I recently discovered Bookwyrm and am really liking it. It’s not quite as full-featured as The Storygraph or Goodreads but it covers all of the most important functionalities and it’s federated which I appreciate. Something that it is missing Vs either The Storygraph or Goodreads at the moment is volume of reviews (ie. Volume of users.) However, your review won’t get lost in the sea so much and I’ve found that it’s been quite easy to find readers with similar interests.
Anyway, who here is using Bookwyrm? What’s your account so we can all follow each other? (Mine is Unfreeze4257@books.theunseen)
While the initiative is very well appreciated, I don’t like using social platforms for the purpose of reading. I used to have a goodreads account but I deleted it and replaced it with an offline app, openreads, which offers basically everything I need to organize my hobby.
I just don’t need most of what online platforms have to offer.
Very fair. I enjoy the social/review sharing aspects of these sites. Plus the install isn’t exclusive to one device since it’s on the web.
Agreed, sort of. I use Bookwyrm but I don’t get the appeal of “social reading”. I don’t discuss books with others because my taste in books is lame, my opinions are usually controversial among book enthusiasts and I would rather not have people looking at what I read. Bookwyrm is also apparently much more expensive to run per user compared to most federated services so I feel bad for costing the instance admin money. But I don’t want to switch to a completely offline or personal instance because I like being able to sync across multiple devices and get book recommendations from the larger instance’s database.
This comment also reminds me that my reading has been paused for several months and I should get back to it.
I’ve been using it for 3 months and enjoy it too. It’s especially nice that you can add new books to the database yourself. In Goodreads you had to join a group, message the admins, and pray to Odin. It’s great that Bookwyrm copies over your Goodreads books and reviews. At the moment I rarely visit the site, only to bulk-post book reviews, check my feed, and see who’s on the discover page. Like my experience with all federated stuff so far, people there are more quiet, private, and reserved, which doesn’t lend super well to a review database. So I still check a book’s reviews on Goodreads before getting it.
I was happy to find an alternative though. Distancing from Amazon is for the best, and to make it easier Goodreads recently went through an awful design change. Everything on the page is bigger, more book data is hidden, and some data disappeared completely. They also refuse to make a dark mode and have a buggy app. Bookwyrm being federated with the ability to boost reviews is nice too.
Yeah it’s pretty clear to me Amazon doesn’t care a ton about the Goodreads experience. I’m pretty sure they mostly use the data for Kindle recommendations stuff, plus the site feeds into Amazon by default for book sales. I have noticed my instance doesn’t have a ton of activity since the discover page hasn’t really changed much. However, I feel the only thing I can do to improve that is contribute myself (I’m sure I’ll grow tired of doing that eventually though.)
You’re bang on about Amazon seeing Goodreads as a utility rather than a social site for users. What’s nice about book reviews is that they help summarize and clarify your own thinking. So even if no one reads it, it’s a net positive. I think many of us value reviews by everyday people over critics and personalities as well.
1000% For me, a good book makes me want to write, and oftentimes bad books make me wanna write too! Reading can be a very solitary activity so just having a place to put your thoughts out there or see the thoughts of others to help you through your thinking is very cathartic. As much as I have resentment for Goodreads now, it has been a place where I have found so many new books through other reviewers - and hopefully Bookwyrm will continue to do that too.
I wasn’t using it before, but I sure am now. This is fantastic. Here is a link for anyone curious.
Mine is @nutcake@bookwyrm.social empty at the moment until I get my goodreads imported. I read fantasy, sci-if, horror and other random stuff that catches my eye.
Here’s mine if anyone wants to follow. I read Japanese light novels, though am looking to read some western fantasy soonish. I tend to leave reviews on a per-volume basis, but it’s hit and miss. My tag is ram@bookrastinating.com
I’ve followed you!
I quit GoodReads back when they sold out to Amazon, and was part of the working group on Google Plus that searched for alternatives to GoodReads (and to Amazon, too). I still haven’t found a solid replacement, but I just signed up to Bookwyrm and am importing my books and reviews right now.
I’m BobQuasit@bookwyrm.social there.
