That’s right, dedicated reader. There’s a caller postulation and speechmaking tracking app connected the literate block: Bookworm Reads. Need to marque definite you’re not purchasing the aforesaid publication for a 2nd oregon 3rd time? Love speechmaking challenges and seeing what your friends are reading? Then you’re astir apt already utilizing an app similar Bookworm Reads. After a mates months of utilizing it myself and having immoderate friends usage it, it’s clip to springiness it a afloat review.
I’ll beryllium comparing Bookworm Reads to Goodreads, of course, and to The StoryGraph, 2 of the bigger rival retired determination for this segment. Let’s get into it.
Getting Started with Bookworm Reads
Signing up for Bookworm Reads is simply a reasonably straightforward affair. Basic information, username, password, the mean stuff. Oh, and you get to outfit your bookworm. Yep, arsenic you navigate the tract oregon you’re your personalized bookworm volition beryllium with you each the time. Don’t worry, you tin alteration the worm’s apparel astatine immoderate time, including with caller worldly you earn.
Once you’re in, it’s clip to physique your library. The website has a useful importer diagnostic if you’re already utilizing a postulation tracker. Just export your room from Goodreads, The Storygraph, oregon wherever, and import it into Bookworm Reads. This is 1 of the fewer tasks that you cannot execute connected the app. When I did this, 1442 of my books successfully imported, and 125 didn’t.
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Fortunately, Amelia, the app’s creator, re-ran the import, and lone 21 were missing afterward. I checked with Amelia, and she assured maine that she does this with each accounts, not conscionable for maine since I’m penning this review. Kudos to Bookworm Reads for perfectly recreating each of my Goodreads shelves, too.
The Website
The beige oversea of Goodreads mightiness beryllium the clunkiest website ever. Yes, it’s loaded with a metric ton of features, but the tract has needed a redesign for astir a decade. The Storygraph is clean, professional, and slick with its black-and-white design. Bookworm Reads is, successful a word, adorable. Look astatine the colors, a rainbow of pastels. The UI is cleanable and slick similar The Storygraph, but that colour palette is inviting and fun. And you person your worm to formal up. Goodreads doesn’t person a worm.
The main leafage shows your library, “wormy updates,” and a hunt bar. Also featured is the existent assemblage speechmaking challenge. Bookworm Bloom is the existent challenge, and each idiosyncratic tin take however galore books they privation to read, without adjacent sharing that number. You triumph the challenge, you get a caller accessory for your worm.
The website is simply a spot buggy close now, however. Searching for books oregon clicking connected them often leads maine to mistake pages. If you adhd a publication to your postulation oregon springiness a publication a review, it takes immoderate clip earlier these changes are reflected connected the site. I property this to the tiny size of their operation, and anticipation they tin physique up and enactment retired these bugs.
The App
Let’s look it, fixed the cute worm and pastel interface, Bookworm Reads isn’t truly aimed astatine idiosyncratic similar me, a 40-something dude who writes a batch and is connected his machine much than his phone. This truly shows since the app is simply a superior acquisition to the website. The cute origin is afloat contiguous connected the app, but the layout of the UI is cleaner. Scroll done your and your friends’ updates, entree and update your libraries, search, and articulation the assemblage challenge.
The bugs are inactive here, though. A person of excavation said it took aggregate tries to alteration the work presumption of immoderate of her books. At the clip of this writing, the full app crashes each clip I pat the worm successful the precocious left. While I didn’t tally into the hunt issues I had connected the website, galore of the books pulled up without covers and took clip to correctly adhd to my library.
Going Pro
Bookworm Reads is free, but it besides offers a Bookworm Pro option. For $5 per period oregon $50 per year, you get the pursuing perks:
Picking a bestie for your worm Priority support Multi-worm collaborative shelves (coming soon)Bookworm Reads takes a hard stance against each things Amazon, truthful they besides boast: “Invest successful an autarkic publication assemblage that’s by and for readers, anti-Amazon, and member-owned (sic).” Most of these look similar novelties astatine this point, though precedence enactment is utile with the bugs successful their system. They besides committedness much perks coming soon.
The Verdict
While prone to bugs, Bookworm Reads offers a increasing assemblage and a bully strategy for tracking your books. The colour palette and wide plan is precise cute, which tin beryllium off-putting for immoderate people, but others volition drawback clasp of it and clasp connected for beloved life. Bookworm Reads doesn’t person the micro-details that Goodreads has oregon the writer tools. It doesn’t person the contented warnings oregon the adjuvant labels oregon moods that The StoryGraph provides.
If you conscionable privation to way your publication speechmaking and collection, articulation speechmaking challenges, and work with friends, however, Bookworm Reads is conscionable what you’re looking for, peculiarly if you adore each things cute.
Seriously, the cute origin is huge. Don’t underestimate the cute.