The BEST Goodreads Competitor (That You Probably Haven’t Heard Of)

Do you love books? Do you want to tell the world about the books you’re reading? Do you want research books that your friends think you’ll love?
… and do you want to do that without giving money to the evil bald man that owns everything? I’m talking about Jeff Bezos, corporate billionaire overlord who owns, among other things: Amazon, Kindle, Audible and Goodreads.
Well, we’ve found an amazing Goodreads alternative, and we love it so much we made a video about it! This is not a sponsored video, we’re just mega nerds who really dig this app. Go check out ‪@hardcoverapp‬ if you want! Or don't, whatever.
Find it here: hardcover.app/
And find us and follow us!
- Ross hardcover.app/@rosshardy
- Laura hardcover.app/@ljmartin
===
Ross & Laura are a couple of internet nerds with over 20 years combined experience in eCommerce and Retail, and a shared passion for quality fantasy and science fiction.
📚 Our bookshop: hardysbooks.co.uk
📷 Instagram: / hardysbooks
🎶 TikTok: / hardysbooks
🎧 Tome Raiders (our podcast): tomeraiders.co.uk

[@hardcoverapp]

Woh, thanks so much for the kind words! We've had a blast building out Hardcover to be the social network for readers that we've already wanted. It's slowly starting to pay off more as more cool people like yourself join. :) - Adam

[@hardysbooks]

Our pleasure! Thanks for the awesome app!

[@passwordyeah729]

It's always nice to see devs of cool websites/tools respond to videos like these. Thank you for making Hardcover 🏩

[@LavenderLydia]

I love how you commented on this video but didn't answer the question he asked you to lol

[@dragontears]

Yeah I'm a StoryGraph person. I'm generally glad for the lack of social media aspect. I joined a book group a few weeks ago, and read a book with a few other people and you can comment on it and basically a little forum can develop, and that's fun. But mostly what attracts me to Goodreads competitors is less Amazon and lite on the social media-ness. But still! Looking into this.

[@jsxtn83]

To change editions, go back to the Read button and go to the Date Read. There, you can select both Physical / Audiobook / Ebook and the exact edition of each type (if we have multiple editions for that type).

[@Igobler-ho1bz]

Doesn't work for me. The option is there but it just doesn't change it no matter what. I tried editing a previously added date, didn't work. I tried deleted every date and doing a new entry, didn't work. I tried completely removing the book and doing everything from the beginning, didn't work. I can change the date which means that the save button works, but the cover stays the same no matter what edition i choose. Annoying!

[@vrindam1247]

Audiobook percentages does appear on the storygraph as well. However, the social media aspect is missing there for those who want that.

[@dragontears]

Have you done a readalong yet? You end up doing like a semipublic forum, basically. They're kind of fun where you can start questions and answer them inside the group, which anyone reading that book inside the time-period can join. It's not modern social media social but I like it more because of that, actually. Throwback social media.

[@cornixregina]

There are read-alongs and buddy reads now. The only thing I miss is the inability to see what books I have in common with other users.

[@marcelberes469]

I'm a Storygraph user, but this looks pretty interesting. Will keep an eye on it.

[@mariaeulaliadejuangil1712]

I use Story Graph and I'm pretty happy with it but man this looks good I'm gonna have to give it a go I also kinda feel like moving platforms is like moving houses almost? You're moving your whole library in a way, it feels so daunting haha

[@hardysbooks]

We moved house recently, definitely know what you mean

[@tracythomas132]

Importing your book list is easy. I did it from Goodreads to Hardcover with very little problem.

[@ladymairreads]

I’m liking hardcover. I’m hoping it’ll have more people behind it as I understand StoryGraph only has 1 woman. But now I just have to remember to update them all!

[@hardysbooks]

I like StoryGraph, the Up Next feature is really useful. Hardcover just has the leg up on UI design for me.

[@MalaysianSWcollector]

Thanks for this! And thanks to YT's algorithim for bringing this to my feed! My main complaint about Goodreads is that it is not phone-friendly. I mean, seriously?!

