For nearly twenty years, I have tracked and taken notes on every novel I’ve read. But the tools for doing this have all been missing something. I’ve moved from paper notebooks to DEVONThink to Day One to Goodreads to Obsidian and a number of smaller apps in between, and each has shortcomings (in this context) that irk me. Last winter, I decided to make Commonplace, which is now available (for free!) on the iOS App Store.
Commonplace has a few features that I’ve found missing in other apps:
- Notes. Notes feel like a forgotten part of nearly every book-tracking app I’ve used. Commonplace’s notes are tied to a book or story, marked with the reading phase in which you took them (before, during, after, or re-read), and displayed in their own menu item. The app will also prompt you for a note when you add a book (“How did you hear about this?”). Notes are important.
- Short fiction. I read Clarkesworld, Uncanny, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Commonplace knows about these publications, and it will let you add and track full issues and individual stories from those magazines. You can add star ratings to finished stories, and you can take notes about them. If you log stories, they will appear alongside your finished books. (And if you aren’t a short fiction reader, you’ll only see books in your lists.)
- Media formats. I read print books, digital books, and audiobooks. I like to note the format(s) in which I’m reading, and Commonplace supports that.
- Import/Export/iCloud sync. Commonplace can import individual books via its web extension or full catalogs via its csv import. It also exports in json, markdown, and PDF, and it supports the Micro.blog books API, so you can post your Commonplace books to your micro.blog bookshelves.
- Privacy. No ads, no analytics, no algorithms, no gamification, no nonsense. It’s just a database of books and stories and notes that syncs to your iCloud account. As it should be.
These are, admittedly, the features that matter most to me, and this is the app I want to use. It may not work for everyone.
It took me about nine months to get to a viable version 1.0, and I’ve learned a lot along the way. There are many rough edges I’d like to polish, and I’ll continue to iterate on this over time. Book-related APIs are a headache, and this app largely relies on the iTunes & Open Library APIs. Most apps like this (including Micro.blog’s excellent Epilogue) use ISBNdb, but that isn’t free, and I don’t want a significant monthly expense for a hobby project. If the app gains popularity over time I might consider a paid service as an option, but right now I’m relying on free APIs. Those have drawbacks (including coverage), but they contain nearly every novel I’ve read in the past ten years, so they’re good enough for me right now.
Commonplace is built for my workflows and my preferences, and I don’t see that changing. But I do hope that someone else finds it useful. It’s free on the iOS App Store, and it’s been a great learning sandbox for me.
