How to Export Your Goodreads Library (Step by Step) — and What to Do Next

Whatever you think of Goodreads, it does one important thing right: it lets you take your data with you. Every book you’ve shelved, every rating, every date — you can export the whole lot to a single CSV file in about a minute. This is worth doing even if you’re staying, simply as a backup. And if you’re moving to something new, it’s the first step.

Here’s exactly how, what you’ll get, and where to put it.

Before you start: use a computer

The one catch that trips people up: you can’t export from the Goodreads mobile app. The export tool only exists on the desktop website. So open Goodreads in a browser on a laptop or desktop — or, on a phone, switch your browser to “Desktop site.” Then sign in.

Exporting your library, step by step

1. Go to My Books. Click the “My Books” tab at the top of the Goodreads site.
2. Find Import and export. In the left-hand sidebar, under the Tools heading, click Import and export.
3. Click Export Library. Near the top of that page is an Export Library button. Click it. Goodreads starts generating your file — for a large library this can take a minute or two, so don’t navigate away.
4. Download the CSV. When it’s done, a link appears just above the button — something like “Your export from [today’s date].” Click that link to download the goodreads_library_export.csv file to your computer.

That’s it. You now own a complete, portable copy of your reading history.

What’s actually in the file

The CSV is more thorough than you might expect. Open it in any spreadsheet app and you’ll find a row per book with columns including:

• Title, author, and additional authors
• ISBN and ISBN13
• Your rating and the Goodreads average rating
• Publisher, binding, and number of pages
• Year published and original publication year
• Date read and date added
• Your shelves (including read, currently-reading, and to-read)
• Your review text, and any private notes

In other words, the things that actually matter — what you read, when, how you rated it, and which shelf it lived on — all travel with you.

Tidy it up (optional, but worth five minutes)

Before importing anywhere, a quick pass pays off:

• Skim for duplicates. If you’ve shelved different editions of the same book, you may have two rows. Delete the stray one.
• Check your dates. Goodreads only has a date read if you recorded one. Books you shelved as “read” years ago may be blank — fine, but worth knowing your stats won’t reach back further than the dates in the file.
• Keep the original. Save an untouched copy of the export somewhere safe before you edit anything. It’s your backup now.

What to do next: move it somewhere you like better

A CSV on your hard drive is a good backup but a dull home for a reading life. Most modern reading apps will import this exact file. A few common destinations:

• The StoryGraph imports your Goodreads CSV directly and is the most popular landing spot for ex-Goodreads readers who want deeper stats and recommendations.
• Hardcover also takes the export, if you want community without Amazon.
• Readistry imports it too — drag the CSV in and it matches titles, dates, and your shelves, so your history and your “to-read” pile arrive intact rather than starting from zero.

We built Readistry’s import for exactly this moment: the idea is that switching to a private log shouldn’t mean losing years of records. Bring the file over, and your shelves, finish dates, and ratings come with it — then everything from that point on stays private, with no feed and nothing for sale.

If you’re still deciding where to land, our honest roundup of Goodreads alternatives compares the main options, and our three-way look at StoryGraph, Goodreads, and Readistry goes deeper on the most common choice.

A note on doing this regularly

Even if you never leave, it’s worth exporting once a year. Accounts change hands, features get retired, and a reading history is a genuinely irreplaceable thing — a quiet record of years of your attention. Keeping your own copy costs a minute and means it’s always yours, no matter what any one company decides to do next.

Readistry is a private reading log that imports your Goodreads library and keeps it yours. Coming soon to iOS and Android — leave your email and we’ll send one note when it’s live.