I’m also BobQuasit over on Reddit. If you follow either of the big book-suggestion subreddits, you’ve probably seen my overly-detailed recommendations of older science fiction, fantasy, mystery, children’s and YA books, classics, manga, graphic novels, and humor. I’m hoping to be able to do the same thing on the Fediverse!
Just followed you!
I have just started to look into BookWyrm because of this post. Is there a way to tag or categorized books? I like to separate them by genre or other aspects.
Er…by the way, is it possible to connect a Bookwyrm account to a Lemmy, kbin, or Mastodon account? Is Bookwyrm compatible with the rest of the Fediverse? Or is it a different Fediverse?
I’m also new to this whole Fediverse thing. What I managed to do is:
- Create an account on a Mastodon server
- Create an account on BookWyrm
- Find the BookWyrm account through the Fedilab app, being logged in with the Mastodon account, and follow (searching for username@bookwyrm.social)
- See posts I made on BookWyrm after I followed in the Fedilab app
I have not found a way to search for users Jerboa which I use for Lemmy. And searching through the website, I don’t find my BookWyrm account. I guess it is still early days for some of this stuff in terms of how easy it is to understand and use.
It’s ActivityPub-compatible, which means it’s compatible with the rest of the Mastodon, Pleroma, Lemmy et cetera-fediverse. You can paste a Bookwyrm profile URL into Mastodon and it will appear like a Mastodon account where the book reviews and status updates are the posts.
I’ve been told it is possible! But I don’t know how…
What I would like to see is some sort of platform that matches your ratings of a set of books against others users’ ratings to determine a “correlation score” that you see when you look at ratings/reviews by other users. In this way you could say, “Hey! This reviewer has similar tastes to me, I can probably trust this review”.
@HamsterRage The story Graph has this
I think The Storygraph has this feature and in the premium tier it’s enhanced in some way. Not sure how accurate it is though.
I was just about to create a post about similar topic. I wanted to ask if people use Goodreads or alternatives.
I recently started using Literal.club. I know it’s not federated or anything but I prefer it over the Goodreads. The design is beautiful, UX is good and the community is very welcoming.
Although I may try Bookwyrm. It sounds cool.
Ah yet another alternative to check out (can never have too many accounts 😵💫). I’m loving the variety of options we have now. Maybe I was just ignorant but I feel that a few years back there was nothing else.
True! I was also searching for alternatives. I’m Polish and we have a polish alternative but it’s super clanky and the UI is filled with ads… I found Literaly on ProductHunt and I was flabbergasted by it
There’s also a French alternative called Babelio that I’m aware of and it’s where I go when I’m in the mood to read French. But again, the UI is also pretty outdated (not too many ads though.)
Thanks for making this post, I’ve just created an account on bookwyrm!
My account is: denton@bookwyrm.social
I mostly read queer (romance) books but also like thriller/drama/black mirror-esque (not the shitshow s5 was though) type books
If you like/mainly read queer books please do feel free to drop recs!
Edit: I will say I wasn’t the best at keeping up with adding books I’d read to Goodreads
denton
any relation to the town in Texas? I went to college there.
😂 no I got this name from that village/town in RuneScape where they give you a village name
Just followed!
Thank you for sharing!!! I just hopped over there. I’ve never been on goodreads, but I’ve wanted to try it for a while. I’ll just skip to this instead. I believe I can be found at @giantpacificoctopus@bookwyrm.social
Just followed you!
Dang hadn’t heard of this one! Crazy how many options there are in the fediverse now
I found it yesterday on Fediverse.party which I think has most or all of them. It’s not super clear on the site which ones have much of a community already though.
I’ve signed up recently, currently working my way through Glen Cook’s Black Company, I’m a big fantasy nerd so looking to add people with similar interests! I’ve imported all my goodreads history already, add me over at - AdjunctTavore@bookwyrm.social
Just followed!
I’ve just set up an account now - https://bookrastinating.com/user/dylan - and imported my Goodreads data. Some of the data needs to be cleaned up but I really like it so far! I think I’ll spend the next while cleaning up the data and I’ll be all set!
I didn’t even know that existed, but thank you for sharing!
