Book Tracker: Bookie

So I bought the subscription but it still says I don’t have access to it.

I bought the lifetime membership to unlock all features. Was really hard to use, especially getting books in certain folders and even harder to undo books I added. Wrote for help and never heard back. Not worth $50.

I actually like the app. It’s not the easiest to use, but once you get it down, it’s not too bad. That being said, there are some key areas that need to be fixed. 1. I had to update the app to get the import from Goodreads function to work. That is fine, except now the option for lifetime purchase is no longer available. I will not buy a subscription based plan. I believe in supporting a program, but it is all too easy to get multiple forgotten subscriptions running and cancelling them can be a problem. Being on a fixed income due to medical issues, I buy once and expect things to continue to work how they did at time of purchase - and it should stay working for several years. 2. The import of Goodreads was basically pointless. The dates that are within the Goodreads system showing when I read a book, got changed in this system. It would say it completed both the correct date and another area stated that it was that date through the day of the import. Rather pointless if it’s not correct. Very few of the covers came across, maybe 25% of the 3000 imported. It also seemed to be short on details for many books, nor did it import all fields from Goodreads. But it did not say what would or would not be imported. Very frustrating. 3. It did not bring across any of my reviews from Goodreads. That was the whole point for me to switch to an app like this. I want one location for all reviews, then I always have a copy of what I said about what book, even if that system crashes, loses data or is shutdown. I don’t want to have to go in and modify hundreds of books to include prior written reviews, as well as have to fix read dates. I also want something so I can add more finished books and reviews through an import. If I could write it here and push it to Goodreads, that might work too, but that doesn’t seem to be an option. 4. Ideally I would like an app that can handle both books and comics. Goodreads falls short on that which is why I want something that is a local based system that I can keep updated. Though I can add manually, it’s not ideal when you are dealing with potentially thousands of comics plus thousands of books. 5. Modifying data isn’t easy. Deleting books is not easy, if I can even do that. Found an option to archive, but not delete. Streamlining the entire process would be helpful. I haven’t even tried to see if there are merge functions or duplicate finding. Those functions would be necessary. 6. The stats about reading overtime is interesting, but not of much importance to me. I know I read a lot and don’t need a graph to push me to read more. I would make use of it, but it seems rather limited. Maybe in the purchased version it works better, but as I’ve stated, I won’t do a subscription based purchase. You had a lifetime purchase, it was reasonably priced and I would have bought it with this version, since the import was sort of fixed. I did not buy it with the earlier version because I could never get the Goodreads import to work. I even cut the csv file to 1 entry and it couldn’t handle it. Newer version does a partial import (though it should import the reviews) but now the lifetime purchase isn’t offered. I plan to buy and use an app for several years, same as I do with my tablets/phones. Maybe every 5 years if a company has massively changed a program and releases something new I’d consider re-buying it but again only as a one time purchase, not subscription based. Subscriptions are becoming the bane of our society. Every company seems to think it’s the best way to keep their profits up, but then they get lazy and don’t supply anything worthwhile for that price. Look at some car companies and their subscriptions to work the radio, car seat warmers, the map systems. Then some go out of business and now you own an expensive brick that won’t function because you had to access their system to continue working. Even John Deere is doing this their customers in the agricultural area. Why would you ever need a subscription based system to continue to run a tractor?? The same can be said for database management such as this program. If we don’t start telling people NO, we won’t accept this, then we are going to continue to be ripped off with poor programming and little if nothing to show for paying an annual subscription rate. Maybe this app won’t go that route, but my trust for such is gone. If you believe in your product, then price things accordingly and it will be used and grow with supporters. Subscriptions will only get people to try, and quit in the few day trial window and then never try it again. If they forget to cancel, they will hate the company because they feel they were ripped off for a ridiculous subscription due to missing the ‘fine print’.