Eunice

For those who aren't familiar with them, The StoryGraph and Goodreads are what are called by Wikipedia, social book cataloging platforms. They are websites where readers can track the books they read, and interact to a greater or lesser degree with other readers. Both allow for posting public reviews, or for simply privately tracking what you read, for your personal benefit. They are not the only two sites that do this, but they are the only two I've used.

I decided at the start of 2026 to open a free account over at The StoryGraph (TSG), and try it out for a while as a possible replacement for Goodreads (GR). I'll share in this post what I've found so far, as far as pros and cons, and compare the two a little bit. Mind you, I've only been at TSG for a few months, while I was at GR for some 14 years, 12 of those more active years. So, one is very familiar, and the other is all new and I'm still learning my way around it. All of this is as yet inconclusive and not comprehensive. I'm just sharing what I've found so far. I intend to keep both accounts open for at least a year. Next January, I'll decide whether to continue with one or both. This might end up being a multi-part series of posts, because once I've posted this I may very well come up with more pros and cons to share later. And I'm still learning about the newer site, so, yeah, learning curve.

Please note, I realize these things are not important in the same ways to others as they are to me. These are just my thoughts, my pros and cons. Yours may be entirely different. But if you haven't experienced one or the other of these sites, here are some (just some) of their differences. Maybe this will provide helpful information or save you some time.
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The StoryGraph pros and cons

TSG Con: Not very interactive

The StoryGraph does have features allowing for buddy and group reads, but I've never been into either, really. I tried reading groups at GR for a while and found that I'm an independent as well as moody reader, and that made it hard to commit to a group read. This is the problem I have with library books with a due date, too. I can think, oh I'd like to read that, but once the book is there, available to read, especially if it was on hold for a while, I might be in the middle of something else, or in the mood for a different flavor of reading. So buddy and groups reads are not for me, most of the time.

I haven't yet seen a way to simply comment on someone's review and have a tiny conversation about the book, at TSG. There's a heart button, but it's hard to even find people there I might want to add as friends. I suppose this is nice for people who join along with a group of real-world friends, or who have built up a friends list there by joining groups. But it seems a lot easier to build a group of like-minded readers as friends on GR. TSG is not really social media, at least not for me so far. GR is, although it doesn't have to be, because you can keep your account private if you wish.

TSG Con: Needing to add books to the system

I don't typically read a lot of bestsellers, or popular fiction. In fact, I read a lot of more obscure books, including lots of self-published books. Because self-publishers tend to gravitate towards Amazon (hereafter shown as Am**on), and Am**on owns GR, all those self-published books are usually already listed at GR. I'm finding that I frequently have to add a book I just read into the system, at TSG, in order to review it or add my reading data for it. That's an extra step that I'm inclined to put off, rather than do a quick little update as soon as I finish. I have started checking there as soon as I start reading a book, to see if it's listed and then add it if needed, or at least be aware in advance that I'll have to do that.

TSG Pro: Updates and tracking

You can track your progress through a book very easily at TSG, and do so either by pages or percent. Percent usually makes more sense to me, reading ebooks. I like this feature a lot. It's also easy to track rereads there, and I like the way that feature works.

TSG Pro: Reading journal

The StoryGraph has a completely private reading journal you can use, separate from the rating and review function, to take notes as you read, and it's not limited, as far as I can tell, by word count as the private notes are at GR. I've sometimes wanted to leave myself more elaborate notes about a book, at GR, but had to abbreviate or be cryptic about it, and that's a con there, for sure. If you don't care about interacting with other readers, and you do want a private online reading journal and place to track your reading, TSG seems the perfect place to do that.

TSG Pro nor Con: Tags, not shelves

It's hard to say this is a pro or con, because it's just different. I got accustomed to the shelf system at GR, and I use it extensively in a personalized way. But at TSG one uses tags instead. Tags feel familiar to anyone who has blogged or used social media, and I like that some tags at TSG are auto-generated, so you don't even have to add any if you don't want to, but will still be able to use them to find your books. And because of the reading journal feature, maybe I don't need so many custom shelves anyway. They were a way for me to remember things about a book, primarily in case I wanted to reread, review, or recommend it. But I kind of miss the visual display of shelves on GR that shows how many books I have in each shelf. This is probably more a problem of my unfamiliarity and getting used to something new more than a pro or con. Both work, and nothing is missing at either site, in this respect. It's just different.

Goodreads pros and cons

GR Con: Am**on

GR is owned by Am**on. Okay, yeah, a lot of us hate Am**on, for more reasons than I'll go into here. Not only politically, but commercially, and in how they treat workers, they seem sometimes like the Devil incorporated. That's been true to some extent since Am**on first existed and presented a threat to independent bookstores. I used to belong to an email list-serve called DorothyL, which was a forum for people who either loved reading mysteries or wrote mysteries, or both. It seemed to be PC there to hate Am**on. But then Am**on started helping people self-publish, so that changed a little. Very little. In recent years, there seem to be many more reasons to hate it. I have a problem more recently with their ownership of ebooks I've purchased. I mean, huh? I'm still somewhat addicted to shopping there, because low income here and low prices and convenience there. But I want to get away from it at least a little, as much as I reasonably can. Monster corporations are not our friend. Unless you have little money and need low prices, and then, just like with Walmart, it's complicated. But this is the main reason I'm looking at other e-readers, and decided to try TSG.

