk with others about books.
The Storygraph
The Storygraph is focused on tailored reading recommendations for the mood reader.
Finally, we have The Storygraph, an app and website to help users track their reading and choose their next volume. Founder, Nadia Odunayo started client research for The Storygraph in January 2019 and launched the offset beta of the site in July of the aforementioned year. She then released a second iteration in January 2020. In June 2020, The Storygraph received a massive spike in new users, which today is upwards to 16,000 people a calendar week use the site, though the site is however in beta.
Interestingly, like other founders, Odunayo also says she didn't set out to build a "Goodreads alternative," emphasizing that she specifically didn't want to exercise that. In some ways, she thought nearly her app as a companion to Goodreads. In other ways, she didn't want to build a Goodreads alternative because she thought but improving a platform that already exists would limit her imagination as a creator to develop something new.
However, Odunayo admits, "there are Goodreads users who want something meliorate, and we have a lot of those users on Storygraph."
In her extensive customer inquiry, Odunayo identified a lot of Goodreads users felt hurting points with reading recommendations, peculiarly "mood readers," or readers who read multiple books at once or alter their TBR based on their changing mood.
I of Storygraph's cadre features is a recommendations survey, which features reading genres, elements, themes, and moods. Readers can identify what they do and don't like. They can besides filter their recommendations and lists with different criteria every bit their reading mood changes.
"In a way, you can talk to the site," Odunayo says.
Storygraph also offers a lot of features that Goodreads users accept long been asking for, including a DNF push, a "books I own" nomenclature, more granular star ratings, more detailed stats, and trigger warning filters, amid them.
And Odunayo says that when people coming from Goodreads see these features on The Storygraph, it's difficult for them not to compare the site to Goodreads, just in reality the ideas for those features didn't come in response to what Goodreads is defective, they came in response to user feedback. Odunayo has had to ask her users a lot of questions to determine why they want certain features—like shelves or tags, for example—then she can pattern features that fulfill what the users demand, not just what they're looking for from past experience on Goodreads.
Ultimately, the lack of development and response to reader feedback has been 1 of my personal biggest issues with Goodreads over the years. So, it has been encouraging to watch The Storygraph adapt their (still very new) product to user feedback.
Bookstagrammer Mariah Coffelt of @layoversandliterature agrees. She says she has used Goodreads for years, but primarily uses The StoryGraph now because the recommendations are more than accurate and personalized, proverb it "feels similar information technology's more than in melody with the user. Less like a website recommending books and more than like an actual person who knows you." Coffelt said some other aspect of wanting to discover an alternative platform was to notice one that wasn't owned by Amazon.
At the time I interviewed Coffelt, the only characteristic she wished to see The StoryGraph add was a trigger warning filter for search and recommendation, so readers could filter out content that might exist triggering to them, which was a feature the platform was actively developing with user feedback—a perfect example of the platform'southward responsiveness to user feedback.
A Academic Site for Every Reader?
In the cease, we all want dissimilar things from bookish sites and apps. Some readers are most interested in tailored recommendations, and even these users all desire those recommendations delivered in different ways. Some readers desire data and stats. Some desire to catalog their home library. Other readers desire to challenge themselves to read more. And some readers desire to exist in community with other readers.
If yous're dissatisfied with the features Goodreads has to offer, it's probable there's a platform out there that will ameliorate serve your needs.
Nosotros'd love to hear from y'all! What practice y'all look for in a book platform? What are your must-haves? Practice any of these platforms have the features you seek if you'd like to leave Goodreads? Or, might you use them in add-on to Goodreads?
Source: https://bookriot.com/goodreads-alternatives/
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