Rating My Most Used Book Apps📚

I have tried a lot of book apps over the years so I decided to rate a couple today. I would like to say I'm not picky with book tracking apps but that would be a lie🙈 Today I'll be ranking Goodreads, Storygraph, and Fable. While they all serve the same main purpose, tracking what you read, I like 1 more than the others. There's some others I would like to rate in the future. I have something called "Tome" installed on my ipad but im waiting to rate it until the android version releases as I am mainly an android user. I want to make a indepth blog post sometimes soon but for now let's get into it!

Each app will have the rating by their name,a brief overview, and what I like and dislike about that specific app. To make it easier to find the information you care about search for these emojis:

⭐️-rating system

📊-stats/reading goal system

📋-cataloging system

🫂-social/community

💥-stand out features

📚Goodreads: ⭐️⭐️.5/⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A classic but not my favorite. It's what a lot of people use to track their books and look at reviews. It's the first book app I ever downloaded and I still use it even though its rated low. The main reason I'm so conflicted is it really has ingrained itself into the book community even though its really not the best one out there - in my opinion. This app is such a pillar other apps will ask if you want to sync or transfer your data from goodreads. While this is my least favorite I unfortunately feel the need to use it.

✅️WHAT I LIKE:✅️

The entire app is very intuitive.

📋-The process of looking up a book, scanning the barcode, or using a picture of the cover is really easy. Sorting books into lists is straight forward.

⭐️-If you want to know what others think about the book you're thinking of buying there will be lots of reviews to look at it.

🚫WHAT I DON'T LIKE:🚫

⭐️-Speaking of the review system, after trying some more apps I've definitely found better. There's no half or quarter star ratings. There's not detailed reviews at all.

🫂They try to do a social media type deal with adding friends and it falls flat.

📊The yearly reading goal with is a feature a book app needs to have for me is also lack luster.

It's also owned by Amazon which is a company I works perfer to stay away from.

📚Storygraph:⭐️⭐️⭐️.75/⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This is another app i installed early on after looking for goodreads alternatives. This app does a lot I like but it isn't an intuitive.

✅️WHAT I LIKE:✅️

⭐️The rating system is improved compared to goodreads. You can select from a list of options for questions like "pace", "this book would be for is in the mood for something...", "is it plot or character driven?", "is there character development?" ect. There is the option for quarter and half star ratings. There's a place to add content warnings.

📊The app will give you stats based on the books you've read that year including pages, genres, most read authors. This is one of the main reason I use this app. The monthly stats and end of year book goals stats really are amazing to have.

📋Another main reason I use this app is its easy to catalog my shelves with the barcode scanning feature.

💥An amazing feature is "Buddy Reading". If you're friends with someone on the app and start a buddy read you can write comments the other will see when they log that they hit that part of the book. My fiancé and I have done this a couple times and it makes it SO fun. It's a stand our feature none of the other apps have. plus it's not owned by amazon😉

🚫WHAT I DON'T LIKE:🚫

It has a learning curve and is harder to navigate. I find myself not updating it often or scrolling because I don't like the interface. I will update it whenever I remember to mainly to get the right end of the year stats.

📋-It's really easy to add something to the wrong list or accidentally put the wrong book format (I hardly ever read digital books but I've had my stats say some of the books were digital and I had to find out how to fix that).

🫂-There's a real lack of community which is the same problem as goodreads. It just seems dead of people and more like just a book tracking app.

📚Fable: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I only recently joined this app but it takes what I like about both of the other apps and combines them into one with even more perks. So far this is the app I like best out of all the ones I've tried

✅️WHAT I LIKE:✅️

⭐️- The rating system not only has half and quarter stars unlike goodreads but has the indepth review questions like storygraph done even better. You can answer questions like "how did this book make you feel" and "how would you describe this book". It goes even more indepth with you choosing what keywords apply to the book's characters, plot, writing, setting, and content warnings. There's ofc a place to write whatever you'd like too.

📊- your "summary" will tell you what kind of reader you are (I'm a FSDW), top rated books, most read genres, and most read authors

🫂- The social aspect on this app is the best by far. not only do you get people's reviews and posts on your home page but finding people who have similar interests to you is super easy. If you click on someone else's profile you'll get a comparison of what type of reader you guys are. Books you've both read and what you rated them. Books you both have on your TBR and more. I have already had some pretty cool conversations about what I've rated books. It is a perfect blend of social media and book tracker.

📋- while the cataloging system isn't PERFECT, for me at least, I do like the lists and customizable lists you can add books too. I have one for my physical books and books from the library. I even have one for books I DNF

💥- The look of this app is by far the best! It is fun to use and I find myself opening it even without tracking books. The reading "streak" feature makes me want to pick up my book a little bit each day. There's book clubs you can create or join and while I haven't used this feature yet looking through the groups makes me want to join one🤔

🚫WHAT I DONT LIKE:🚫

📋- It took me a second to understand how to add new books to lists after my previous ones synched from goodreads. It's not as straightforward as some of the other apps

📊- My only grievance with the stats is the year to year aren't as detailed as Storygraph.

Oh 👋. If you made it this far thank you thank you. To see how important captions are and how many people actually read them I like to leave a question at the end. Let's start with what's your favorite book app? Now a more specific question: what's your reading goal for this year?

#lemon8bookclub #lemon8challenge #bookapps #reading #bookrecommendations