I ditched my goodreads account once I learned about bookwyrm as an alternative, I'm liking it so far
this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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Just here to shed some light on BookWyrm, the Fediverse equivalent of Goodreads. I've been doing some more reading lately, and I like to keep track of what I read and also I like reading other's review, suggestions, etc. Now I boycot amazon and others big tech as much as possible, so for me Bookwyrm is the place to be. It's steadily growing I think, but I thought it deserved some more attention, therefor this post. Same goes for BookBrainz and to a lesser extend IA's Openlibrary. OpenLibrary is, among other things, a place where people catalogue book-metadata, and if a book is not on Bookwyrm yet, it can often be imported from OpenLibrary. Problem with OpenLibrary is that the data is often messy and there are a lot of duplicates. That's where BookBrainz comes in, the book-equivalent of MusicBrainz. They're not that big yet, but what they do very well is that they have got very clean data. I feel like BookBrainz has the potential to be the perfect source of data on books, for other apps to use as they please, similar to how MusicBrainz is already functioning. It just needs more contributors, but I'm sure it's steadily growing. I just started doing my part, adding the books I read on all three.
Would love to hear thoughts on these platforms, as well as other platform suggestion if you've got any.
Edit: changed Bookwyrm.social to BookWyrm, since people should pick an instance themselves.
Thanks so much for sharing this Bookwyrm is on my radar to try (currently use storygraph). I've been looking for ways to contribute to the open source community as a non-coder so def going to check out bookbrainz. Freedom of information is one of my biggest passions and this goes hand in hand with those goals as they form the backbone of meaningful archival efforts.
I also use Storygraph and like it well enough. Is there a good reason to switch to Bookwyrm?
I've only started using Storygraph recently (which I also like) but I'd consider a federated alternative. Does anybody know whether its possible to migrate the history from SG to Bookwyrm?
I was just looking into that and found that, apparently, you should be able to migrate your data quite easily. I already did so from Goodreads to Storygraph, and it was easy enough.
I tried bookywrm a year or two back. It was nice that I could import my goodreads history. But something like 70% of my books just weren't in the database.
And I am not just talking kindle exclusive authors. It was (not necessarily one of the books but at the same level) seminal works like Lois Lowry's The Giver.
These days I am checking out Storygraph. Import was very smooth. Not super huge on the excessive amounts of AI but AI generated premises that (theoretically) cater to my own interests seems like a good use of the devil's silicon.
How do I use this? Let's say I would like to find highly reviewed SF detective books. How can I do that?
I never started a goodreads account because amazon, but always wanted one. Signing up.
Calibre integration?
I've been using Bookwyrm since I learnt about it - not long after I joined Mastodon. Migrated my GoodReads history over. @chris@wyrms.de if you want to follow!
I am currently using Storygraph, but I might switch to Hardcover. Their app is really good looking, if a bit slow, and it is very letterboxy, which I like. They too have lists feature which is a lot better than just tags, in my opinion.
I like storygraph a lot but... I have been using it for around 3 years and in that time nothing substantial changed on that website. They still don't have normal author page.
I tried to use Bookwyrm for a while but ended up having to add nearly every single book manually looking up isbn codes finding cover links etc.
Just gave up on it after a while.
EEEEEE WW ccc sss
What don't they understand about consummate Vs?!
Interesting, gonna check out the selfhosted bookwyrm later.
I'm not much interested in sharing book reviews and the like so I will probably stick to https://calibre-ebook.com/ though.
Another alternative on the fediverse is NeoDB. I'm trying that one out for the time being. Its interface is pretty barebones and could use some work, but it's nice because you can track more than books.
Ohhhh this is super interesting. Thanks for sharing.
I've been trying to use both BookWyrm and Storygraph. I prefer Storygraphs UI and they have a larger library of books (it seems). However I would like to mainly use BookWyrm to help with the network effect, as well as to contribute with adding books