Rereads does count in your yearly goals, but I totally agree with everynthig else !

I’ve been saying forever that goodreads needs a good update! I don’t need a million posts on the home screen telling me so and so liked someone else’s review 🙄 so annoying

Great video! I personally use both Goodreads and Storygraph and while I like the graphs on SG, it all comes down to aesthetics and easy of use for me. SG has a lot of empty space and big images that aren't very inspiring to stay long past updating a read. On GR images are sized well, there's a variety of colors and shapes (lol maybe kindergarten nostalgia is a factor too), easy-ish organization/search, and sense of community. Also, I've been using GR since 2010 and if I don't get my sticker for finishing my reading challenge, I don't know what I'll do lol. This year, I did set my goal at 1 book just to get that out of the way and so I could enjoy reading. So far so good 💗😁

I was so late to the Good Reads party. Signed up in 2022, barely used it. In 2023 one of my goals was to read more, so I set up a challenge for myself to read 60 books last year. Ended up reading 80. By keeping track on the app, it definitely helped me reach that goal. I purchased several books based on reviews/ratings on GR, which I quickly realized was a bad decision. Many times I find that my tastes are different from “the masses”, so 4-5 star ratings barely got a 2 from me and vice versa. This year I decided not to read any reviews and try to ignore ratings as much as possible. I try to go blindly into a book so I have no preconceived notions or expectations either way about it. Find that my experiences with books have been so much more enjoyable this way. It’s important to keep in mind that everyone uses the rating system differently. It’s absolutely ridiculous that we can’t rate something a half or quarter star. I don’t really use this app as a social media platform. I basically use it to keep track of what I’m reading and books I’m interested in.

I hate Amazon so I'm a StoryGraph girlie through and through. I also find the ratings more accurate: it feels like every book I look up on GR is rated 4.4⭐ while the same books are rated 3.2-4.7⭐ on SG which is much more helpful.

17:07 You can mark rereads on goodreads and have them count towards your reading goal. If you add an additional "dates read" on the book's page

for me, storygraph definitely takes the cake. sometimes I miss adding in an update and can EASILY go back to the specific day I read and add what page I stopped at instead of just updating at the time that I remember. plus, all the data reports are so fun to look at and the tracking of AUDIOBOOKS IS SO MUCH BETTER!

StoryGraph is sooo much better in book tracking areas. The only thing I wish is that their community sections were better. It’s getting there but they’re indi and women of colour created which is so much better than supporting Amazon.

I actually like how minimal the logo is and it also kind of gives me coffee-tea reading vibes, so I wouldn't wanna change it. But the app definitely needs a good modernization, especially when the feedback for the UI is very persistent and on the same things all the time.

At first I thought I’d just use GR and SG next to each other but I’m a lazy gal so who was I kidding… I’m now only using SG as I don’t want to support Amazon and I’ve already successfully bullied two of my friends to also change to SG. I’m very excitingly waiting on their community expansion so that I’ll be able to more interact with friends activity etc. So far have not regretted making the switch. I’m now doing my first buddy read with my sister and I’m obsessed.

I use both Goodreads and Storygraph, but honestly, I feel like I enjoy Storygraph more. It has been interesting to see the graphs, pages read, time spent reading etc. I mainly keep Goodreads because I find it simpler for typing the review (although it does need a half rating system at least). I won't be doing a reading goal for 2025 though. I've done one this year (started at 12, then doubled to 24) and I find I'm just not enjoying reading knowing it's for a goal. I'll see the year out, and maybe edit the goal down if I need to, but I want to enjoy reading and tracking books for fun.

I use Goodreads purely to track my reading and catalogue my bookshelves. I don't use a single one of the 'social media' features. I've only got a couple favourite genres listed, and that's only because you have to have at least one, and I don't have any friends or people I follow, so my homepage of doom is empty. The only tab I use is the 'my books' tab and all my shelves are related to my books I already own (rereads, series I'm currently reading, how many books I have in each genre, etc.) I've always found rating books overwhelming (long before I started using Goodreads) so I don't do that, and I don’t write reviews. I have a wishlist shelf but I get the majority of my recommendations elsewhere, and if it's from Goodreads, it's not from the 'discover' tab. Basically for me, it's a digital version of my bookshelves, so its shortcomings don't bother me. The only thing I wish it had is a Dark Mode. (And yes, I will admit I am addicted to the Yearly Reading Challenge and absolutely get the dopamine kick of updating my status.)

It's already possible to filter the home page. I filtered it to not appear when someone liked something and it no longer appears on my home page. It's also possible to mark something as a re-read.

