Goodreads vs. Booktopia

Goodreads vs. Booktopia: What’s the difference?

Goodreads and Booktopia are all about books and reading, but that’s where the similarity ends. One site is dedicated to reader interactivity while the other is a dedicated online bookstore. If you’re wondering which site to join, read on!

Goodreads

Goodreads is a seriously interactive, reader-orientated site, and it is dead easy to sign up and get started on choosing genres and rating the books you have read. Once you’ve rated a book, similar book recommendations begin to pop up. Be warned, you can lose hours on the net on this step alone because the whole exercise turns into a lovely bookish trip down memory lane. Once you’ve rated twenty books, the site will recommend similar books and authors. This is a great tool for people who know what genre they like but don’t have the time to keep up with the latest authors.

When you’ve had enough of rating books, you can work on updating your profile. It’s very easy to upload a photo, add links to your website, configure e-readers, add your Amazon account and find friends on Goodreads with social media. Click on the ‘Explore’ button and you’ll discover a hefty blog with author interviews, writing tips and book reviews, numerous groups you can join, giveaways, quizzes, and famous quotes. You can follow an author or check out Listopia for some reading ideas (for example ‘Books everyone should read at least once). Goodreads encourages reviews from readers and has the capability of automatically publishing any review you write to your blog (only for WordPress and Blogger platforms). Finally, if you are an author, Goodreads provides an Author Program that helps with book promotion and stats gathering.

You can buy books on Goodreads, but there is no ‘shop’. If you want to buy a book simply click on the image and purchase information is provided. The site keeps a record of your purchase history on your bookshelf, but the emphasis remains on stories and readers rather than selling, and quite frankly, that makes a refreshing change!

Booktopia

With 70,000+ followers and a slew of business awards under its belt, Australian-based Booktopia must be doing something right! The site is dedicated to promoting and selling books and boasts that a discount applies to all books offered on the site. It’s easy to sign up and not at all difficult to browse through clearly marked categories for the title of your choice. If you still can’t find what you’re looking for, a search bar and help centre will soon have you pointed in the right direction.

Booktopia has a dedicated blog, a newsletter for subscribers, and links to Facebook, Twitter, Google, and YouTube. There’s plenty to see and learn on the site, but it does not have the immersive interactivity of Goodreads. The blog has author interviews, reviews on upcoming titles, and competition results, but all competition details and subscriber commentary happens on Facebook, so if you want to talk back to Booktopia, you will have to do so through social media.

As you can see, each site has plenty to offer, but the approach they take is very different. If you’re a hopeless book addict like me, you’ll probably decide to sign up for both!

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