Chels

I love tracking things, but I don’t tend to use tracking apps. I’ve always leaned more towards spreadsheets, mostly because I don’t have a lot of storage on my iPad, so I can only keep the most important apps on there. Currently, I track my reading on a joint Notes app page with my cousin for our annual reading challenge (I’ve won every year since lockdown, but I’m slacking this year), but I do miss the insights from back when I used Goodreads.

Joining the Bookstagram community (if only on the outskirts) means I’ve seen a lot of discourse about the best tracking apps; which to avoid, controversies, or up-and-coming apps, and over the last month or so, I decided to test out the four most recommended, to see which one is objectively the Best. (Or, to see which one is best suited to my reading habits. I put out a story on our Instagram back in September asking for reading tracker recommendations, and shortlisted the four most popular apps: Goodreads, Fable, Pagebound, and Storygraph. I used Goodreads throughout the 2010s, and I had a personal account registered on Fable, though I have no memory of actually using it, so to make my experiment fair, I created new Nonsense&Lit accounts on each of the apps.

Before I jumped straight in, I thought about the things that are most important to me when it comes to an app like this, and I came up with four categories that I would judge the apps on: setting up an account, tracking books, updating progress, and creating reviews. In terms of what I’m looking for – I like for things to be easy enough to follow, but not so basic that pen and paper could do the same job.

Account Set Up

This factor is probably the most important for me. It’s the reason we don’t have an account on Twitter/X – the account creation process is too much of a hassle, you have to jump through hoops and complete multiple captchas only for the site to restart right as you’re about to finish creating your account. These apps all function properly, though, so there’s nothing exciting to say – all of them make it easy to log in. On all of the trackers, as you’d expect, there’s an option to create a yearly reading goal. Since I started in October, I skipped this option for now (if only to make me feel better about how little I’ve read.) The more exciting part of the account creation is personalisation.

Fable was the most disappointing of the group. Once I’d set up the account, it was straight on to tracking. There were no further questions, no prompts to fill in, which meant no recommendations.

On the other end of the spectrum, Storygraph offered a whole survey to generate recommendations based on likes, dislikes, and previous reads. Since the accounts are for Nonsense&Lit, I only included books that Karly and I have both read and enjoyed, so the recommendations given were primarily poetry collections. Not that I’d complain about poetry recommendations. Storygraph suggested over 15 books, and pretty much all of them interested me, plus their survey was fun to take. There was also an option to import your Goodreads data to their service.

Pagebound also offered the option to import Goodreads data. They also ask for a selection of your favourite reads to generate recommendations, and they gamify the whole process – each step you take in setting up your account generates points. What do the points do? I’m not sure, but nevertheless it’s fun to watch the number go up.

Goodreads, old faithful, was slightly disappointing. The app asks for favourite genres and some past ratings to generate recommendations. I gave some favourite genres, but since this experiment was intended as a fresh start, I didn’t rate any books I’d previously read. As I should have expected, this means I wasn’t given any recommendations, though I was hoping I’d get something based on the combination of genres I selected. Hopefully, adding more books to Goodreads as I finish them will result in some recommendations.

My setup ranking: Storygraph, Pagebound, Goodreads, then Fable.

Book Tracking

The bread and butter of a book tracker. If the book tracking system doesn’t work, there’s really no point to the apps. Of course, all of them worked, though some were easier than others to follow. The first book I tracked was Wuthering Heights, specifically, the Penguin clothbound classics edition. I was determined to specify the edition, since page counts can differ by a lot, and I wanted to be accurate.

Again, the most disappointing was Fable. It was a very complex system. The Penguin clothbound edition was not already registered on their system, which would be fine, except the rest of their system was so complicated that I actually gave up, and added a random edition. You can only track a book via their mobile app, but you can only attempt to add a new edition of a book on their website, so trying to track a newly added edition was a nightmare. It was such a frustrating process that I considered cutting Fable from the shortlist.

Pagebound also didn’t have the exact edition I was reading in their system (which is to be expected, actually, the site was only created this year, and the app only launched during this experiment). It was easy to add the book though, it just requires the url of the goodreads page for the book, and then it becomes part of their system.

The same was the case for Storygraph – I had to type in the ISBN of the book to generate the exact edition, but once I found it (an easy process), I arrived at the homepage of the book, which gave some snapshot reviews of the book from other users, some graphics of statistics (see below), as well as content warnings (hidden behind an expand tag for if you don’t want spoilers). Storygraph was definitely the most thorough in terms of the ‘profile’ of books, which I liked.

Goodreads, again, is old faithful. Thankfully, it had the simplest process to add the book – I typed the title and edition and it appeared, I pressed currently reading, and it updated the status. Simple. On the book’s homepage you can see ratings and reviews, an author biography, a list of genres, and some recommended similar titles (a feature which made up for the lack of recommendations on joining the site).