Great points, especially on the book recommendations - mine also always suck and never change. I also hate that there is no “DNF” option! I don’t “want to read” a book I could never finish, but I also don’t want to mark it as “read” when I didn’t make it very far. Also get annoyed that the app won’t let you filter reviews by anything other than the rating - can’t sort by most recent, those only in your spoken language, those with actual text, etc. The updated desktop site is better, but far less convenient than just pulling up the app on my phone

Goodreads does count re-reads. You can add a new reading session or 2 or 3 in the add/edit button. It will count towards your reading goal.

I didn’t even know good reads was owned by Amazon wow makes sense now lol thanks Sara!

Popular authors getting more popular because unpopular books are not getting enough feature and it's sad

The KZfaq algorithm served this video up to me and it’s the first of yours that I’ve seen. It flew by. It was really well presented and your ideas for improving Goodreads are super insightful. I’d love to see more videos like this 👀

I use StoryGraph. Not perfect, but works for my needs and it's constantly improving with new features, which is more than Goodreads can say lol. I only track the status of a book:to read, currently reading, read, DNF. I put tags on my favorites or to indicate an own voices book or something I want to keep recs for ready. I usually don't track the page counts. I forget or it gets too much for me. I really only track that when I'm doing a readalong for the book and need to reach the percentage to unlock the chat for that chapter. Otherwise, I don't worry about page counts. I think my graphs and stats are interesting and I like that StoryGraph recommends me things based on what I've read in the past. They have a newish AI feature where it can predict how well you personally may like a book based on precious books you've liked. Even if it isn't perfect yet, it's good for getting comparison books. This book has similar elements to books 1,2,and 3. So that can help me know if I'm in the mood for something similar to those books. It's superior to Goodreads in my opinion

Not only does rereads work, but I recently noticed another change that I really want to put into a light of a positive thing GR did: Goodreads can now accept, if you own different editions of one and the same book Own The Lord of the Rings in German, English and French? Do you have two English editions and maybe even three in German? Like "in three books", "in one book", or "yes, in three books, but by a different translator"? Goodreads can now be told that you own these editions and correctly log which one you read

I deleted my account awhile ago and found my joy or reading just for reading again :) I do track what I read and write down my thoughts in a private notion template.

I'm so glad I set my reading goal to 1 book this year! I felt enormous pressure to hit the goal I made last year and it just didn't feel good, which is stupid because that is pressure you inflict on yourself. It made reading, which is supposed to be fun, feel like a chore.

Fable is also an option for tracking your books. And the book club option is has is even cooler. I love the little summary it creates given your read books, i always laugh about them, because i get called out by that.

I have no idea why the app symbol needs changing. To me it feels like another way to spend twenty million on a new logo and ad campain that nobody likes. Other points are sensible to me. That said, I do not and do not want to use this app in any social capacity, so it does not bother me too much that it is clunky in this aspect, but that is just my preference. Worse is that it only allows 5 Stars. I have no interest in half points, I want a ten point system because in that every single number has a very clearly defined meaning to me and since I only use the app for myself, it would make myself very happy. Again, this is simply focussed on my own needs and I accept it.

Listen, I am no fan of Goodreads but I have had a hard time convincing my book club to switch over to StoryGraph. Because the GR homepage is a nightmare, I wasn't updating my TBR list etc. but I wanted to keep it updated because we sometimes refer to one another's lists when picking book club books. Then I found a way to turn off feed updates for various things (adding TBR books, progress updates, finishing books, reviews etc). This is only available on Desktop but I recommend turning off things that you feel like are holding you back because you don't want to clog up the feed! Now I can add 10 books to my TBR without all of my friends having to witness them.

I had no idea they were owned by Amazon😭 gonna go cry in a corner now. Also someone else mentioned Fable which I also use and like!

i mostly use goodreads on laptop, tbh. i think its way more navigable on there, even with the bad ui update.

This video was well edited. *chef’s kiss*

There is a filter option for your feed, but you can only do it via the website.

story graph is my BELOVED!!

Hate Goodreads, but if you read in another language rather than English, Storygraph has less options. I use both. Goodreads looks sooo ugly, why? I've been using since 2022 and still looks the same ugliness

You do get credit for rereading books towards your yearly goal. You pull up your review on GoodReads and towards the bottom you can add a new row for date read and indicate the new time that you read the book.

you can track rereads towards your reading goal, there’s even a section that shows every time you reread a book

I gave up on Goodreads eventually because I was using both Goodreads and StoryGraph and I just CANNOT DEAL with the UI and the design that looks like it hasn’t been updated since 2006. Basically every issue you’ve mentioned, StoryGraph does better, but you obviously already know that 😆 I do, however, have one single gripe about StoryGraph: I can’t comment on my friends’s reads and say “wow! I like that book!” or “good luck, I really struggled with that one.”

