Keeping track of the books you’ve read, books you want to add to your personal library’s growing collection, and books that you want to read in the future are important tasks for every reader and book hobbyist. GoodReads has long been the go-to platform for all this and more, but there’s now an alternative website to organize books you’ve read that’s gaining traction: StoryGraph.
At the beginning of 2022, I started making the switch from GoodReads to StoryGraph. In this post, I’ll share tips on how to use StoryGraph to manage your TBR, track your reading goals, and even find new book recommendations.
Update!
If you’re looking for a way to view your complete library in StoryGraph, check out my post on how to see all the books you’ve read in StoryGraph.
How to Add a Book to Your TBR in StoryGraph
Getting started with StoryGraph is pretty easy. You can download the app on your phone or tablet, or set up your account on the website using your computer. Once you’ve created your account, you’ll have the option to migrate your data from GoodReads if you want to switch from GoodReads to StoryGraph.
This feature can be a bit hit or miss, but even if it only imports some of your GoodReads data, it will speed up the process of getting your StoryGraph account up and running.
After you’ve finished setting up your account, you can start adding books to your TBR (To Be Read) pile. Just search any title or author using the search bar:
Then set the status for the book you’re interested in as to read using the dropdown:
StoryGraph will then add the book to your TBR pile. You can find this on the home screen of the app. Tap Search and Filter to view all the books you’ve saved:
From here you can see all the books you’d like to read, making it a great tool for deciding what to read next.
How to Mark a Book as “Read” in StoryGraph
To track which books you’ve read, you simply need to change the status to read using the same dropdown shown above:
If you’re tracking a reading goal or want to be able to see your reading stats for the year, make sure to set the date you read the book as well. Just scroll down and use the dropdowns to set the date, or tap Set to today to use the current date:
Then tap Update to save your reading date. If you ever want to make changes or to include the date you started the book as well as the date you finished it, tap View/edit read history to reveal more settings.
StoryGraph Reviews
Like GoodReads, StoryGraph lets you add reviews for the books you’ve read. These can be nice to look back on if you want to reminisce about your favorite books, but more importantly, they help other readers decide what they want to read next.
To add a review, tap Add review on the book’s page:
StoryGraph asks you several questions about the book, such as how you’d describe its mood, what the pacing is like, if the story is more plot or character driven, and what you thought about the characters:
Then you’ll have the chance to give a star rating (zero to five stars, in quarter-star increments) and write a detailed review with all your thoughts about the book. You can also add a list of the themes, tropes, or topics the book covers:
Make sure to tap Save when you’re done.
StoryGraph Content Warnings
StoryGraph also includes a section for content warnings on the review screen. These help readers who might be sensitive to certain topics avoid books that might be harmful to their mental health, or that they just want don’t want to read:
If you found something in the book you’re reviewing that you think might bother other readers, it’s nice to include that here. Contributing content warnings is part of being a good member of the literary community.
StoryGraph Reading Stats
One of the best features of StoryGraph is the reading stats it provides. You can see your reading habits broken down into detailed charts and graphs, something that GoodReads doesn’t offer.
To view your reading stats, tap the Stats tab (shaped like a pie chart).
You can then change the date range you want to view. By default, you’ll see all your data for the current year.
Then you’ll see charts that show you:
- A breakdown of the moods of the books you’ve read
- A breakdown of the pacing of the books you’ve read
- A comparison of the length of the books you’ve read by page number
- A comparison of the genre of the books you’ve read
- What formats you read in (print, digital, or audio books)
- Your most-read authors
- What languages you read in
- The total number of books and pages you’re read
- Your average star rating and a breakdown of the star ratings you’ve given
The charts are also clickable. You can select a bar, segment, or point to view all the books that fall under that distinction.
Remember, in order for books to be included in your stats, you have to add the date you read them.
Conclusion
If you’re looking for a website to organize books you’ve read and don’t want to use GoodReads, StoryGraph is a great solution. It’s easy to use and provides tons of cool features. I’ve just scratched the surface in this post. There’s a lot more you can do with this app, including participating in reading challenges and tracking your reading goals.
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Molly Tyler
Molly received her B.A. in English in 2016, and her M.F.A. in Creative Writing in 2019. She now works full time as a digital content marketer.
Hi, I have one problem with storygraph: I can’t find all the books I’ve read listed anywhere, like the TBR-pile, you know? I can see in the stats that I’ve read 20, but not which ones and it kind of bothers me… Is there a setting I can change or something?
