Watch out, Amazon: The Kobo eReader now has a Goodreads rival

Another challenger to the Amazon Kindle-Goodreads book-tracking empire has emerged.

The short version

• On Monday, the reading tracker StoryGraph teamed up with Rakuten’s Kobo , the maker of a more open e-reader (and Kindle alternative), allowing book lovers to automatically track their reading habits.
• The integration was first announced in May and is now live for all Kobo account-based content.
• This makes the Kobo the first e-reader to integrate with StoryGraph’s book community platform and serves as another way to chip away at Amazon’s dominance in the digital books market.
• Traditionally, Amazon has managed to retain its readers by offering low prices on books and e-books and combining that with a robust online reading community and social network, Goodreads.

What happened

While many Goodreads competitors emerged over the years, few have been able to establish a solid footprint because they lacked the ability to integrate with customers’ e-reading devices, as Goodreads does with Kindle devices. The StoryGraph-Kobo integration changes that, as it will now automatically sync a user’s reading progress with their StoryGraph account.

Why it matters

That means when you finish a book on your Kobo eReader, it will automatically be marked as “Read” on StoryGraph, keeping your reading stats up-to-date.

Summary by Nerd News Network. Read the full article at TechCrunch via the links above and below.