Why is it that every ebook reader on the market can show that you’ve completed reading an ebook, but most can’t show you when you finished reading a book?
I feel like reading statistics are something that is seriously undervalued and underdeveloped when it comes to ebooks. So far most companies just collect reading data for themselves for their own benefit, while leaving readers in the dark. That needs to change.
I recently found myself considering rereading The Stand by Stephen King because it’s one of my favorite books of all time. But I can’t remember how long it’s been since I last read it.
Considering I own a digital copy of the book, you’d think it would be easy to determine that, but it’s not. If it wasn’t for Amazon’s Reading Insights page I wouldn’t have been able to figure out that I last read that particular ebook in 2019. Most Kindle users probably don’t even know that Reading Insights page exists, and Amazon does a poor job of integrating that information into Kindle devices.
Kindle ereaders don’t show any kind of reading stats or reading insights whatsoever. They mark books as “read” when you finish reading them and that’s all you get.
However, Kindle apps show the same reading insights that you can view on Amazon’s website. That’s one of the most irritating things about Kindles: Amazon adds features to Kindle apps that they never add to Kindle ereaders. There’s no valid reason why they can’t show reading insights on Kindle ereaders too.
Kobo has a section on their ereaders that shows “Reading Stats”, but the information is very limited. It just shows how long you’ve spent reading, your average minutes read per session, and average pages read per minute. The estimated reading time is pretty cool and can be helpful at times, but I’m not training for a speed reading competition so I couldn’t care less about the time-based reading stats. They should show more useful information like date completed, date purchased (or borrowed), average reading time to finish a book (like they show on their website), total pages, pages remaining, highlighted sections, notes, etc.
The only ereaders I know of that show a date completed time is Boox devices with their built-in NeoReader app, but not all of them support reading stats. My older Note2 doesn’t have that section at all, but the newer Go 7 models do.
My Pocketbook basic ereader shows the date when you added an ebook to the device, but it doesn’t show the date completed or any other reading stats.
Considering all the tracking these companies do on customer’s reading habits, you’d think they could provide more useful reading stats to the user directly on their reading devices. I can’t believe Onyx is the only one that shows a date completed on individual titles.
Nooks show date completed in the library list view and have a progress bar for any open books. Not sure if there are more stats for actual nookbooks as all I have on mine right now are sideloaded books.
Nooks have something useful that Kindles and Kobos don’t. You don’t see that everyday.
Sony gives you last accessed date and time.
I run KOReader on my Kobo Sage, and it shows all kind of statistics. Lists of all the books you’ve read, with page counts and how long it look you to finish. Bar charts for each week. Calendars for each month. Some screenshots, if links survive.
https://ibb.co/0VYmQ56R
https://ibb.co/xqjFwZYf
First, I love Kindles, ever since the very first one, maybe 14(?) years ago.
I don’t care for Kindle marking a book as “read.” All it requires is going to the end of the book for whatever reason and it assumes you’ve read it. It’s also inconvenient if more than one person reads under the same Kindle account.
For decades I’ve kept a list of all the books I’ve ever read. Author, title, month and year in a simple spreadsheet so I can sort by date or author. When I began reading on the Kindle, I added Kindle if I own it or Library if borrowed.
Yes, I’ve been wondering about that for a long time.
I’ve been using KOReader for some time now, which fortunately displays nice reading statistics that you can even synchronize with other devices.
(Oh, and I’m actually reading The Stand at the moment 🙂 )
I’ll go on vacation and binge read a bunch of books in different series but then can’t remember where I left off.
Does anyone know of a way to track read books if your ereader doesn’t have a system?
Nate-Just saw this.
From Feb 2025.
Looks like good review of tracking apps.
Sharing with you. Don’t necessarily need to post.
I will read through on my own.
Linda
https://isbndb.com/blog/book-tracking-apps-and-websites/#5
Wow, that’s a lot of options. I’ve never even heard of at least half of those. You’d think more dedicated ereaders would have features like that built-in.