We’re seeing a mass exodus from X (formerly known as Twitter) as a protest of owner Elon Musk. Former X users are mad that the billionaire buddied up to Donald Trump throughout his reelection campaign and spent roughly $120 million to help get him back into the White House. And there’s another corner of the internet that is experiencing something similar.
Folks are leaving Goodreads, which was purchased by Jeff Bezos’ company Amazon in 2013, for The StoryGraph, a Black woman-owned company. Founder and CEO Nadia Odunayo, who started the book-tracking app as a side project, launched the space in 2019.
Chatter about the app started online and on BookTok, the TikTok community of book lovers, years before the 2024 election. But since the election — when Bezos restricted The Washington Post, which he also owns, from endorsing a presidential candidate, and later congratulated Trump on his win — more and more people say they are protesting Amazon by switching to Odunayo’s app.
The StoryGraph currently has 3 million users, up from 2 million in December 2023. The app had 25,000 sign-ups on Nov. 11 ― 10 times the average daily number, according to The StoryGraph’s newsletter. (That said, it’s still a much smaller reading community than Goodreads, which has 150 million users.)
“Here’s the thing, I never set out to create a Goodreads alternative,” Odunayo told HuffPost.
“And I actually think that helped me, because if I had said ‘I’m going to build a Goodreads alternative,’ one, I might have been intimidated by this... but the other side of it is, it would have been limiting,” she said. “Because if I just tried to build a Goodreads, I just would have looked at Goodreads and been like, ‘OK, what can I do that’s better?’ — and that wouldn’t have been different enough.”
“But to build something independent of Goodreads and just listen to my customers, I feel like I have ended up building an alternative, but it wasn’t just based off of [Goodreads],” she explained. “It was based off of, ‘Where’s the gap in the market?’”
The StoryGraph does indeed address gaps in Goodreads’ product, while also being a necessary space for people interested in social change.
“I think especially after the results of the election, more and more people have just become more conscious about the things that they’re supporting and recognizing that, just as much as our dollars are votes, the apps and things we use are also little micro-votes,” Allie, a BookTok content creator who asked that her last name be withheld to maintain her privacy, told HuffPost.
Many BookTokers call the switch an act of resistance and a way to support platforms that actually deserve it.
“Community and uplifting each other is going to be so vital, even more so, over these next few years, and this is something that so many of us in the BookTok community can do right now,” TikTok user kaitlyninthecity said in a viral video that Odunayo credits for a surge of sign-ups this month.
Want to learn more about the growing app? Here’s what to know:
BookTokers love the StoryGraph app for its user-friendly nature.
“The team at StoryGraph regularly makes updates to improve the user’s experience, and it’s based on user feedback. I don’t know the last time that Goodreads has put any sort of meaningful update, let alone any updates at all,” TikTok user bunnysbooktalk said in a recent video. Glitches and old functionality are common complaints among Goodreads users.
Some say it’s also easier to leave reviews on The StoryGraph.
“The StoryGraph review process is super simple, you can check off a few boxes, you can do a drop down and select things, and it gives a very comprehensive review very quickly,” Allie told HuffPost. “So it’s very accessible and easy to get into — you don’t have to take a ton of time thinking out a super well-thought out review. You can just hop on, do a quick little quiz and you’re good to go.”
Users like that The StoryGraph lets you leave half-star and quarter-star ratings. It also has content and trigger warnings available for each book on the app, which helps readers know what they’re getting into if they want to avoid certain subjects. The content warnings give a heads up about a range of topics, including cancer, animal cruelty, infertility, murder, addiction, death of a parent and more.
It also gives you lots of data about your reading habits.
All over BookTok, users of The StoryGraph praise it for the sheer amount of data it provides: your reading moods, the genres of books you like, book characteristics that you don’t like, your reading pace, and your personalized recommendations.
There’s also an option to mark books as “DNF,” or “did not finish.” Another popular feature is the reading journal, where you can take notes on books as you make your way through them.
“I just think it adds an element that is more interesting, and you can understand yourself more by looking at the StoryGraph data,” Allie explained.
Tips for getting started on The StoryGraph
If you’re already a Goodreads user, you can export and upload your data into The StoryGraph with a few clicks so you don’t lose your reading history. When you sign up, you’ll be met with a screen that gives you the option to import this data.
From there, you can set your privacy and community preferences, which control who can follow you and who can send you friend requests. You can also share your book likes and dislikes in a personalized recommendation survey, establish your reading goals, and more.
The StoryGraph is free to use, but there is a paid version, The StoryGraph Plus, that offers extra data and features.
Allie noted that some of the app’s features are still in beta. “Be patient with the company, give them the time to adjust to the volume of people that they have, and be willing to give kind feedback if something is going wrong,” she advised.
Some people argue that it’s easier to see other people’s reviews and comments on Goodreads, Allie said. But she thinks this is a complaint that the makers of the app will address. “It’ll be interesting to see what changes, now that everybody has kind of started coming over to them,” she said.
Indeed, Odunayo confirmed there are big changes coming as soon as January. “I feel like for the last few years, we’ve had the same main problems, and I just really don’t want to go into 2025 with the same key problems,” she said. “So I’m just trying to keep my game face on and focus on that.”
She’s also working on addressing a complaint heard on BookTok by creating more community in the app, like making it easier to find friends and build out your circles “without sacrificing the fact that StoryGraph can be a very private, quiet place.”
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“The high-level message I want people to know is, we’re not done. We’re nowhere near done, and we’re going to keep working to improve this app for readers to make it the best reading app ever,” Odunayo said. “We know we’ve got a lot of work to do, and we’re excited to just keep doing the work.”