[@KamoheloM___]

Fell in love with Fable becoming goodreads and Letterboxed all in one. So will be trying this too.

[@niki.cunningham]

Love finding apps like this, driven by small teams that truly care. Thanks for the recomendation.

[@sillygo0oser]

*sighs* alright I will try _another_ book tracking social media (My current fav is Fable, it’s like old instagram, but for book tracking and now tv shows added too)

[@esjo04]

I use Fable too but sadly it’s still not perfect… I don’t think there’ll ever be a perfect book tracking app tho but I hope to one day find it!

[@NoxDineen]

Perfect, thank you! Kobo + Hardcover makes me a happy lady. Amazon is inescapable to a degree, but any way to avoid them is welcome.

[@grsdv]

Thanks for the shout out, it looks quite good to be honest. I'm going to give it a go, been looking for a decent Goodreads alternative for a while.

[@readingwithrebeccanicole]

The audiobook % calculator is a game changer! I'm excited about playing around on this app some more

[@JessicasLibraryCard]

Thank you for the tip- I'm always looking for Goodreads alternatives!

[@MegaWhoppingCosmicBookwyrm]

Always excited to see a new app for tracking books! I use several and like different features better about each one than others. I can’t seem to find one that does everything the way I want all in one place. But sounds like hardcover might be on its way to being exactly that! I’ll definitely be downloading it and checking it out.

[@greysonrome8727]

You can track minutes and hours on Audiobooks on Storygraph too, but Hardcover doing it for you without doing the math sounds cool. Storygraph does have DNF shelf by default too.

[@BlackHand531]

I've switched fully to Story graph years ago.

[@hardysbooks]

Also a strong option!

[@burnt-croissants]

this seems promising! i’m also quite liking the ease of use, pretty ui, lovely community and frequent updates of fable!

[@chrismantonuk]

Thanks I’ll check it out, GoodReads is just about usable…. but not exactly a modern or pleasant UX. Hardcover looks great, but TBH you had me at “half stars” 🤩 Nice video too, your room looks cosy and the cat is cute!

[@BeersBeDragons]

SOLD, TO THE WOMAN WITH THE MONKEY!! Thank you for the rec!

[@David-sg1yi]

This looks really good. I've just started with audio books and that you can update those easily is a big draw for me.

[@Show985]

On the API subject, I love the idea of automating something I’ve been doing manually to reward myself for finish books. I allocate some money for hobbies or random stuff I don’t need, with an API I could connect it with my banking app and have it done hassle free

[@vajs6312]

The most infuriating thing that’s no longer possible on Goodreads for me is the option to add a new book/edition of a book. Although I also read in English, for someone from a small country like Croatia, every time a new book in my native language comes out I have to wait years for it to be indexed into Goidreads, where before I would just index it myself. If Hardcover or any other Goodreads competitor offers that option + if I could simply transfer all of my read books from Goodreads, I’d make the switch instantly.

[@nyxian_grid]

I don't know about Hardcover, but Storygraph allows you to import the data from Goodreads an explains how to do it. It's not perfect, but it's close.

[@pettyella6607]

Storygraph makes it very easy! I'm also from another country and it was a very important feature for me to have. You can also suggest corrections in other editions, so if there is a Croatian book there, for example, but the pages are not quite right you can send a ticket and say the correct number of pages and things like that. I don't know about Hardcover tho.

[@vajs6312]

Thank you both :) I’ll check it out.

[@MarisaAndChew]

Storygraph you can do this. Or if you're a Goodreads librarian unless they've changed that as well...

[@hardysbooks]

I can add editions on Hardcover, though I am a Librarian, so I don't know what non-Librarians can do. StoryGraph is also great, for what it's worth.

