A new contender to the Kindle-Goodreads book-tracking realm has come onto the scene.

On Monday, the reading tracker StoryGraph partnered with Rakuten’s Kobo, the creator of a more flexible e-reader (and alternative to Kindle), enabling avid readers to seamlessly track their reading habits.

The collaboration was initially revealed in May and is now available for all content linked to Kobo accounts.

This positions Kobo as the first e-reader to link with StoryGraph’s literary community platform, providing another means to challenge Amazon’s stronghold in the digital book arena. Historically, Amazon has successfully retained its audience by offering competitive prices on books and e-books while coupling that with a thriving online reading community and social network, Goodreads.

Although numerous competitors to Goodreads have arisen over the years, few have been able to create a lasting presence due to their inability to connect with users’ e-reading devices, unlike Goodreads’s integration with Kindle devices.

The StoryGraph-Kobo integration alters that dynamic, allowing a user’s reading progress to automatically sync with their StoryGraph account. Therefore, when a book is completed on your Kobo eReader, it will be instantly marked as “Read” on StoryGraph, ensuring your reading statistics remain current. The feature is compatible with both e-books and audiobooks, as stated by the companies, and works with any Kobo device as well as Kobo’s apps.

Reading trackers such as StoryGraph are favored for providing a simple method for users to document their reading history and favorite titles, along with opportunities to discover recommendations based on what others are engaging with. As suggested by the name, StoryGraph offers in-depth analytics, presenting readers with comprehensive charts about their reading moods, pace, and more, aimed at enhancing reading habits.

It also provides an online community where individuals can engage in reading challenges and join book clubs, while remaining motivated to read by achieving “streaks.” (Generally, we aren’t fond of addictive gamification in social applications, but for the purpose of fostering reading, we will make an exception.)

Established by Black British engineer Nadia Odunayo and CTO Rob Frelow in 2019, StoryGraph started as a side endeavor and did not seek external funding. It has since grown into a community of more than 5 million readers. With the Kobo integration, the app will now be introduced to the e-reader maker’s 12 million users across 190 countries.

Kobo and StoryGraph are not unique in seizing the cultural resurgence of reading, bolstered by online communities like #booktok and various reading apps. As per Pew Research, approximately three in ten U.S. adults (31%) reported reading an e-book in the previous year, an increase from 17% in 2011.

The startup Everand, which provides a marketplace for e-books and audiobooks, also recently acquired Fable, a digital book community app developer, to offer a comparable integration — but without the hardware. (Could Kobo be contemplating a future acquisition of StoryGraph?)

The new Kobo-StoryGraph integration does not necessitate a subscription, although the StoryGraph app does provide a $5 monthly Plus subscription that includes more detailed statistics, filters, custom charts, and comparison tools.