Hey y’all! Whether you know and love The Storygraph already, or you haven’t had the pleasure yet, allow me to introduce you to some of my favorite features specifically from the Plus subscription. The site itself is free, and you can do A TON with it from the free level, but adding the Plus subscription is a lot of lovely little bonuses.
If you’re someone who loves data and stats, or has a book journal or spreadsheet with all the nitty gritty details of your reading, or you tag the heck out of ALL of your books — you’re going to love this. 😁
Take a look at the best features of Storygraph Plus that build on the base website, and enter the raffle for a one-year subscription of Storygraph plus!
A quick look at The Storygraph!
The main features of The Storygraph (SG from here on out) that tend to draw people in are the stats and the customized searching by the moods of the book.
The search: mood-readers rejoice, because that’s who SG was made for! (At least, it feels that way). The moods include tags like inspiring, sad, funny, informational, dark, adventurous, and a WHOLE lot more. You can find titles based on these and many other criteria to get to the perfect read to satisfy whatever whim you have! Moods are set by users’ reviews and machine learning, so there’s a good balance of feedback.
The stats: aaaaand here’s where my analytical side fell in love! There are a ton of stats complete with charts and the ability to drill down into the details of each segment. Below you can see my current chart for books I read in 2021 broken down by mood tag, with the “emotional” tag highlighted. If I click on the emotional wedge it shows me a list of all the books included in it. There are so many more stats, like pages read per day, book pace, page length average, genres, format… TONS!
There’s a lot more to love about the site, but those are usually the two highlights for folks new to it.
The highlights of Storygraph Plus!
ALRIGHT, now, if you want to dive in and completely immerse yourself in data and tracking details of your reads, then Plus is a dream come true. I’m grateful I’m able to afford it, both because it’s wonderful to have, but also because I love supporting the tiny team that does all the work on this. Right now it’s $50 USD for a year, or $4.99 USD for a month.
Stats per custom tag & comparing them!
If the data built in to SG doesn’t cover everything you want, you can tag the heck out of all your titles. And if you have SG Plus, you can see the stats for each tag you add!!
I love using this to track personal challenges or notes on my Fast Forward Friday titles to see what my habits are and how many I’ve read, rated on average, etc. I’m going to use this to make a whole post about them, and look at what books tend to draw me in. Apparently, it’s largely emotional / adventurous titles. xD
I can also compare the stats on two tags! I use this for comparing books I find on different ARC sites, like NetGalley versus Booksirens versus Edelweiss to see which sources I rate higher on average or have better options for certain genres and moods.
TBR Up-Next Recommendations
So this is one I found recently and LOVE. I can’t believe I didn’t have this earlier. Basically this feature goes through your TBR list on the site and gives you recommendations from it on what to read next based on different criteria. They give one for a random pick, which one has been on the list the longest, a book similar to what you just finished, ones that work for reading challenges, and a bunch more options!
So if, like me, you have so many books on your TBR that you kind of forget about a lot of them, this is a fabulous way to remind you of some and get you excited to read them again!
EVEN DEEPER STATS
Right, remember how I said the stats are a dream come true? Not only can you check the stats pages for your custom tags, but you can also compare two time periods (like 2020 versus 2021, or this month versus last month, or December from the last two years)!
It has all the same stats you see for one period, but shown side by side or top & bottom for the two selections. (PS – here’s why November of 2020 was a ton of reading for me…)
The deeper stats also let you see you ratings per book for a selected period, based on Moods, Genres, and fiction v. nonfiction. Below is my all-time ratings by mood, which apparently reinforces how much I love learning because “informative” books are my highest rated. 😂 I find this one really fun to look at! It shows me how much I change over time in what I prefer, and sometimes it shows me that what I *think* I like best… isn’t actually the case. xD It’s also almost like a journal for me, because what I read is so based on my circumstances, so if I’m having a tough month I’ll probably read a lot of lighthearted and/or funny titles and rate them highly.
Personalized similar book suggestions
If having the TBR recommendations just aren’t enough, you can just pick a book you love and want more of and get recommendations based directly from that one! The free version of this feature shows books that are generally similar, but Plus takes it a step further by considering your past ratings and preferences of books that you’ve added. That machine learning, baby!
When I compared the standard results to my personalized ones, there were definitely more that I had already added to my TBR (or even read before!) on my custom list. I also noticed the ranking was different for books that are on both based on how much *I* will probably like it, rather than just how generically similar they are. I’ve been super in love with Lore Olympus so I’ll probably be diving into some more mythology based on the recos here. 😊
Got a problem? Yo, they’ll solve it! And quick, too!
This is kind of an under-the-radar thing that you might not notice as much, but I want to give it a shoutout. As a Plus member, when you report an issue on a book like needing a cover or incomplete / incorrect details, your ticket goes to the top of the list to be resolved. I can confirm that it’s usually pretty quick too. Since the folks doing it are worldwide and volunteers, there’s often someone around and looking. Some of my requests have been done in just a few hours, but even at most not more than a day or two.
Control the future!!!!
As I mentioned earlier, the team behind The Storygraph is reallll small. It’s literally 3 people (which you would never guess), and many users are on a first-name basis with the main folks behind it all (Nadia, Rob, Abbie, whassup). This makes it really personal and super responsive to the feedback of the community. Plus subscribers can post and vote on ideas on the Roadmap, which is basically a list of features in progress, coming soon, and being recommended. MANY of them, if not all, are addressed personally by Nadia or Rob as the main developers, so users truly get a conversation and feedback from it.
So basically, even if the Storygraph isn’t precisely what you want it to be right now, you can definitely get your voice heard! 😊
On to the raffle giveaway! I’m gifting a year-long Plus subscription to one person! Enter details below 🙂
How to enter:
- Be following this blog (Hopefully that’s why you’re seeing this already!)
- Like this post
- Comment on this post with your favorite Plus feature OR a feature you’d like to see implemented!
That’s it! The raffle closes at midnight EST on 12/31/21 (add it to your new year’s countdown!). The winner must be able to provide an email address to receive the gift receipt for the subscription. Winner will be selected via a random number generator assigned to each entrant.
Now is the perfect time to take a look as we end one year and start a new one full of reading challenges and fresh goals. So set up your account now and import your Goodreads or Excel sheet data, add me as a friend, and start exploring Storygraph! 🙂
PS – this is not sponsored or affiliated or anything, I just REALLY love The Storygraph and want to share it with other folks ^.^
My Book Joy 
I love the ratings by book type! I just set up an account last week and im definitely going to play more with it.
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Awesome! I love it so much. One thing I’ve noticed though is that the genres I’ve only read one or two books in are skewed a lot since the sample size is so small, so according to the ratings I really love essays for example (because I read one book of them and rated it highly). But the middle ones I read a lot of were more insightful!
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