[@The_Open_Book]

That's great, I hope they continue to develop and flourish :) Goodreads needs to step up or get left behind

[@anotherbibliophilereads]

I’m a fan of LibraryThing but I’ll give Hardcover a test drive. ❤🐱

[@anao9765]

OHHHH OHH! This is amazing! Will be making the switch

[@YellowChick-rp1ef]

First off the app is really cute.... Starting to get really fond of it ❤

[@dixiechick6652]

Thanks I’ve been looking for an app just like this

[@SamHarrison2099]

Me, in the middle of typing a comment about how half stars are for equivocators, being called out directly by name 😮

[@SamHarrison2099]

Laura and her mug giving real Son of Man vibes

[@hardysbooks]

I don’t know what this means so I’m choosing to take it as a compliment

[@SamHarrison2099]

@@hardysbooks you know that painting of the man with the apple in front of his face

[@hardysbooks]

Ooooooooh

[@jonathan.palfrey]

@@hardysbooks What I see here is: Ooooooooh Translate to English

[@kyrilson71]

I really like this!! I’m switching over for a while, see how it goes.

[@johnthebiker300]

Totally agree re the DNF finish option

[@the_fools_tale]

I was sold on shiny. Not sure about the Baldacci comparison haha

[@Skillet48]

Love the video! New sub 😁

[@TheGerbita]

Thank you! I’ll give Hardcover a chance.

[@cubegirl97]

I just switched to Fable and I am enjoying it I will say though the option with the audiobooks is super nice

[@talking_to_trees]

Thank you for this! Definitely going to look into it. Like you, I am also all Amazon-ed-out! I don't know why this place is allowed to be so big because, overall, it just does not like people very much. Not its hard-working staff and not its loyal consumers. Anyways; your down sides are actually not things that would bother me, but let me see...

[@jsxtn83]

Read dates are a known issue, btw - and actually is a problem in the Goodreads export file itself. :(

[@hardcoverapp]

Yeah, this is an annoying one. The export doesn't contain "date started reading". If books in a status of "read" don't have a "date read", we've gone back and forth on when to set the date read in that case. Should it be the date you clicked "read"? That's what we've gone with, but that's not always true (marking a book you read years ago as read for example). We have a few ideas to improve this though!

[@hardysbooks]

I should have figured it was GR's fault :(

[@RobertMcGovernTarasis]

The API is appealing as I potentially can create a plug-in for my blog to pull reading data. Hmm

[@dyogenez]

(founder here) That was the initial reason I started Hardcover! I was showing my reads on my blog and GR deprecated the API. That almost 4 years ago now and they still haven't announced a new API.

[@RobertMcGovernTarasis]

@@dyogenez hi, and thanks for the unexpected reply. I love that that was your reason for starting Hardcover. Like sure I get that Amazon wants people to go to their site, but API is such a nice value add, its MORE likely to encourage me to use a service. Anyway, I look forward to using Hardcover and exploring. Wishing you all the best & success

[@badfaith4u]

The cat was adorable. 🐈‍⬛

[@rosjackson]

I'm not sold on the AI recommendations, but I welcome lots of different sites for book recommendations. The more the merrier, because if we all read the same things that's bad for literary diversity, and for the midlist.

[@sergeikulenkov]

That's great, thank you! Just created an account after watching the video.

[@jonathan.palfrey]

Following this recommendation, I signed up with Hardcover, and imported all my Goodreads data into it. There is already an issue here caused by Goodreads, which exports only one read date per book. I reread books that I like, so I typically have multiple read dates per book, and they get lost in the transfer. This is not Hardcover’s fault. What bothers me more is that Hardcover is bad at importing my book reviews (hundreds of them): it imports only the most basic character set, and any characters not present on a simple keyboard (such as proper apostrophes or quotation marks) are converted to question marks. Furthermore, it ignores paragraph breaks and converts each review to one long paragraph. The StoryGraph, for example, imports reviews much better than this. I think maybe I’ll wait for Hardcover to fix its import software before I do anything much else with it.

