Help & Getting Started

Once you've made an account, the fastest way to get value out of Reads is to add the last five to ten books you finished. You don't need to log everything you've ever read — a handful of recent titles with honest ratings is enough for the recommendation engine to understand your taste. Use the search bar on the home page or the Discover tab to find each book on Open Library; one tap adds it to your library and prompts you for a rating and (optional) short review.

If you're importing from an existing habit (Goodreads, a paper notebook, an old spreadsheet), don't try to do it in one sitting. Add three or four books a day for a couple of weeks and it'll fill in without becoming a chore.

Reads uses a five-star scale, but you can rate half-stars if you want more granularity. Ratings are private-by-default in the sense that they never show up on your public profile against your name unless you also write a review; the recommendation engine uses them regardless. Reviews are optional, and short ones work better than long ones. A single sentence about how the book felt is more useful to future-you than a two-paragraph plot summary.

If you finish a book and can't decide on a rating, close the app and come back the next day. First-hour ratings tend to be inflated by whatever emotion you closed the book on. Twenty-four hours later, your rating settles.

The Recommendations tab shows a small batch of picks that our engine thinks you'll like based on the books you've rated highly. It's not a bestseller list — the picks are shaped specifically by your ratings. If they feel off, add more of your favourites (especially the deeper-cut ones) and refresh; the engine calibrates to whatever taste signal you give it.

You can view details on any recommendation without committing to it, add it to your library once you've read it, drop it in your wishlist to remember for later, or share it with a friend.

Reads is free forever with a soft monthly limit (ten new books and fifty new recommendations per calendar month). Once you hit the cap you can either wait for the next month or upgrade to Reads+, which removes both caps and hides ads. Reads+ is €3.99 / month or €35.99 / year (25% off), managed through Stripe. You can cancel any time from your Account page and keep access until the end of the paid period.

If a specific page is broken, a book won't add, or a recommendation is nonsensical, please write to us with a screenshot if you can. We're a tiny team, we read every message, and small bugs get fixed fast.