Fun With Digital & Electronic Reading Journals

Let these tools help you learn more about your reading habits

Hi readers,

In the past two newsletters, I’ve explored how you can track your reading the old-fashioned way and ways to try your hand at creative reading journals. This newsletter will be the final installment focusing on digital and electronic reading journals. There are apps and websites you can use to track your reading, and most of these methods allow you to go back and forth between both, although some features may not be available on both. There are digital reading journals that mimic a paper journal made especially for iPad’s and tablets. There are spreadsheets used to track your reading and provide various stats about the books you’ve read.

This newsletter is not all-inclusive of everything available for tracking; it’s just an overview and enough information for you to explore the ones that interest you the most.

Website and apps

There are many players in this space, some have been around for many years, and others are new to the scene. Each website and app allows for the basics of tracking books read and providing some stats related to those books. Most have some method to use to categorize your books into categories that are meaningful to each reader. Most of the apps allow the user to scan the bar code to add a book to your collection of books. I have used two of these myself and will start using the third one at the beginning of 2022.

• Goodreads - Most readers have heard of and probably used or continue to use Goodreads. Initially created by Otis Chandler and Elizabeth Khuri, they sold it to Amazon in 2013. Over time, it has fallen out of favor with many readers for various reasons: the system being old-fashioned and clunky and because of Amazon itself. I think the best feature of GR is the ability to have as many exclusive and regular shelves as each reader needs to categorize their books in any manner they wish to. I also love the “giveaways,” and I’ve discussed how I use the giveaways in this newsletter. There are many other functions of GR that I don’t use, but I know there are many others that take advantage of GR’s various functions.

• The Storygraph - Billed as the “fully-featured Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads and the all-in-one platform for your bookish needs,” Storygraph began in 2012 as a writing platform and launched in 2019 as a book tracking platform. Users can sort and rate books by many different qualities and tags. Content warnings can be provided for others on books read; buddy reads, reading challenges, custom tags, and lists are at your fingertips. One of the best things that I hear readers praising it about is the ability to rate a book with quarter and half stars, and you can import your data from GR if you want to. I’ve heard that it does NOT allow for shelves as GR does, which may be a problem for some readers. While Storygraph is free to use, there is also Storygraph Plus that will enable extra things such as advanced statistics, unlimited recommendations, and more personalized options and support, all of the extras for a small monthly fee. Here is a link to an interview with the creator Nadia Odunayo to give you more of the history of Storygraph.

• Library Thing - According to its website, it is a cataloging and social website for book lovers. Not only does it allow you to track your books, but you can also track your movies and songs. It appears to function very similar to GR; there are monthly book giveaways, you can import your booklist from GR, and scan books into your account via the mobile app. It doesn’t appear that all the website functions work in the mobile app.

• Reading List Book Tracker app - This is an app-only program to track your reading stored on your device or iCloud that doesn’t require any special account to use. Because of this, there is not a “social” function to the app; it is merely a place to keep track of your books. You can import your books from other programs and enter books manually or scan books into the app. It sounds like the app equivalent of a basic spreadsheet to keep track of your books in. There doesn’t seem to be any bells and whistles; it’s just a place to keep track of what you’ve read and what you want to read next.

• Book Buddy - This app allows for tracking up to 50 books for free; anything more than that, you will need to purchase BookBuddy Pro, a one-time in-app purchase. This app is cloud-based so that you can access your book catalog anywhere you have internet access. It works very much like the Reading List Book Tracker app, except that since it is cloud-based, you can connect with others via the Book Buddy website. I used this app early on before I began using GR. I don’t remember anything remarkable about it, but I do remember that it allowed me to scan all my paper books and organize them in various ways.

Spreadsheets

One of the best things about tracking your reading in a spreadsheet is the amount of data it allows you to track. If you are a statistics lover, setting up your books in a spreadsheet enables you to sort your books based on any column of data you have predefined that is important to you, such as genre, recommendation source, reading tastes, diversity, publisher, and so on. Some of these are free, and others are available for purchase; maybe try out a free one first to see if it is something you would like to do, then upgrade to one of the better ones that track many more data fields.

• Sarah’s Bookshelves - The 2022 Rock Your Reading Tracking Spreadsheet is in its 4th year, and Sarah updates it every year for new stats her readers tell her that are important to them. Her spreadsheet allows you to compare last year’s stats to the current year’s stats and includes updated stats as all the charts update every time you add information to the main spreadsheet. Sarah provides excellent customer service, and she has also done podcast episodes in the past on how to use the tracker. You can purchase at the link above or join her Patreon page at the Superstars level and receive the tracker for free. Even though the spreadsheet is labeled with a “year,” there is no reason that you couldn’t use it for longer than the labeled year. The only reason to purchase next year’s model is to take advantage of the upgraded features.

