At couple of years ago, when I was looking for a Goodreads alternative, one of my coworkers recommended Literal.club. However, I’ve found it a bit buggy (doesn’t always properly mark something read, search can’t find the exact book I’m looking for even though I know it exists in the system, that sort of thing). I was hoping it would improve, but sadly, I’m still struggling to use it. So I decided to move over to TheStoryGraph after reading about it in a CBC article.
One of the really nice things about TheStoryGraph is that you can import your book data from elsewhere. However, the importer is meant specifically for Goodreads. Of course, not everyone wanting to move over is on Goodreads right now (like myself). So here’s a short post about how to do it.
I’m surprised that they do not have this information on their own website. They will happily tell you this information if you write into their support.
Note: This information is current as of posting. It’s possible they don’t post the information online because the format can change.
What you need
If you want to migrate from somewhere that isn’t Goodreads to TheStoryGraph, you’ll need to create a CSV file using the same formatting as Goodreads’ CSV export. Thankfully, pretty much any book tracker that has an export function will usually have CSV format. You can edit the export file you have to match the formatting required. I recommend using a spreadsheet program (like Excel or Google Spreadsheets) to organize the information, then saving it in CSV format.
Required columns
I don’t know how important the column names are, but I was told to use them exactly.
- Title
- Author: First Last
- My Rating: use 0 if you haven’t read the book or for no rating
- Date Added: YYYY/MM/DD
- Exclusive Shelf: One of: ‘read’, ‘currently-reading’, ‘to-read’, ‘did-not-finish’, or a custom exclusive shelf
- Read Count: use 0 if you haven’t read or finished the book
Optional columns
- Date Read: YYYY/MM/DD
- My Review: HTML formatted written review
- Owned Copies: number
- ISBN13
- Bookshelves: custom tags that are comma separated, using hyphens instead of spaces for multi-word tags
Hope this helps other people. Happy book tracking!