The issue with tracking Goodreads is that we try to add services that provide data at least on a single-day level — for example, “one workout today” — but with Goodreads tracking, for example, “one book completed today” is disingenuous because you’ve probably been reading that book for weeks! And very few people update their intra-book progress so that’s not really an answer.

I’m not convinced that this will be all that useful for users, but I am happy to be swayed.

What about tracking pages read in a day?

Yes, pages read in a day would be great.

Sure, but as I mentioned there, very few people will actually bother to track and input their number of pages read every day, so it won’t be very useful.

Really? I track my pages read regularly…

@cygnoir interesting! Anecdotally none of my goodreads friends do, and I do it only very irregularly. So you update your reading progress every day you read?

Yes. But I might be an outlier. I’m a librarian and writer. ;)

@cygnoir maybe, but that’s good to know. A goodreads integration would work for you at least! And perhaps others.

at least total pages and reporting would be cool

@joshsharp Dear Josh,

Would it be possible to fetch the API of goodreads when you start reading a book and fetch again when you finished the book? Then you can easily make daily calculations?

Based on those calculations you could again get daily averages and so on?

@oreios we could probably guess at how much you’ve read each day using this method, but I’m not really comfortable doing this because 1) it means we don’t know an average for a particular day until you’ve finished the book, so we have to then update all past days with that data, and it becomes less useful the further into the past that is, and 2) guesses aren’t great - we want to make sure the data we get on your activity is as accurate as possible. We don’t want to give you credit for reading on days you didn’t, for example, as this can have a flow-on effect and skew other correlations.

At this stage I’m still in favour of tracking reading progress by percentage or number of pages read and recorded per day as @cygnoir and @barbedbella propose - it requires more effort, but results in much more accurate data :)

@joshsharp I tend to log my pages read a few times per week, but I would be inclined to do so everyday if it was tracked.

I basically never update Goodreads at all, let alone with my pages read data. But if it was being tracked in Exist, I would make an effort to update more regularly :D

Goodreads’ terms state you can’t use their API for commercial uses without their approval. I’ve applied for approval but got a response saying they don’t let anybody use it commercially. I don’t know if the support person or the terms are wrong, but anyway, we’re unable to do much about this given they’re uninterested in replying further to clarify :|

@joshsharp Can’t you just hook up to your Goodreads “read” queue’s RSS feed? I do that to hook GR up with Beeminder (via IFTTT).

@strickvl to get books read that would work, but not to get progress reading a book, unless that is also included?

@joshsharp nope. they just offer custom RSS feeds for all of your ‘shelves’, so it would only track the total number of books you’re reading

@strickvl that’s not really useful enough data for us on its own unfortunately.

Just want to say that I update my pages read daily and I would love to know how weather, food choices, etc affect how much I read

Diego, you may have missed the comment there among the others but we cannot add goodreads support as it is against their terms to integrate it commercially. Out of our hands I’m afraid.

This is probably a little too late and not very helpful, but having the opportunity to track Goodreads on THIS website would actually encourage me to update my daily pages read progress on a daily basis. Reading more is one of my goals and it’d be really rewarding to see it on Exist! Plus, I bet there are a lot of correlations you could gleam. Reading more when your mood is worse, could indicate pulling back from people. Invaluable information for people with mental illnesses. I recede to books when I’m antisocial. Plus, I read MORE on days that I’m more manic than days I’m depressed because I have more drive. Just a thought!

I’m quite confused. So implementing their API, and since your service is not free, so that’s a commercial use?

That’s right, and they don’t allow commercial use except with explicit permission, which I couldn’t get. (I’m not sure the support person I was in contact with knew much about the API or its terms, but I was unable to talk to someone who did.)

Hiya. I’m just wondering if you’ve approached GoodReads recently about this. I note from your comments that you had approached them in 2015, but I wonder if their policy has changed since then. I am desperate for GoodReads integration (desperate!), especially now you’ve added Pocket integration (when reading, I choose between Pocket and a book). Their API is available, so I’m guessing the only stumbling block is the legal issue of using it for software people pay for? There are other websites/apps using GoodReads API so I’m wondering if you got bad advice when you last approached? E.g. Momento, QuietThyme,

You only really need the “read status” data, since I’m not sure there’s any need for Exist to have access to shelves or anything like that? I’m guessing most of us just want to know how much reading we’re doing.

Incidentally, I saw the tangential thread about perhaps the data not having much value. I update my “currently reading” stats a couple of times a week. I read mostly physical books, but I also have a Kindle and on there is just a case of pressing the “g” symbol to automatically update your reading status to Goodreads. As such, it’s a fairly simple thing to do for gadgety people!

One issue I do foresee if you got the rights to use the API is how you actually track reading. Kindle books, for example, I find easiest to track by “percentage read”, whereas physical books I track per page (although Goodreads converts this to percentages). I guess Exist would have to report something along the lines of “you read 50% of a book today” or similar, as this the only way to report this consistently across mediums?

You’re right, I haven’t asked for a while. Their terms say you’re not allowed use their API for commercial (ie paid) use unless you get permission, so I’m curious whether the other apps are ignoring that, or they’ve started giving out permission again. It’s worth checking, so I will contact them again 🙂

I log my progress many times a day, for myself not for anyone else. I’m not sure how common this is, but those who do log this often would surely be those likely to use a service such as Exist? There are various widgets and pieces of code available from Goodreads, though possibly not fr this specifically. I would lie to think it would be possible to track the pages read in a day

An account is needed to view this properly: https://www.goodreads.com/user/edit?format=html&tab=widgets

Will these be revisited on a regular basis, I know goodreads is available through Zenobase

Goodreads’ terms haven’t changed, so any other commercial service that integrates it is probably in violation of the terms. It is a shame that they have an API and then deny anyone access.

I get where you’re coming from after reading the previous comments. I’ve been using Leio (http://leio.co/) to track my reading progress. It writes to Goodreads, but provides a ton of stats above and beyond. Would love if you could integrate into the app.

Unfortunately, as a standalone iOS app, Leio doesn’t provide an API to access that data, so we can’t use it either.

Even though it’s not something many people would complete daily, tracking books read would be valuable for the annual goal progress and to see seasonally when you read more books. Goodreads or something similar would be ideal, but you could track it with custom tag too.

Would really love to track pages read per session, as well as book title.

Perhaps you could build a portal that allows users to use their own private keys to get their own data into the app. So you wouldn’t be using their api, but rather enabling users to access their own api.

That’s not a terrible idea. It’s a bit clunky to setup, but doable. Might still be violating the terms, though, given that at the end of the day we’re the ones using the API commercially.

I update my progress every time I read. Any chance you guys could reapply (or get clarification on the previous application) for commercial use? Would it be useful at all for Goodreads users to to ping them on this as well?

Goodreads hasn’t changed their status and I doubt they ever will unfortunately. Any commercial app with a GR integration is violating their terms, and we’d rather not.

If you’re looking for an alternative to goodreads, I would recommend story graph.