• BookRiot - BookRiot updates their yearly reading log about this same time every year. The 2022 spreadsheet has not been released yet, but this link will take you to the one for 2021, so you can see what information is available to be tracked. There are stats and charts included based on the information that the spreadsheet allows input on. This spreadsheet also allows you to keep track of the Read Harder Challenge.

• Your Words My Ink - Bianca creates this spreadsheet that I discovered last year and she has upgraded it a little for 2022. In her 2022 Reading Tracker Spreadsheet she provides sheets to track your books read, pages read, series and ARC tracking, along with providing stats related to key metrics. If you want to get an early start on using this one, you can purchase it now for $6, otherwise, it will become free for everyone by the end of the year.

• Reader Voracious - The Ultimate Book Blogger/Reading Spreadsheet Template is designed to track your reading, and if you are a book blogger or bookstagrammer, there are pages to keep track of essential tasks such as ARC publishing dates, a scheduling calendar, and many pages of reading stats. This tracker is free and might be a good one to try out of you need more than just the reading tracker. I don’t see that Kal has created a 2022 version yet, but it looks like there has been a new one each year for the last couple of years. If you are a blogger/bookstagrammer, some other resources on this website might also be helpful to you in those endeavors.

Digital Book Journals

There are digital book journals that you can purchase on Etsy and other places on the internet. I’ve never used a digital journal before, but every year about this same time, I peruse the Etsy pages above, looking for one that I can’t resist, and then talk myself out of trying one of these because I don’t have the time. Some look interesting, and the cost is inexpensive enough to try one or more of them. All of them are designed to work with Goodnotes, Notability, and other PDF annotation apps. Here are a few links I think I might like to try someday.

• Dreamers and Planners - This cute digital shop has a reading journal along with other types of digital journals. The reading journal comes with eighteen detailed sections and twelve-monthly sections, all hyperlinked with eight different paper styles and plenty of pages to track your reading challenges, and books read.

• Amethyst Garnet - As with the previous shop, Amethyst Garnet has many different types of journals along with this reading journal. There are pages to keep detailed notes on 60 books and many other pages to track reading challenges. You can import book covers to pages to show the books you’ve read that mimic GR and also the Kindle app for the iPad.

• Pretty Mess Planning - Most of the digital reading journals I see on Etsy are very similar in design and content, and this one is no exception. I love the sleek look of this journal and the color scheme, and when you look at it, be sure to watch the short video that shows all the different pages. It has pages to track up to 120 books, it is all hyperlinked and has many other pages to track all kinds of book lists, and it comes with stickers and clip art.

• Hello Happy Creative - This is another reading journal similar to the three above. It has room for tracking sixty books, many reading lists, reading challenge pages along with note pages and stickers. I like the look of this one as there’s not a lot of “cutesy” graphics; it is streamlined and clean-looking.

Wow, that’s a lot of different options to keep track of your reading via digital and electronic methods. No one method is suitable for everyone, and a method that works great for one reader may not work as well for another. We are so individual in our reading tastes that it only stands to reason that we are also individual in the methods we use to track our reading. Now that you know more about the myriad of different ways to track your reading, hopefully, one of these methods above or in the first two newsletters will work for you. Any one of these can provide a resource to keep track of your reading and provide bookish joy for years to come.

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I know my limits and what I presently have time for, so I’m not making any changes for the coming year except to begin using Storygraph in 2022 to keep track of my reading. I’ve set up an account, but I will not import my books from GR as all I want to do is keep track of my reading from this point forward. I may do additional newsletters during the coming year about my experience with Storygraph, but in the meantime, I’d love to hear about what you are planning on doing for the coming year to track your reading. Are you going to be making any changes from previous years? Maybe you will begin a new tracking method, or perhaps you will start tracking your reading for the first time. I’d love to hear about this in the comments below.

I’m excited to start the new year with new goals related to my reading. I want to give a fresh look at the various reading challenges. I’ve started many reading challenges in the past and have not completed most of them, which leaves me frustrated. I will be more realistic in reviewing the available challenges for 2022 before choosing one for myself. I’m also going to look at doing a challenge that doesn’t involve reading specific books but helps me create the reading life that I want for myself. You’ll see all of this and more in an upcoming newsletter before year-end about Reading Challenges for 2022. I’ll tell you about some of my mistakes in the past and some of my favorite reading challenges for the coming new year.

I hope you have a great week and accomplish many things from your to-do list; be sure to stop long enough to read a few chapters of a good book, your mind will thank you for it. Happy reading!