The Best Apps for Booklovers
The Best Apps for Booklovers
If you love books, then it’s a guarantee that a lot of your time spent outside of actual reading will be spent reading book reviews, buying books, and talking about books with fellow bookworms…so what are the best apps to do this?
Read on for my favourite apps that will connect you with fellow readers and your next great page-turner!
For bookworms…
…Who love to track their reading
Cost: Free
Goodreads is the OG bookworm app. As well as a great place to keep track of what you’re reading, it can also help you connect with others who have the same taste in books as you do. You can also follow your favourite authors, and Goodreads will send you notifications if they are doing a book tour or hosting a giveaway.
One of the downsides is that Goodreads doesn’t have any fancy algorithm to help you find books similar to what you like. But the simple layout appeals to me, as well as the option to do a reading challenge each year, whereby you can set yourself a goal to read a certain number of books.
Overall, Goodreads is not a flashy site, and is best suited to readers wanting to keep track of what they’ve read or keep lists of books they want to read.
…Who love audio books
2. Libro.fm
Cost: Starts at $14.99 a month
libro.fm is an audio-book app with a great concept. The sale of each audio book through the app is shared with an independent bookseller. This is a great solution if you prefer your books as audio but still want to support small booksellers. With a catalogue of over 250,000 books, you can be sure that they will have something to suit your taste.
…Who want to save money
3. Overdrive
Cost: Free
New books can be expensive, and many of us are not taking advantage of our local public library. Through the Overdrive app, you can access the catalogues of thousands of libraries worldwide. Borrowing books is a great way to try out new titles or authors without the financial commitment.
…Who want an Instagram just for books
4. Readerly
Cost: Free
Although not yet launched, there has been a lot of exciting hype for this new app. Described as a book delivery platform, it eschews algorithms and menacing 5-star rating systems in favour of matching your tastes with fellow readers, for a more accurate appraisal.
If you frequent Goodreads, you will know that some of their users love to write 500-word essays on each book they read. Readerly wants to appeal more to Instagram-style slides with their favourite quotes or 2 sentence summaries, or “gists” as they call them. The app is colourful and modern, which makes it super appealing to use as well.
….Who want bite-sized reads
Cost: Free
For those who are time-poor or struggle to concentrate, Serial Readers feeds you classic literature daily in 20-minute segments. The simple layout and achievable reading goal can help you to make reading a daily habit. This is especially useful if you’ve been wanting to tackle some heavier classics. Instead of scrolling socials for 20 minutes, why not break into Austen or Dickens?
….Who love reading and writing poetry
6. Poetizer
Cost: Free
This is a beautifully simple app with one specific purpose: sharing your poetry with others and enjoying other people’s poetry. You can follow your favourite poets and see their uploaded poetry in your newsfeed. If you love to write poetry, it is a great way to share your work with others - the way a photographer might on Instagram or Flickr.