Goodreads, at its most basic, is a website for book lovers to find, read, and rate their books. With a free account, you can track the books you’ve read, your current read, and – most importantly – the books you want to read. As a social platform, you can follow your friends and see what they are reading, write reviews, and comment on those reviews written by others. 

Additionally, the site will help you find books you may want to read with book clubs, lists and book recommendations. 

What is Goodreads?

Goodreads launched in January of 2007 and by 2013 had been acquired by Amazon. The goal is to help people find and share books. You can find new books by searching for titles, authors, topics, and genres. Also, get recommendations based on the books you’ve read, or even browse lists of new releases. 

The site is free to use and you can access your account in two simple ways, through the Goodreads website or the app. Also, thanks to Amazon, Kindle users can rate books and add new books to their shelf straight from their tablet. 

How Goodreads Works?

Goodreads is fairly simple. Once you sign up you will have access to the platform and be prompted to review books you’ve already read and add them to your shelf. This is how Goodreads starts to curate recommendations for your next read. 

Adding books to your shelves is easy. To start, you have  “read,” “currently reading,” or “to-read” bookshelves. Simply enter a title or an author in the search bar located at the top of the page. When your result comes up, there is a green drop-down menu underneath the cover image. From there, you can select which shelf you want to add your book to. 

To see your bookshelves, click the icon “My Books” in the menu bar at the top of your screen. From here, you can write a review, change your star ratings, and add the date you read it. This will correspond to the dedicated page for the book on Goodreads. This dedicated page shows the book’s ratings, a summary, author information, and reviews from the community. 

If you are out of books, you can simply click “Recommendations” on your home page to get recommendations from Goodreads. Similarly, there is a “readers also enjoyed” section of similar books. 

You can also join a community of book lovers by hitting the “Community” tab to find like-minded readers and chime in on book discussions.

Why is Goodreads So Popular?

Now that you know this is the best way to keep track of your books, there are other features that you can enjoy.

Use it as a social platform to keep up with your friends’ booklists. You can join book clubs, giveaways, ask authors questions, and more. You can even get offers to read entire eBooks and excerpts for free. 

Want to start building your booklist right now? Check out our 9 Spectacular Destinations Books to get you started with your first list.

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