I would love a DNF rating on GR; it is more descriptive than a low star rating.

I enjoy tracking books as a way of processing it, and not just have the book go in one ear and out the other. But I also understand that they foster an unhealthy competition with one another, just like wrap-ups does. I don't think it's just about forcing ourselves to read to reach the goal, but to feel accomplished compared to our social group.

GoodReads definitely counts rereads toward the yearly reading goal and has for at least five years, but it desperately needs an update...

I have recently just been using good reads to read reviews and author plots/author notes. Also I do like how they will tell you what books are apart of a series and that it takes you to a seperate page to see them all at once. Other than that, I've switched over to Bookmory which I think is 1) much prettier visually and 2) they have graphs and a calendar which shows you your reads each day 3) Allows for half star ratings. Loved the vid :))

Ok. You can edit your feed by clicking on the little settings icon and choose between seeing ONLY reviews or everything. Also, you can ask to have books recommended by going into your desktop settings and edit what you want to see there too. I’m more surprised that you didn’t talk about the fact that you cannot see the genres of books on the mobile app.

you can add rereads

On the website, you can filter your feed, but you have limited options. Everything, reviews only, or book updates only. You can also change what updates you publish. If you don't want your friends to see every time you join or group or enter a giveaway, for example, you can change it so you don't publish those updates at all.

This is so well done and researched!

Fable is the best alternative to both. It’s user friendly and it feels more modern and user friendly than storygraph and goodreads

I use Storygraph but frankly I don't really care about the social aspect of it. I mainly just use it to track where I am in what I'm reading (it's nice to see a more exact percentage) and keep a record of what I've read and what I thought of them. I do take part in the yearly reading goal, but I set it based on how many books I think I can read based on the size I usually go for (big ones because I like fantasy)

ive been using fable and honestly i love it more than storygraph (and obviously on that tier ranking list goodreads is number 3 lol) there are some improvements to be made on that app but its pretty new so its got a lot of potential🤭

What camera do you use? Your footage looks beautiful! Just found your channel and love the vibe and quality of this video!

I use both GR and SG, but as said I've used GR for so long that I'm more used to and like some features better. But yeah, SG is waaayy better regarding user friendly features and stats. Still, my go to place to update is GR and will migrate the data to SG a week or two later

I get that GR is mainly used as a tool to drive Amazon book sales but something that really grinds my gears is that there is no way to autosync my tbr shelf with my Amazon wish list except MANUALLY. Like I'm not gonna go through 1700 books and add them one by one to my wishlist, Jeff - it would be pretty nice and convenient to offer that integration directly so you know, I actually buy more Kindle books.

After all these years, you think they would revamp. It’s so shocking to me that they haven’t especially with the surge of new readers over the years

Loved this. I had no idea Amazon owned Goodreads. Learned a lot! Great video.

I downloaded Fable earlier this year and think it's OK. My main issue is that I have finished two books recently that couldn't be found on the app so I was unable to log them. One was the latest release by Craig Schaeffer, "Dig Two Graves," and the other was a new release by Jon Conroe, "White Wolf."

StoryGraph + Fable is a winning combo

Yes to the reread crediting in one's challenge! However, take the reading challenge to a much more fair system and count books AND pages. When I complete a 190 page pulp murder mystery and it counts the same as me having finished the 1162 page The Power Broker: well, you see the problem. That being said, the reading challenge has pushed me to open up new genres and acts as one small impetus to go to bed early and swin into my current lit love.

Omg I miss the amazon books shops so much too 😭😭😭 they were SO nice!

Great vid, the second I heard about storygraph, I immediately swapped over. I thought the UI of goodreads was abhorrent and it didn’t give me the ease of viewing stats that I wanted, so storygraph was definitely for me. I also greatly preferred it not being connected to amazon.

Goodreads still works for my needs. I only use it to record what I’ve read, so that I don’t buy books I’ve already read. (My memory sucks.) I have no real interest in social connections. (Reading has always been just a thing I do by myself; I don’t do book clubs either.) I like the reading stats, just to see a review of my year, but I never doing the reading challenge. I only want reading to be something I do for fun and only when I want to. I majored in English and edited books for my short career (before I became disabled). I’ve had enough of reading with a time limit. The point you mentioned that affects me is the terrible state of book recommendations. I’m always looking for new books and you’re right, their recommendations page is terrible.

