4 Best Book-Tracking Apps for Readers

Keeping track of all the books we’ve read and all the books we want to read—by genre and category—takes up half of a reader’s life. Our Notes app is filled with favourite quotes and books to be read and vague thoughts on the book we’ve just finished. But how often do we go back to them and organize the mess?

Another problem we face is finding book recommendations. When we love a particular book, in our book-hungover state, we look for another book that is similar, with similar tropes and plots. This is why every bookworm needs a book-tracking app to keep track of all these—from books read, to books to-be-read, to receiving quality book recommendations and, more importantly, to interacting with the reading community at large.

Goodreads is already well-known with our readers, we’d like to share a list of four other such book-tracking apps you can use.

01. The StoryGraph

With its easy-to-use interface and clean design, The StoryGraph is one of the best alternatives to Goodreads out there. It allows you to track your books in much the same way as Goodreads, but with a website that is easily navigated and with several other features that stand out:

• Tracks your reading habits and gives you useful insights in the form of graphs and charts.

• Gives you very personalized book recommendations based on questionnaires that asks for characteristics of books you prefer, literary turn-offs, genres, etc.

• Allows you to look for books based on your “moods”.

• Has detailed review elements like mood, pace, character development, etc.

• Allows you to import your entire Goodreads library as a .csv file, with step-by-step instructions on how to do it.

• Comes with reading challenges, content warning for books, and half & quarter stars.

Since The StoryGraph isn’t just about tracking books, expect setting up the account to take a little time because you’re required to fill out very-specific questionnaires.

02. Libib

With both a web app and a mobile app that automatically syncs with each other, Libib allows you to keep track of up to 5000 items—which, besides books, also includes movies, music and video games—for free. Libib also comes with the following features:

• Can add as many libraries as you want with customized titles, and can choose to keep them either private or public.

• Can tag, review, rate and make notes on each of the books in your library.

• Lets you import items in bulk in CSV format, automatically retrieving the items’ cover art and other information.

• Includes a barcode scanner feature.

• Importing of Goodreads .xml file.

• Analyzes your reading habits, and gives you cool insights.

Libib offers two options: a free plan, which allows you to track up to 5000 items and create up to 100 libraries, and a paid plan, which allows you to catalog up to 100,000 items, edit in batches, etc.

03. Bookshelf

Bookshelf: Your Virtual Library is an app that helps you catalog your library or book collection and keeps it incredibly organized. Besides this and providing good book recommendations, the Bookshelf app also comes with a variety of unique features, like:

• Ability to batch scan book barcodes for multiple books at once (if the books are not already in their catalog).

• Ability to manually enter book details for older books without barcodes.

• Allows you to rate books you’ve read and make your own notes about the book for your future reference.

• Has an option to record if and what books are lent to someone else.

• Lets you add customized tags for books, make customized collections, etc., according to your preference.

Bookshelf also allows you to link to your Amazon account, making book purchases a smooth process, and lets you browse current bestsellers which you can add to your library.

04. Litsy

Commonly described as “when Goodreads meets Instagram”, Litsy is for book-lovers who want to engage more with the reading community, and is perfect for Bookstagrammers. It has an easy-to-use user interface that allows you to share posts about your books—and it could be anything ranging from photos, blurbs, quotes, and reviews, each of which can be linked to the book. Other features of Litsy include:

• Allows you to keep track of books you have read and want to read. 

• Can browse your feed and interact with the posts of other readers.

• Can add other people’s books to your own library from their posts.

• Can find discussion topics by looking for specific books, authors or tags.

• Gives users a ‘litfluence’ score, based on the number of books/pages completed or number of likes received from other readers.

While Litsy allows you to rate your books, it doesn’t follow the conventional method of rating by stars. Instead, it gives you four options to choose from: Pick, So-So, Pan or Bail. This has mixed reactions from Litsy’s users, since it forces one to form a concrete opinion about a particular book.