Battle Of The Book Apps: Is Storygraph Better Than Goodreads?
This article was written by The Zillennial Zine’s fall editorial intern Raven Minyard. Find her on Instagram at @raven.minyard. If you would like to share an article with The Zillennial, send us an email at thezillennialzine@gmail.com.
If you’re a reader, you’ve probably heard of Goodreads, the Amazon-owned book review website that allows you to keep track of the books you’ve read and want to read, as well as to set a yearly reading goal. But have you heard of its competitor Storygraph? Storygraph is a Black and female-led platform, and many readers believe it to be superior to Goodreads. In this article, we’ll walk you through the features of Storygraph, and you can decide which app is the winner in the battle of Storygraph vs Goodreads.
Background
Storygraph was founded in 2019 by Nadia Odunayo, a tech entrepreneur who wanted to “fill in the gaps” for features Goodreads didn’t have. According to an article with The Women’s Network, Odunayo wanted to make the app user-focused, as its biggest competitor Goodreads is not known to prioritize users’ needs due to Amazon’s huge company size. What began as a side project for Odunayo soon became her main focus, and Storygraph continued to grow in popularity. In 2020, the beta version of the app jumped from 1000 users to 20K in just three days. Storygraph officially launched in January 2021 when it hit 100k users.
Features
In an interview with Kobo, Odunayo states that she never thought of Storygraph as an “alternative” to Goodreads “because you might fall into the trap of looking at what they’re doing and then just trying to do the same but better.” She wanted to focus on “what wasn’t being done,” which led to the development of many fan-favorite features for Storygraph.
Both Storygraph and Goodreads are book rating and reviewing sites. They allow you to track the books you have read, are currently reading and want to read, and you can rate them on a five-star scale and leave a review of your thoughts. Both apps also allow you to set a yearly reading goal and let you know if you’re behind, ahead or on track to reach that goal by the end of the year.
However, there are a lot of features on Storygraph that Goodreads does not possess. For one, Storygraph allows users to give books half- and quarter-star ratings, while Goodreads only permits full-star ratings. Sometimes you read a book that’s not a 3-star rating but not quite a 4-star, either. Storygraph allows you to pinpoint this rating somewhere in between, a factor that users have been begging Goodreads to implement for years.
My favorite aspect of Storygraph is its use of charts and graphs. You can track almost every aspect of your reading. The app creates personalized pie charts based on the moods (emotional, adventurous, sad, etc.), pace and length of your books. It allows you to track how much fiction vs nonfiction you read and tells you which genres you pick up most often. It then curates a recommendation list based on this data to help you find your next read. You can make your recommendations even more curated by selecting moods, genres, number of pages and whether or not the books are already in your “to-read pile”. This feature is extremely helpful if you want to branch out in your reading preferences. I noticed I read far more fiction than nonfiction because of Storygraph’s charts, and I use their recommendations to try to balance my reading habits.
Storygraph also allows you to join challenges other than your yearly reading goal. Some reading challenges are created by Storygraph while others are user-generated. Each challenge gives you different prompts to complete by reading various books. A few challenges I’m competing in are the “Must-read Classics” and “Taylor Swift 2023 Reading Challenge.” These serve as a way to get you more excited about reading, challenge yourself to read more often and explore genres you may not gravitate toward.
Storygraph vs Goodreads
As a user of both Storygraph and Goodreads, I can say that both apps have their strengths and weaknesses, and there is a reason I continue to use both. While it’s pretty obvious to anyone who has used both apps that Storygraph’s interface is much better than Goodreads, Goodreads makes reading more social. Reading can be a very isolating hobby, and sometimes you just want to scream about a book to anyone who will listen. You can’t really do that on Storygraph because there are no chat or comment features. You can follow other users to create a personalized feed, but you can’t easily interact with them. If you’re just there to track your books, then it’s perfect. If you want to interact with other readers, though, you should head over to Goodreads. Goodreads allows others to comment on your posts and updates, and you can message your friends directly. Since I enjoy seeing other readers’ reactions to books, this is reason enough for me to continue using Goodreads in addition to Storygraph.
Since Goodreads is still the better known of the apps, more people go to it for reviews. In most cases, any book you pick up will have more reviews on Goodreads than Storygraph. In my personal experience, reviews for any specific book will be more detailed on Goodreads than Storygraph. Ratings also tend to be higher on Storygraph since fewer people use it, so Goodreads would probably give you a more accurate average rating for a book for the general population.
However, Goodreads is not one of Amazon’s priorities and tends to be neglected. The app rarely, if ever, gets a proper update, and it is often very glitchy. I’ve had many experiences just over the last few months where the app would be down for an entire day, leaving me frustrated when I wanted to log my reading. The overall user experience is not a good one.
Storygraph, on the other hand, typically runs smoothly and is much more user-friendly. I began using it at the beginning of the year and can’t recall a time when it’s been down. If you’re interested in moving from Goodreads to Storygraph but don’t want to lose all of the reading history you have, Storygraph also has the option to import your Goodreads information. Because of this feature, I have data going all the way back to 2015 on Storygraph. It’s not always 100% accurate, but it’s pretty close and it isn’t too difficult to fill in the gaps yourself.
What do you think of Storygraph vs Goodreads? Do you have a favorite? How do you track your reading? Let us know in the comments!