P.s. I really like your blog 😀
Hi Julie!
You’re right that you can’t see a list of all the books you’ve read in a format similar to the TBR pile.
What you can do is tap or click on different points in your stats to see the specific books for that stat.
For example, if you tap on one of the bars in your star rating graph, you’ll see all the books you’ve given that many stars.
Also, if you have a reading goal set up, right under the progress bar there will be a link that says “# books” with the number of books you’ve read that count toward your goal.
Hopefully this helps! Thanks for the kind words.
Ok, I thought it was just me that couldn’t find my library of books on Storygraph. That pretty much makes it useless for me especially after importing all my books from GR… I’m not a fan of GR but this won’t make good alternative. Such a shame, the graphs and breakdowns were cool.
Hi Robert!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. StoryGraph has improved some of its features recently, including the options for viewing all the books you’ve read throughout time. I wrote a post on how to see your read and owned books in StoryGraph. I hope you’ll check it out!
I loaded all of my Goodreads date to Storygraph last year but I just haven’t used it. I had the same issue Julie asked about. Oddly, Storygraph have made it difficult to do a basic function of book tracking, just finding a list of the books you’ve read. It takes multiple steps to get to your read books and even then they’re still split by year.
I completely understand what you mean! It took me a while to get used to StoryGraph when I switched, and it’s true that there’s not one list where you can see every book you’ve ever read through all time.
If it helps at all, you can see all the books you’ve marked as “owned” by going to your profile. If I remember correctly, GoodReads recently removed that feature from their platform.
How to track your books is, at the end of the day, a really personal decision and everyone has to find what works best for them.
Yea, I came here to see if I could find out how to view a list of my book, so others have the same problem, back to Goodreads I go… such a shame too
How do you log the hours for your hours goal? I have been trying to find this out for a couple of days but can’t seem to find out how to do it.
Hi there!
It sounds like you’re probably participating in a user-created reading challenge. StoryGraph doesn’t have a built-in hours tracking feature, so there’s no way to automatically apply hours read to a challenge the way you can page counts, for example.
However, if you’re using the Currently Reading/Reading Journal feature, you can add notes to your entries to manually log your hours that way.
Hope this helps!
Hello,
I only started using Storygraph a couple of weeks ago. Now I DNFed (did-not-finish) a book for the very first time. I managed to mark it as “did not finish” on Storygraph but now I’m wondering if there is a way to see a list of all my DNFed books on Storygraph, in case I DNF more in the future?
Greetings, Maria 🙂
Hi Maria!
Yes, you can view DNFed books by going to your profile (the little person icon in the bottom right corner of the app). Then look for the Recently Read section and tap View All. There will be a button in the top right corner of the next screen that says DNF books—tap that to see all your DNFed books!
Hey there! Thanks for a very informative article. This may be a bit of a silly question but, is there a way to manually add a book to the Storygraph database, if it does not already exist? I have been looking all over (including the net) to find an answer/ solution – to no avail. Thank you in advace!
Hi Christiana! Yes, you can add new books to the StoryGraph database. Search for any book (doesn’t matter what you enter, you just need to get to the results page). At the top of the search results there will be an Add a Book button. Tap that and you can enter the title and author to import a book. You’ll also see options to add a book to StoryGraph by ISBN or to add the book to the database manually. You’ll need to verify your email address to do the latter.
Hope this helps!
Thanks for the article. I am trying to change some of my imported Goodreads from paperback to audiobook. Is there an easier way to do this than deleting the entire entry and re entering with the audiobook selected?
Hi Deanna! Yes, you can switch to the audiobook format using the “editions” link. Here’s a shortened list of the steps to take:
1. Pull up the book you want to switch from paperback to audiobook in StoryGraph.
2. Next to the publish date, you should see the “editions” link. Click/tap on it.
3. Find the audiobook version of the book. It will say “Format: Audio” in the description. Click/tap on that edition.
4. On the page for the audiobook version, click/tap on the three-dot icon next to the reading status dropdown. There should be an option that appears labeled “switch to this edition.” Click/tap on it.
The book should then be listed using the audiobook format in your StoryGraph library and reading stats. Hope this helps!
Hi, nice article. I was wondering if there is a way to not have a duplicate in the read books section after re-reading the same book.
Hey Lia —
Thanks for pointing that out, I hadn’t noticed it before! I don’t know of a fix for this currently, I would recommend contacting StoryGraph to mention this issue in the hope that they will implement a solution the next time they update the app.