[@dyogenez]

(Founder here) Thanks for bringing this to our attention! I went ahead and deployed a fix for this today. If you (or anyone) reimports their library and selects "Use Uploaded File" for "Override reviews", it'll reset all your reviews to use the correct formatting. The dates read one is tougher, but we do have a plan for that. It'll involve authenticating with Goodreads then using their API to access your data. Unfortunately GR's API is closed, which means we can't get access there. The alternative is crawling the website to get these, which is more difficult and prone to errors.

[@jonathan.palfrey]

@@dyogenez Thanks! It’s very nice to get such prompt attention to problems, as I’ve sometimes experienced with small companies in the past. Large companies, alas, generally ignore any problems their users may have. In this case, I still find some remaining problems, but the situation has been much improved by this fix.

[@jsxtn83]

We also have a Discord server to report problems on, and the team is extremely responsive there. :)

[@hardysbooks]

Love to see this Adam (@dyogenez), incredible response rate (please don't burn yourself out 🙏)

[@Kaladin0622]

Saw you listening to Ashes of man book 5 of suneater and that alone got me to download the app and like the video!

[@hardysbooks]

70% in, shit has hit the fan 🪭💩

[@Kaladin0622]

@@hardysbooks Get readyyyyyyyy 😈😈

[@TheFonzieCommunity]

your wife is pretty without makeup, and this is a great video. i think i'll use gr, and hard cover interchangeably!!

[@tresenpartychef1891]

Great vid - the only issue I have with it right now is that they seem to be using AI generrated artwork for the genre headers.

[@hardysbooks]

Not a fan of that either, but I know the team are AI skeptics, so I imagine that's something they'll probably replace in time.

[@sophiealka3431]

It's like letterboxd for books

[@PQ_497]

I'm trying to get back into reading. I just want an app that's like imdb but for books, specifically for the detailed parental guide section.

[@hardysbooks]

StoryGraph does that pretty well with their Content Warnings-worth checking out if you haven't already!

[@PQ_497]

I haven't but I will now, thank you very much!

[@jsxtn83]

@@hardysbooks Hardcover also has Content Warnings - right in the genre tag section so they're easy to find. :)

[@PQ_497]

Thanks! Does it go into detail about the content? (For example: profanity/ mild/ 4 f bombs)

[@jsxtn83]

@@PQ_497 It is more of a tag based system. It is also based on users or Librarians adding the data. So it would be more like #profanity than profanity / mild / 4 f bombs.

[@mpcoomber]

Hey, I’m currently reading Mad Ship too!

[@bsweeney0430]

Me too! Love Robin Hobb

[@mpcoomber]

@@bsweeney0430 couldn’t agree more! I’m absolutely loving this series

[@r3gulat0r]

i already have goodreads and storygraph, i don't need another one

[@hardysbooks]

That was how I felt too… but here we are 😂

[@suecarol1563]

Does Hard Cover provide a list of the series you have read?

[@hardysbooks]

Yes! It's under Discover > Lab Experiments.

[@Thetrilingualreader]

Is it friendly for books that are not originally english?

[@dyogenez]

(Founder here) We are! But there’s a lot more we want and need to do. We have a concept of a “book” which has many “editions”. Right now we always show the English edition across the site, but allow searching and saving by non-English titles.

[@Thetrilingualreader]

@dyogenez another question. Why cant i access my profile on the app but can on the browser? Thanks

[@gialauren]

UI reminds me of letterboxd!

[@jsxtn83]

That is Adam's intent. :D

[@DarkAkaike]

Well, with no barcode scanner it looses half the functionality for me. That is the reason I started using Goodreads. As for half stars, meh, why not out of ten?