I started by using SG instead of GR, and wondered if it was the right choice lol but I actually like SG better overall. I sent so many tickets to correct informations 😂 Also! SG actually has a feature so you can import your data from GR! You don’t have to go through it manually (although multiple imports lead to multiples reads of the same books, so be careful)

You nailed it with this video girlie, thanks for the content!

You can reread books on good reads

Sara: "I can simultaneously love something and still acknowledge where it falls short." Yeah, this probably something my mother has had told herself over the 44 years of me being her daughter. 😂 (I love you mum...you have the patience of a saint!)

Do people not know about Fable? I think it has more of a social media vibe if that’s what you’re looking for. They have book clubs and an end of month wrap up poster you can do. Fable uses half stars and I personally like it better because instead of searching for a specific version of a book you can just fill in the number of pages. I use Goodreads, StoryGraph, and Fable but I prefer Fable and typically forget about the others.

Re-reads do count towards my goal on goodreads, its just making sure there are two sets of dates. I wish there was a Did not finish feature and a lot better design like you mentioned

there are more book tracking sites than good reads and storygraph, I have found them difficult to use. I've had my current GR account since 09. I like that GR is an old style website, I ended up dropping storygraph because if its endless scroll, and it was hard for me to sort my books. I've never used the GR app, because I don't believe in cluttering up my phone with apps. I've never bought a book because of goodreads directly. but I sometimes like to do a "wiki walk" though it where after I read a book I'll see who else who has read it, and then see what our percentage of overlap reads are and then if it seems like we have similar tastes I'll check out what they've read to see if they have something I'd like something I'd like. GR does count rereads and it will say how many times you've reread a thing. On my feed right now I see I friend has just read a book for the second time. I used storygraph for a year and a half straight in tandem with GR and for everything I liked about it I found at least 2 things very frustrating. As a whole I usually only read reviews when I'm feeling iffy on a book, and then I only read the negative reviews to see if the thing that is bugging me was bugging other people based on what those say if I want to quit the book.

For me the downfall of GoodReads was several years ago when the same page kept reloading like 50 times a minute and wouldn’t stay logged in longer than 5 seconds. I haven’t gotten over that. I don’t think I will ever get over that. 😅

You can import your Goodreads library to storygraph

Amazon is capable of making the website experience more pleasant. I think their regular shopping app is fine to good. I get much better recommendations for books in the kindle app over Goodreads which makes zero sense. The kindle app isn’t seeing everything I read yet manages a better job and owned by the same company. I also HATE that I can’t buy a kindle book in the kindle app or the Amazon app. I must do so in a browser window on the Amazon webpage. What is the function of this? Can anyone explain why Amazon is putting a barrier between me and instant delivery?

So I rarely buy books and not on Amazon usually. I update a lot because I have kids that pull my bookmark out of my books so I need to “backup” my work lol. I have a nook from 2010 that still works well for epub files. I use my library for everything and only get Amazon stuff if I can’t find it anywhere else. I find the scan search option annoying because it will scan my item and it pops up. Then when I go to change it to “currently reading” it changes the barcode to other items. It goes absolutely crazy and I have to do extra work to find the item I scanned. It wasn’t always like this so I don’t understand why it’s like this.

I don't use Goodreads, I did try it but tracking it like that just isn't for me. Also the app felt so dated so I just use it to look up reviews and descriptions

my pet peeve with the discovery tab is when finishing reading a book of a series it would suggest any other book but the next book in the seriesany book in the series! I have to manually search for it!

They also sell books at a lower price than everywhere else on purpose.

I recently downloaded fable and I loveeeeee it, I think it's so much better than goodreads!!

You should check out Fable😊

Honestly, this year I started moving my book tracking to an online journal. I'm not even keeping track on my challenge. I feel that it's still a good tool, but honestly I don't use it much anymore

I hate "My books" page with burning passion, the same passion I hate the fact that the "date read" doesn't add automatically with. I find it ridiculously hard to find a book I just marked as "read" and add the date. I also hate the fact that filtering book editions is so poor, with only one criterium: format (audiobook vs. Ebook vs. paper, I believe). How about LANGUAGE? Like, I'm Polish and I read the majority of my books in that language and finding the correct edition, especially of popular books with multiple editions in mamy languages, is a nightmare. I really don't like goodreads, don't even know why I'm still using it 😅

I joined GR during the pandemic because I suck at keeping track of the books I've previously read and want to read on paper/my phone. I had a few issues with the interface of it where it wouldn't log my reading dates or my reviews at the time I finished the book so they're left as "read" but have no reviews or rating when I remember putting them in at the time. Kept having the issue in 2023 when I started reading more, looked into other apps like Fable and SG and absolutely fell in love with SG interface because it's not bombarding you with suggestions or shaming you for being behind on your reading goal (not that I've noticed much). I try not to support Amazon also, so cutting out GR was easy but living in a rural-ish area it's cheaper to get certain things than through other companies, plus I have an attachment issue to my kindle 😅

I actually got into reading for pleasure recently (my school was forcing me to read so much that i didnt have time before) and started straight into storygraph. I am so glad i did! The community on there is great, they are constantly coming out with new updates giving the user better experiences and i love how on their website you can see in real-time how they are incorporating users recommendations. Also, i love not supporting amazon!

