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)
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@read.ramram.ink
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.
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.
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.
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.