My tracking ranking: Storygraph, Goodreads, Pagebound, then Fable.

Updating Progress

Why do we use book tracking apps if not to see the progress bar fill up with every update? Each of the apps I tested offered different methods of tracking progress.

The Goodreads progress tracker is only available on the app, not on the website. Unfortunately, while I was using it, the progress bar also seemed to be broken, so despite logging my progress, the bar stayed at 0%, which was a disappointment.

Fable also only allowed for progress tracking on the app. It’s an ‘I read today’ feature where you log how many pages into each book you are. I quite liked this feature – it also came with a daily reading streak – and the progress bar actually filled up. The only problem was that it wasn’t the same copy of the book that I was reading, so the percentage wasn’t actually accurate.

Storygraph was by far the simplest – I just had to type in the page number I was on, and it calculated my progress percentage. Simple, but practical, and I had no issues.

I was very surprised at how much I grew to enjoy the progress tracking on Pagebound. At first I was disappointed that there was no way to simply track the page number – the only way to note it was to share ‘thoughts from page x’, which intimidated me at first. I’m not someone who particularly enjoys talking about books before I’ve finished them (it’s the fear that I’ll have missed some key plot point or theme that only becomes crystal clear in the final pages), but I found that the more I shared my thoughts, the more open I was to the activity – I found the self consciousness evaporating as I wrote my updates. They didn’t have to be detailed reviews, just a line or two to capture my thoughts on the book so far. The aesthetic of Pagebound definitely helps with this – it does feel very relaxed and social, it’s not made for clinical analysis, it’s made to engage in the social aspect of reading.

My rankings for progress updates: Pagebound and Storygraph are tied for first place, followed by Fable, then Goodreads.

Book Reviews

Following on from progress tracking, the final key feature of a book tracking app is their review function. On the whole, I’m not a huge review writer. In general, I much prefer a silent star rating. For this exercise I wanted to test out the various ways these sites allow you to write your reviews.

Goodreads continued to provide the basics – a star rating and space for a review – no tags, no extras. They still only allow for whole star reviews, so there’s not a lot of room for nuance (do I categorise a 4.5 star book as five stars or four?).

The Pagebound review feature doesn’t automatically trigger when you mark a book as complete. Again, though, since Pagebound is so new, I want to be lenient in pointing these things out – making a website is hard, and it can take a year to iron out the bugs. When you do create your review, you can give an overall rating, then a rating for enjoyment, quality, characters, and plot, as well as submit three summary emojis. You can also write your review, which I did, because I was already in the habit of writing my thoughts out there.

Storygraph has quite a thorough review system, too. I was really excited to review Wuthering Heights there, mostly because I wanted to contribute to the statistics graphics on the book’s profile page. Plus, Storygraph not only includes half stars, but also quarter stars. A real treat for the indecisive among us.

I may have criticised Fable a lot, but their review system was really very fun. Like Storygraph, they allow half and quarter stars, and they also provide a list of tags to choose from. In lieu of trying to write a sophisticated review, I found the tag review quite fun – selecting prominent topics, as well as review buzzwords (things like ‘beautifully written’ and ‘morally ambiguous’). 

My review ranking: Storygraph, Fable, Pagebound, then Goodreads.

And now for my big confession…

Since my experiment, I haven’t actually returned to any of these tracker apps. In my defence, the two books I read after Wuthering Heights were shorter stories part of larger collections, and I intended to wait until I’d completed the entire physical books before I logged them, and after that, it just slipped my mind. As it turns out, the Notes app is the most convenient tracker for me (bar the year my iCloud went haywire and I lost all my notes). That being said, I really do enjoy the review systems on the newer apps, and I’d like to commit to at least logging completed books and rating them, even if I’m not logging my progress daily. 

Overall, I think going forward I’ll be sticking with Storygraph and Pagebound. Goodreads really is old faithful, but it does only have the basic features. I’d be nowhere without the trusty half-star, plus, despite being the oldest of the four trackers, it seemed to be the one with the most technical issues while I was using it.

Fable could definitely be the favourite for a lot of people, I can see that, and a lot of it’s features are really exciting – it was up there with my favourites for their review feature. Unfortunately, as a primarily desktop user, it’s just not practical for me.

My winners are Storygraph and Pagebound. I’d love to pick one over the other, but they serve different purposes, I think. Storygraph is really thorough in terms of categorising and reviewing books, and they provided the most diverse list of recommendations. Pagebound, on the other hand, is really promising in terms of the social aspect of reading. I’d love to see more people join them – think Letterboxd but for reading – sharing quick reviews and thoughts, building a profile similar to mainstream social media.If I do manage to focus enough to return to book tracking apps, I’ll be using Storygraph and Pagebound for sure.