How to move your Goodreads library to Bookwise in about 5 minutes

I built Bookwise partly because leaving Goodreads felt harder than it should. Years of ratings and shelves locked in one place is a real reason people stay.

This is the short path I tell people: export once, import once, then clean up anything that didn't match. Most libraries land in a few minutes.

What you need

• A Goodreads account you can log into on the web
• A free Bookwise account at bookwiseapp.com
• About five minutes (longer if your library is huge and you want to hand-match leftovers)

Step 1: Export your Goodreads library (CSV)

1. Open Goodreads on the web and sign in.
2. Go to My Books.
3. Open Import and export (sometimes under account / library tools).
4. Click Export Library and wait for the download.
5. Save the CSV somewhere easy to find.

Tip: do this on desktop. The export flow is easier there than on mobile.

Step 2: Start the Bookwise import

1. Sign in to Bookwise.
2. Open Import / Export from the sidebar (or Settings).
3. Choose Import from Goodreads.
4. Upload the CSV you just downloaded.

Bookwise will start matching books automatically.

Step 3: Let matching run, then fix the leftovers

Bookwise tries several ways to find each book:

• ISBN when Goodreads included one
• Title + author
• Cleaned titles (series noise and subtitle clutter stripped when it helps)

For anything still unmatched, you'll see search results so you can pick the right edition. If you match something by hand, Bookwise remembers that mapping for later imports.

What usually comes over cleanly

• Books (title / author when matched)
• Your ratings
• Shelves / status where Goodreads encoded them
• Reviews when present in the export

What often needs a second look

• Weird editions, self-pub, or sparse Goodreads rows with no ISBN
• Series titles that Goodreads stored in a messy format
• Duplicate editions if you rated the same work more than once under different records
• Anything Goodreads never really catalogued well in the first place

If a book doesn't match, search once and pick the closest Open Library edition. That usually clears it.

After import: a two-minute sanity check

1. Spot-check a few books you care about (rating still right?).
2. Glance at Currently Reading / Read / Want to Read.
3. If you use Kindle highlights, that's a separate path later (bookmarklet from Import / Export). Don't block your library move on highlights.

Why bother

Once your history is in Bookwise, you can rate in quarter-stars instead of rounding, and talk to a companion that stays behind your current page. Free tier includes tracking and Goodreads import. Plus is there if you want unlimited AI and the fuller stats.

If something in your export looks wrong after import, reply to this post or email me directly sha@bookwiseapp.com with a screenshot. I read those.

Sha Alibhai, founder of Bookwise