Readwise Takes on Amazon’s Kindle and Goodreads with a New App for Book Lovers
Readwise, the company behind the read-it-later app and digital reading companion that syncs your highlights across services, is now challenging Amazon’s e-book empire with its latest app, Readwise Books. The app combines an e-book store with tools to track what you’ve read, much like Amazon’s Goodreads.
The bootstrapped startup describes the new app as “a cross between Kindle and the Goodreads apps,” offering a single place to buy, read, and track books. But Readwise Books aims to deliver more detailed reading stats than simply recording the dates you read a book and whether you finished it. It lets readers visualize richer data such as words read, pace, depth, immersion, and reading sessions.
The new store offers “millions” of e-books from the big five publishers and others, initially in the U.S., with more countries to come. Print books (fulfilled by Bookshop.org’s distributor) and some audiobooks are also available, the company notes.
The launch arrives amid an explosion of new reading apps and book trackers, all hoping to challenge Goodreads by introducing features like book clubs, widgets, improved discovery, goal-setting, better lists and organizational tools, habit-tracking, and more. However, few indie developers have gone so far as to launch an alternative to Amazon’s Kindle e-book store, which remains the industry leader with an 83% share of the market when Kindle+ (formerly Kindle Unlimited) is included in the stats.
Note: This article is based on reporting from TechCrunch. Image credits: Readwise.