Another challenger to the Amazon Kindle-Goodreads book tracking empire has emerged.
On Monday, reading tracker StoryGraph partnered with Rakuten’s Kobo, the maker of a more open e-reader (and Kindle alternative), allowing book lovers to automatically track their reading habits.
The integration was first announced in May and is now live across all Kobo account-based content.
This makes Kobo the first e-reader to integrate with StoryGraph’s public book platform and serves as another way to end Amazon’s dominance in the digital book market. Traditionally, Amazon has been able to retain its readers by offering low prices on books and e-books and combining that with a strong online reading community and social network, Goodreads.
Although many Goodreads competitors have emerged over the years, few have been able to establish a strong foothold because they lacked the ability to integrate with customers’ e-reading devices, as Goodreads did with Kindle devices.
The StoryGraph-Kobo integration changes that, as it will now automatically sync a user’s reading progress with their StoryGraph account. That means when you finish a book on your Kobo eReader, it will automatically be marked as “Read” in the StoryGraph, keeping your reading stats up to date. The feature will work with both e-books and audiobooks, the companies said, and works with any Kobo device and Kobo apps.
Book trackers like StoryGraph are popular because they provide an easy way for people to keep track of their reading history and favorite books, and provide ways to get recommendations based on what others are reading. As StoryGraph’s name suggests, its analytics are often in-depth, providing students with detailed charts about their reading habits, pace, and more, to improve study habits.
It also offers an online community where you can participate in reading challenges and join book clubs, while staying motivated to read by earning “strokes.” (Normally, we don’t like the hypnotic methods used in social apps, but for the sake of learning motivation, we’ll make an exception.)
Founded by black British engineer Nadia Odunayo and CTO Rob Frelow in 2019, StoryGraph began as a side project and received no external funding. It has since evolved into a community of over 5 million students. The Kobo integration will now put the app in front of the e-reader maker’s 12 million users in 190 countries.
Kobo and StoryGraph are not alone in collaborating on the revival of reading culture, driven by online communities like #booktok and reading apps. According to Pew Research, nearly three in 10 US adults (31%) reported having read an e-book in the past year, up from 17% in 2011.
The startup Everand, which offers a marketplace for e-books and audiobooks, also recently bought the book aggregator that created the social app Fable to provide the same integration – without the hardware. (Perhaps Kobo could be eyeing StoryGraph for its M&A in the future?)
The new Kobo-StoryGraph integration requires no subscription, although the StoryGraph app offers a $5 per month Plus subscription that adds in-depth analytics, filters, custom charts, and comparison tools.
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