Kobo Q&A

How did this partnership get started?

For a while I dreamt of us being integrated with Kobo. I’d personally been using one for years and people always talked about how they missed the Goodreads/Kindle sync with StoryGraph.

Last year, Kobo’s CEO, Michael Tamblyn, reached out. We had a couple of conversations and quickly realised we had aligned product goals and visions. A few months after that he put me in touch with their product team and we started talking about what an integration would look like.

How hard was it to keep it a secret?

Very hard! Mainly because a lot of people wanted this. We were regularly being tagged alongside Kobo in social media posts and we wished we could say “don’t worry, we got you, it’s coming!” But we had to keep quiet and wait for the official announcement. We were seeing posts on Reddit saying something like this was very unlikely to ever happen just days before the announcement! 😬

When does the sync get triggered?

Every time your reading progress percentage increases by one percent.

Will there be a way for me to record a DNF directly on my Kobo?

Not directly. Kobo doesn’t have that concept built in, but we’re going to start by classifying as DNF any book that’s marked as “Finished” below 90% and get feedback on how that’s working out for people.

Will my side-loaded content be synced as well? What about books borrowed from my public library via the OverDrive integration?

Unfortunately, the integration will not support side-loaded content. We will support all books that are attached to a user’s Kobo account, and this includes titles from OverDrive and Libby.

Will highlights/notes be synced?

Not for V1. We do see this in a future version of the integration though, alongside several other enhancements. 👀

As a StoryGraph Librarian, I’m especially concerned about duplicate/orphaned editions. How will you be handling this?

We’re concerned about our book data too. That’s why we have the StoryGraph Librarian programme in the first place. We’re looking to do smart matching before any books are added to the database, taking into account existing read statuses, title, author, and ISBN information.

Will the integration work via the Kobo app if you don’t have a Kobo device?

Yes, it will!

Will you ever try and integrate with Kindle?

No. Amazon owns both Kindle and Goodreads and they don’t allow any competitors to get involved.

What about integrating with other apps, like Apple Books?

We’re definitely open to that. We want to improve the quality of our users’ reading lives so we’d consider any integration that would do that.

How do you celebrate achievements and accomplishments like this one?

In this case, the main work hasn’t been done yet, but Rob and I definitely don’t celebrate our achievements enough. We’ve been getting better over the years though, even if we just do a celebratory retrospective or have some downtime playing ping pong or crazy golf in VR.

I also have mini internal celebrations when I see social media posts like this one:

Thank you to everyone who sent in questions!

Top Three Fairytale Retelling Nominations

What’s the greatest fairytale retelling in novel form?

If one is coming to mind, please fill out my Google form to help my new book club out! 🙏🏾

A New Filter Menu Is Born…

I had some downtime amongst all of the Kobo work and was able to get back to the review filtering work that I started forever and ever ago…

More filter options coming as soon as I have more time away from the Kobo work. 😁

(Love that I can talk about this now!! 😅)

Six Year Spike Anniversary

Tomorrow marks six years since we first exploded via Twitter. Wowee!

I always like to post on social media asking people who was around back then and what their number one favourite thing in the app is so I’ll probably do that. 🥹

What shall I personally do to celebrate? 🤔

What I’m Reading

I said to my friend, Ana, that we hadn’t buddy read anything in too long. She’d just read the opening pages of Evenings and Weekends by Oisín McKenna and had noticed that it was on my To-Read Pile, so suggested it. I jumped straight on it and am really enjoying it so far.

Have a great week,

Nadia