GR Con: Site updates

What site updates? GR hasn't updated their software much since Am**on has owned it. It's still its clunky, slow old self. TSG is new and shiny. And it seems to actually get updated.

GR Pro: Social interaction

One thing I have liked about GR for years now, is that I can gear my following and friend adding there to what I read. I've learned a few tricks there to figure out how to find people, through reviews by others of books I read, and through the member compare feature, so I find reading friends I have something in common with, and get book recommendations that suit me (and they get the same from me), and we sometimes discuss particular books in the review comments. I'm not that social a person, being rather introverted, but this I like. It's just enough socialization around books, while remaining independent in my reading, to suit me. I haven't found ways to do that at TSG yet. I don't know if it's possible. It seems much more geared toward privacy and personal tracking of one's own reading, unless you want to do structured buddy or group reads.

There is a downside to this capability at GR, in that if you let it this puts you in a kind of reading silo, where you only see new books in one or two genres, reviewed by friends. I watch for that, and try to add some other flavors of readers into my friends mix, and that works for me. I also, of course, have real-world friends there, and they aren't moving over to TSG, so that's a drawback as well. (I've had the same problem in the past, trying to escape Facebook, when all my friends and family seem to want to stay there.)

GR Pro: Review visibility

Reader reviews are important to me, and this is a critical part of that social media aspect of GR. I see all my friends' reviews. I could see every new review on GR if I want, in my feed, every day. I mostly just choose to see my friends' reviews, but it's up front and visible in my feed, the first thing I see, and I can read what they thought of the books they read. Most of my friends there, and I, review nearly every book we read. A few years ago, I stopped reviewing books I give 3 or less stars, mainly because I got tired of writing negative reviews. But if I like it a lot, I review it. I'm not seeing reviews on TSG. I have to go looking for them, and I find there aren't that many. Maybe because it's a relatively new site? I don't know, but I miss that. I also find that reviewers on GR are a little tougher, more particular, than reviews on Am**on, so I feel as if I get more honest reviews at GR. I haven't done that comparison with TSG reviews, because I've seen very few.

Reviews help me decide what to read, and the more honest the better. It's important to me to know the drawbacks to a book, even if I don't mind what others consider negative. It helps me not waste time (or money) reading books I won't like. I've even seen warnings on GR about plagiarism, so it seems important. Even if I don't wind up agreeing with a review, every review helps.

I suspect that the reviews on GR help Am**on sell books, so that's why they're an upfront feature. At TSG I feel as if they're catering more to private enjoyment of books, and there's nothing wrong with that. It just might not turn out to be everything I'm looking for. If it isn't, I might stay there anyway for the features I like. As I said above, I haven't decided yet. I'll give it at least a year to decide.

GR Pro: Ease of use with a Kindle (hereafter Kin*le)

GR's ease of use with a Kin*le is what got me to be more active at GR in the first place. I was a member there for a couple of years before I got my Kin*le, and even then it took me a while to figure this out, but it's incredibly easy to send a book rating and add the book to your shelves, from your Kin*le, as you finish reading a book. It's a built-in feature of the e-reader and Kin*le ebooks, that interaction with Goodreads. I finish reading, and up pops a window asking me to rate the book. I do later have to go to the website to add more detail to the book listing, but that provides the impetus, the starting point, to adding the books I read to GR.

I guess you could say it's one more reason to hate Am**on for getting people hooked on it. But it has been a convenience.

Now that I'm accustomed to habitually using GR and TSG, this doesn't seem as necessary. Now I automatically, out of habit, think about tracking and reviewing what I read. But it helped me build that habit. Until I started doing that, my updates of Goodreads were sporadic at best, and I had no record of my reading, and maybe not even quite as much incentive to read more. I don't know, because I have no record of how much I read before that. But I read a lot now, and it's all tracked by me. For anyone who is new to using an online book tracking program, this could be a definite pro for GR and not for any other site. If they read using a Kin*le.

However, I don't think this is a reason, in and of itself, to stay only with GR, or with Kin*le or with Am**on. Habits can be established in other ways. You could add a note at the end of a book at the time you start reading, to remind you to update TSG or whatever other program you use, when you finish. After some time of doing this consistently, you will remember. It's just a habit, not proprietary to Am**on.

In closing, I know I'll think of more pros and cons, so this may be updated later, or I may add another post about it.

My apologies for the word replacements if they seem cryptic or confusing. It's just that I've spent a lot of money on you-know-who's products through the years, and I refuse to provide free advertising for them now. Not that my little blog post matters, but....

On The StoryGraph I am @wildviolets_bk
On Goodreads I am Barbara K.

Also posted at my blog, Wild Violets, https://wildviolets2.wordpress.com/2026/05/08/trying-out-the-storygraph-vs-goodreads/