Another challenger to the Amazon Kindle-Goodreads book tracking empire has emerged.
On Monday the reading tracker StoryGraph partnered with Rakuten’s Knotthe maker of a more open e-reader (and Kindle alternative), which allows book lovers to automatically track their reading habits.
The integration was first was announced in May and is now live for all Kobo account-based content.
This makes Kobo the first e-reader to integrate with StoryGraph’s book community platform and serves as another way to chip away at Amazon’s dominance of the digital book market. Amazon has traditionally managed to retain readers by offering low prices on books and e-books and combining it with a strong online reading community and social network, Goodreads.
While many competitors to Goodreads have emerged over the years, few have been able to create a consistent footprint because they lacked the ability to integrate with customers’ e-reading devices the way Goodreads does with Kindle devices.
The StoryGraph-Kobo integration changes this, as it will now automatically sync a user’s reading progress with their StoryGraph account. This means that when you finish a book on your Kobo eReader, it will automatically be marked as “Read” in 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’s apps.
Book trackers like StoryGraph are popular because they offer an easy way for people to keep track of their reading history and favorite books, and they offer ways to discover recommendations based on what others are reading. As StoryGraph’s name suggests, its analytics tend to go deeper, offering readers detailed graphs about their reading moods, pacing, and more to improve reading habits.
It also offers an online community where you can take part in reading challenges and join book clubs while staying motivated to read by earning “streaks”. (Normally, we don’t like addictive gaming measures in social apps, but to encourage reading, we’ll make an exception.)
Founded by Black British engineer Nadia Odunayo and CTO Rob Frelow in 2019, StoryGraph started as a side project and received no external funding. It has since grown into a community of over 5 million readers. Kobo’s integration will now put the app in front of the e-reader maker’s 12 million users in 190 countries.
Kobo and StoryGraph aren’t the only ones benefiting from the cultural resurgence of reading, driven by online communities like #booktok and reading apps. According to Pew Research, about three in 10 US adults (31%) reported reading an e-book in the past year, up from 17% in 2011.
Startup Everand, which offers a marketplace for e-books and audiobooks, also recently bought community digital book app maker Fable to offer a similar integration — without the hardware. (Perhaps Kobo could be eyeing StoryGraph for its own M&A in the future?)
The new Kobo-StoryGraph integration doesn’t require a subscription, though the StoryGraph app offers a $5-a-month Plus subscription that adds deeper statistics, filters, custom graphs, and comparison tools.
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