[@hardysbooks]

Gotta use what works for you 🤷‍♂️

[@stanloona000]

I think I'm gonna stay with Storygraph for now. It has pretty much everything Hardcover has so I see no reason to make another change

[@hardysbooks]

You've gotta use what's right for you! If you're happy with StoryGraph, might as well stick with it 🤷‍♂️

[@Hablenator]

StoryGraph is the new Goodreads 👑

[@hardysbooks]

Also a fan of StoryGraph! I just like Hardcover cause it's shiny

[@geographconcept7523]

I have already switched to Storygraph but I'm so put off by their addition of AI features.....and also put off by Hardcover's inclusion of the AI chatbot there :

[@hardysbooks]

Everything's going AI these days isn't it? FWIW I think this is one of the better uses of AI. But human generated recommendations will always be superior.

[@geographconcept7523]

@@hardysbooks it's okay! I think that the environmental needs of AI are so great that it's always unethical to use AI. HOWEVER. the chatbot is really cute

[@StelianDobrescu]

This is a good point! I'm part of the team, so I can tell you our stance that genuine reader interaction is always prioritized. AI is nice, and we've heard a lot of people interacting with Jules who found new books to read. And it's is only limited to that part of the app, unless you deliberately want to use it you can skip out of it completely. So it's going to part of the mix, wherever it can genuinely help with book discovery. We're very careful with that in general, because we do recognize that AI brings up some challenging problems and this kind of discussion definitely helps.

[@dalishrogue3621]

What's wrong with storygraph out of curiosity?

[@hardysbooks]

Nothing wrong with StoryGraph! I'm a fan of theirs too, particularly the mood and pace metrics. I've switched to Hardcover because it does a few things better than StoryGraph: design, development roadmap, and progress tracking for audiobooks. Definitely consider trying both and see which you prefer!

[@timothyburbage]

It's weird seeing you with hair. With all of the hat wearing I had simply assumed you were a soldier in the bald brigade

[@hardysbooks]

Laura's not read yet, nor the world

[@Andrew.Downing]

I don't know if I can trust no-hat Ross!

[@hardysbooks]

This was how I discovered just how much hats had become my brand

[@Scimitar55]

It does look interesting, but too much is on Goodreads. Too little on Hardcover. So many books and editions are missing. What to do.

[@jsxtn83]

Join us and help add the data. Goodreads has more Librarians than we have users so far - so does StoryGraph. And neither is as responsive to users as we are. :)

[@hardysbooks]

I know the struggle, but if you want to build a competitor to a massive business that's been operating for years, gotta start somewhere!

[@monicap8561]

I'm sorry you dnfed GIDEON THE NINTH???????

[@hardysbooks]

Uh oh 😬 Sorry Tamsyn Muir's prose is my kryptonite

[@aaronh.2496]

Daniel green needs to watch this.

[@hardysbooks]

Hey if our humble channel can generate this much love for Hardcover, I'm terrified about Daniel's impact 😂 Let's hope their servers are ready…

[@marthaking6779]

Not owned by Jeff Bezos!👍👍👍

[@jonathan.palfrey]

Thanks, quite interesting. But, Laura, for God’s sake, you don’t need makeup, you look fine without it. I’ve never used makeup in my whole life. OK, I’m a man; but we’re both human, no? If I don’t need it, why the hell should you? I often feel that women look worse with makeup (especially if they have no particular skill in the use of it). It’s a weird social convention that dictates that women should paint their faces while men don’t. I think people should look like people, not like painted dolls. Bah, humbug.

[@hardysbooks]

Only being silly, as is my way Jonathan! I actually very rarely wear any make up at all, even in videos. I just have blonde eyebrows that I like to colour in before I put them out on the internet for public scrutiny! It’s a confidence thing, that’s all

[@jonathan.palfrey]

@@hardysbooks OK, fine. What’s wrong with blonde eyebrows? I’m old, my eyebrows are turning white, that’s not going to be a concern of yours for quite some time yet. 🙂

[@user-xg8ue7wk7z]

Not a fan of goodreads. Less of a fan of (whatever) this (is); calling it an alpha version would not be inaccurate. Hopefully it's alpha because this thing had virtually nothing of interest on it.

[@hardysbooks]

I don’t know, I counted at least 8 things of interest-you know, the things I mentioned in the video