They could also change the search engine to actually show results based on your search instead of most popular.

As a non-native English speaker (and reader), I have both Goodreads and Storygraph. Ngl would love to switch to SG fully, however the lack of or bad (or let's say "non-refined yet" and cross our fingers) database integration of international literature into SG makes me stick to Goodreads. Nevertheless I love the recommendations on SG, the AI features and in-depth reviews for the books that are on there. Let's see where this is going. (:

I used to spend 15 hours a week being a Goodreads librarian, correcting the database. The search is garbage, like total utter wankery it's so bad. Then they launched the new page, it's impossible to see what needs updating at a glance and I just stopped.

I´ve enjoyed this video a lot. thank you. I agree with most of it. I use Goodreads only to keep track of my read books but I´ve stopped making year´s reading challenge ( would make me very anxious) and stop rating books like biographies because it makes no sense to me rate such type of books. Cheers.

I use storygraph and love it

I never had success trying to use Goodreads. I tried so many times; I wanted to track my books and see how much I was actually reading but never went back till several books later. I’ve had so much more success in Story Graph. I love that it records rereads and lets me give quarter star ratings. Its recommendations and analysis of my reading habits is so accurate. And I’ve always loved graphs. Really the graphs give me the dopamine I need to remember to track!

No wait, I love the current logo

Sara this content was 🔥!!

I think they believe keeping the original is a style… They should actually try to update while keeping the same vibe…

I use Goodreads, Storygraph and Bookmory, I think bookmory and storygraph would be great merged into one

Good video, I agree with all your suggestions. Using both Goodreads and Storygraph.

GR definitely still has various ways to improve. As you have mentioned, some filtering option as being able to follow friends' update on their own reading but avoiding seeing every time they liked a post by some unknown {to me} user, would be helpful. Their internal analytical visual tools are outdated {for example if you look at the timeline of books' original publication dates that I have, once you add some ancient book as The odyssey, the graph becomes useless..}. It is not really clear why these obvious improvements are not done yet.. one note: I do think that rereads count to the yearly challenge.

Great video. Totally agree.

It's nightmarish to find other versions of the same book in Goodreads .... I like to use Skoob which is mostly Brazilian, but it's way better than Goodreads in usability. Oh my god, i never stopped to think but rereading is also reading??? None of the platforms i use habe it! I sometimes don't even put it in my journal!

The reread adding to your goal use to be a problem but they changed it so it now counts. I don't use the app though as I don't like it at all, so I use my phone and turn the Web page into the desktop version.

Amazon started,Amazon classic edition half of them or only half the book

I appreciate in storygraph that you can put in a .25 or .5 or .75 but I'd rather be able to just type in my rating not limited to those numbers but that being said it's better than Goodreads' rating system.

I use both GR and SG, and I don't think either has an aesthetically pleasing or intuitive user interface. GR looks kind of like ad vomit to me. I love the graphs and charts SG has, but find them incomplete for my needs. I also use the CAWPILE spreadsheet, and even that is lacking some data I would like to track.

On the website i guess recommendations are different but I still prefer Storygraphs way of recommendations

Even better than an Amazon book store is a non-Amazon book store.

I've noticed a bug with Goodreads where it'll say I finished a book when I still have pages to go. They might be counting the first page of the first chapter to the last page of the last chapter, not the publishing info, dedication, etc but I still find it annoying. This may be a small nitpick but they shouldn't allow authors to rate their own books. I've seen multiple times bigger authors rate their own books, yeah you're going to give it 5 stars. It skews with the ratings.

super unpopular opinion but i love goodreads as it is lol i can get behind adding half stars and updating the recommendations feature but i disagree with everything else haha the issue with the feed can be fixed in your settings and rereads do count towards your goal

Totally agree! The app SUCKS! I only use it to update my readings and respond to comments because it is impossible to see the updates on the phone... And in Android it gets WORSE 😭😭

it’s so weird to me cause this app could be AMAZING and it’s not like there’s not money or demand for it? i love storygraph but wish both of them were a bit more user friendly