Kobo finally mimics one of the Kindle’s biggest ecosystem advantages

Goodreads integration has long been one of the Kindle’s underappreciated ecosystem benefits. Meanwhile, Kobo users are mostly stuck with manually updating third-party reading trackers or relying on useless solutions. That may soon change thanks to Kobo’s recently announced partnership with Storygraph.

Starting in June, Kobo users will be able to connect their Kobo devices to the StoryGraph platform. Recently opened books will automatically appear on users’ “Currently Reading” shelves, and reading progress percentages will sync between the Kobo and Storygraph platforms. Similarly, finishing a title on the Kobo will automatically mark it as “read” in StoryGraph, and the star rating will sync as well. If users want more fine-grained control they will be able to manually edit entries within Storygraph. The new integration will support all Kobo account-based content, including both ebooks and audiobooks.

For Kobo users, this is a very worthwhile quality of life upgrade and has been requested reddit threads For years. Many consider automatic tracking to be one of the few remaining ecosystem benefits of the Kindle. This move looks great for Kobo too. While Amazon’s Kindle ecosystem continues to take off, Kobo has consistently offered more flexible but equally well-developed alternatives.

Meanwhile, Storygraph has built a strong reputation for analytics and personalized recommendations. It also offers motivational and community features like reading orders, challenges, and book clubs. Automatic syncing should make all of those features feel more intuitive to Kobo users and help make Kobo’s ecosystem feel even more complete.