Coming from Goodreads?
Import your Goodreads library
Sprawl is a book collection tracker for daily use. Bring your Goodreads library with you: your books, shelves, ratings, reviews and reading dates. It's free, and with your profile link it takes about a minute.
What comes over
- The books on your Read, Currently Reading and Want to Read shelves. Read stays Read, Currently Reading becomes Reading, and Want to Read becomes Plan to read (or Wishlist for books you don't own, when your Goodreads library says which ones you own).
- Your star ratings, on Sprawl's 1-10 scale: 4 stars is 8/10.
- Your reviews, the dates you finished each book and the dates you added them.
- Your other Goodreads shelves, as Collection shelves (you can leave them out).
- Page counts and covers.
Before anything is saved you see the list: leave books out, pick only the ones new to Sprawl, or set one reading status for all of them.
Two ways to import
Paste your profile link (about a minute)
Open your profile on Goodreads (your picture, then Profile) and copy its address from your browser. It looks like goodreads.com/user/show/12345-your-name. Paste it into Sprawl and choose Get my books.
Your Goodreads profile needs to be public for this. If it isn't, Goodreads' privacy settings have a "Who can view my profile" choice: set it to anyone, import, then switch it back. This way doesn't bring your private notes or how many copies you own.
Upload your Goodreads export (the most complete)
- On Goodreads, open My Books, then Import and export (under Tools), or go straight to goodreads.com/review/import.
- Choose Export Library.
- Wait for the link to your export file to appear (refresh the page after a minute; a very large library may get an email instead), then download it.
- Choose that file in Sprawl.
Use Export Library, not "Request my data" in your Goodreads account settings, which is a different request and takes days. Goodreads may move these pages around; the export is the CSV file of your library. LibraryThing exports, and any CSV file with Title and Author columns, work too.
Where to find it in Sprawl
A new, empty Library starts with "Coming from Goodreads?". Later, it's in your Library under Add book, then Import.
After the import
When 10 or more books come over, Sprawl shows you your library at a glance: how many books, how many you've read, the authors you keep coming back to and your biggest reading year. From there, Build my bookcases sorts your books onto bookcases by author (up to 2,700 books; any more wait in Unshelved), and you can rearrange them any time.
Importing again is safe: books already in your library aren't added twice, they only get missing details filled in. Run it again later to bring over books you've added on Goodreads since.