{"id":9579,"date":"2026-10-29T07:19:03","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T07:19:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=9579"},"modified":"2026-10-29T07:19:03","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T07:19:03","slug":"readwise-books-launch-ebook-store","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=9579","title":{"rendered":"Readwise is taking on Kindle and Kobo for ebook supremacy"},"content":{"rendered":"


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For the last several years, Readwise has been building tools for power readers<\/a>. There\u2019s the eponymous product, Readwise<\/a>, which stores and categorizes your Kindle highlights to help you remember what you\u2019ve read. There\u2019s Readwise Reader<\/a>, an app for reading newsletters, PDFs, and web articles you\u2019ve saved for later. And now there\u2019s Readwise Books, a full-fledged platform for buying, reading, and talking about books.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Readwise Books is currently in beta, available through invite or to existing Readwise subscribers. I\u2019ve been testing the app for a few days, and it\u2019s a much bigger take on reading than most. Tristan Homsi and Daniel Doyon, Readwise\u2019s cofounders, like to call the platform \u201cStrava for reading\u201d because it can track how long, how much, and how fast you read, and it can show that information to friends you make in the Readwise Books app. The app\u2019s homepage is a feed of what other people are reading, with comments and recommendations laced throughout.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cStrava for reading\u201d wasn\u2019t the original goal of Readwise Books, which has been part of the Readwise plan since the beginning. \u201cLiterally, Dan and I talked about this when we first met,\u201d Homsi says. \u201cWe feel like Kindle could be so much better. We really didn\u2019t think it would take nine-plus years to be able to get to this point.\u201d But it turns out, Doyon adds, that for all their ideas about innovation in books, \u201cno one sits around wanting a better Kindle.\u201d But there is one thing they do wish for: a better Goodreads. \u201cEverybody hates Goodreads.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In a sense, then, the plan for Readwise Books is to take on Kindle by first taking on Goodreads. The Readwise Books app offers a nice way to track books you want to read, are reading, and have read; it even syncs with your Kindle account to let you track books you\u2019ve bought from Amazon by taking pictures of your starting and ending pages. You can rate and review books and see what others have said. It\u2019s a little Strava, a little Letterboxd, and a lot nicer to look at than Goodreads.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The long-term goal, of course, is to get people to stop buying Kindle books and start buying from Readwise. Homsi and Doyon have spent the last several years working to reach deals with all five of the major US publishers in order to have a competitive library of books available. That meant endless negotiations, security reviews, DRM debates, and more \u2014 both cofounders seem exhausted just talking about the process. But eventually, by several small miracles, they got the deals done. And since those deals govern the price of books, and many things about how they\u2019re sold and presented, they bring Readwise to a nearly even playing field almost immediately.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It all took a lot longer than expected, but Doyon and Homsi think their timing might actually be pretty good. Digital book reading continues to grow<\/a>, particularly among young people; a huge amount of that reading happens on phones and tablets. Meanwhile, a new crop of E Ink devices like the tiny Xteink and the Boox Palma line have expanded the universe of available hardware for a company like Readwise.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Readwise breaks your reading into \u201csessions,\u201d like a workout in Strava.<\/em><\/figcaption>Image: David Pierce \/ The Verge<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Not long ago, Doyon says, they would have had no choice but to build an e-reader of their own. (And he says they still might.) Now, they can just make sure it runs on an E Ink-friendly flavor of Android.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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After a couple of days using Readwise Books, I can say confidently I already like it better than practically all of its competition. It\u2019s a much nicer-looking app than anything you\u2019ll get from Kindle or Kobo; it has lots of ways to customize how books look; and at least for now, I\u2019m finding the tracking features compel me to read more instead of annoying me. (Homsi says some early versions of the gamification features were substantially more annoying.) I\u2019ve found a few bugs, and the half-integration with Kindle is a little confusing in spots, but it\u2019s already a really nice place to read.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Of course, I, like millions of other people, already own a Kindle and lots of Kindle books. Switching ebook platforms is hard, and Doyon says he\u2019s not counting on everyone to do it right away. He says he\u2019s hopeful Readwise can persuade existing users to switch, in order to sync their notes and progress more seamlessly. He\u2019s also hoping that the advent of AI, and the ways in which AI reliance may rot our brains, will get a lot of people back into the idea of reading more deeply again. And that a bunch of those people might be looking for a nicer, more social place to do so.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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