Kobo now syncs your reading to StoryGraph. What carries over?

What does the Kobo and StoryGraph link do?

Good e-Reader's report of the 19 May announcement lists four things. Books you open recently on Kobo sync to your StoryGraph "Currently Reading" shelf. Your reading progress percentage syncs between Kobo and StoryGraph. Finishing a book on your Kobo marks it "Read" on StoryGraph. And it works for both ebooks and audiobooks. Kobo's help center has a page on connecting the two accounts.

You keep manual control: StoryGraph lets you override what the sync did, which matters if you open a book to check something and do not want it counted as a new read.

What does it leave out?

Books you sideload onto a Kobo (EPUBs from other stores, DRM-free purchases, library files you transferred yourself) are not part of the sync, as e-reader forums noted when it went live. That is a real gap for exactly the readers who chose Kobo for its open format support. Library loans and store purchases are the safest bet; check your own shelf after the first week.

It is also one-directional in practice: it reports what you read on Kobo to StoryGraph. It does not pull your StoryGraph to-read list into Kobo or change what Kobo recommends.

Why does this matter for choosing an ebook app?

Until now, the tracker was always a separate chore. Kindle readers have had Goodreads built in for years because Amazon owns both, which is convenient and keeps you inside one company. Kobo plus StoryGraph is the first comparable pairing where the tracker is independent of the store.

For our purposes it nudges Kobo's sync and discovery story forward. It does not change Kobo's ownership terms, which were already the best of the big ebook stores, and it does not change StoryGraph's export path, which still lets you leave with your data. Both reviews keep their current scores until the next scoring pass.

Who gains the most from the link?

Kobo readers who already log books in StoryGraph and are tired of updating progress by hand. Book club members who use StoryGraph's reading challenges or buddy reads and want their percentage to be current without thinking about it. And anyone weighing Kobo against Kindle who wanted a tracker that is not owned by the store they buy from.

Readers who gain little: anyone who mostly sideloads, anyone who does not use a tracker at all, and anyone happy with Goodreads, which has no equivalent link to Kobo.

What does this say about where the market is going?

The big ebook stores are building out the parts of reading that happen outside the page: tracking, recaps, switching between print and audio. Amazon has Goodreads, Story So Far and Ask this Book. Spotify has Page Match. Kobo has chosen to partner rather than build, which keeps your reading history in a service you can export from. For a reader, that is the better trade, and it is one more reason Kobo does well on our ownership criterion.

How do you turn it on?

Follow Kobo's help page "Sync Your Kobo Reading Progress with StoryGraph": you sign in to both accounts and authorize the connection. After that, open a book on your Kobo and check that it appears on your StoryGraph Currently Reading shelf within a few minutes. If you use a tracker other than StoryGraph, our sister site on tracker apps covers the alternatives in more depth.