Pirate and donate directly to author
Cut out the middlemen
this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2025
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Goodreads is like Yelp for books.
Find a book written by a right wing author. Hundreds of ratings, and the reviews don't even talk about the book beyond the description. Lots of pesudo-science and bad faith arguments.
I got scammed by a few books. And worse, call out the issues with the books and your review gets shadow banned. Amazon doesn't have a urgency to remove these fake reviews because it'll affect sales.
I love BookWyrm so much. It's my favourite social media.
You have to find and follow a good number of people before your feed really has the right feel, but once you dial that in it's the perfect cozy cadence.
Is that the better one? IDK I don't use good reads much and just want a simple good intentioned replacement
I don't know. I've never used goodreads, but I've seen plenty of people port over their reviews from there. I don't think it's an exact replacement, but I like it. I post my thoughts and reviews on books and books I want to read, and comment on other people's thoughts and reviews, and TBRs. For me, that's perfect.
Occasionally, you will find that a book is missing from your Bookwyrm server; finally, this is your chance to show your quality! You can manually add it to the library yourself, for others to refer to.
Here's a guide to switching I found. I'd try it out on its own a bit first to see if it's for you.
Does anyone have a review or thoughts on all these different trackers? I started switching to StoryGraph but new ones keep popping up and I don't want to have to try them all.
(StoryGraph, bookwyrm, hardcover, open reads, library thing, others)
I've looked at Storygraph and Bookwyrm. Storygraph is leaning pretty heavily into AI usage, so take that as you will. I, personally, did not like it so I bounced (I didn't think it was adding anything useful--maybe they've improved it since then.)
Bookwyrm is federated, so you pick an instance you like, etc etc. Bookwyrm's federation means that the same book will be scattered across instances, which makes doing review research a little difficult, but their search function is pretty solid for pulling all the books in, so at least you don't have to work too hard to find what you're looking for. It's also reliant on the community for filling in metadata/adding new books, and I'm kind of shocked at how frequently people don't put in basic metadata, but it's not the end of the world for me.
I do really like the "community" vibe of Bookwyrm. I've even found someone I started following for reviews because their tastes/opinions line up with mine.
Both services have solid import options for moving off Goodreads, but I will say I think Storygraph's is a bit better than Bookwyrm's for that.
EDIT: Also worth mentioning that Storygraph paywalls some features, and Bookwyrm is completely free.
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I wish I'd find the next fiction banger to read to escape into before venturing our wuthering lonely world.
If i want a good foss e-ink tablet or whatayoucallit that i can load any books onto what should i get?
Kobo works great for me, it's basically dragging and dropping ebooks onto the mounted reader !
Buy a second-hand Kindle (or repurpose one that you already own), jailbreak it with WinterBreak, and read whatever you want.
My plan for the next weekend :)
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I don't really use Goodreads much but BookWyrm looks good so I've just switched over.
Adding I use bookwyrm because it's federated and uses activitypub so I can just boost my reviews from mastodon if I want to share them there.
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The most surprisingly good place I have found for ebooks recently is itch.io. Solid platform for indie content.