Pagebound: Social Book Tracker

after 7 months of using this app, i can safely say that it has great potential as a tracker, and has space to host a variety of discussions. however the community is a bit cult like. as long as you are agreeing with them, you’ll be fine. but the moment you disagree or criticize the community the app or the founders publicly, you’ll get dogpiled by the top contributors. there is no moderation of their behavior. they literally take it upon themselves to act like guard dogs.

Weird how my review about the paywall concerning the new stats seems to have vanished. And then I get a newsletter with them explaining why they paywalled certain stats. It’s just frustrating that every book app paywalls stats, the one element that most people want. The community is also super cliquey and makes it hard to integrate.

I think pagebound has a lot of potential, and the idea of an anti AI book tracker that focuses on book discussions is great but there is still a bit of work to do with this app. I think the discussion forums and reviews are really well done, and the homepage is fairly well tailored to you once you get enough books in your library. I do however have a few problems. My main gripe with this app is the lack of genres. I have a feeling this has something to do with not wanting books to fall into a box and going beyond genre or whatever but there is not even a distinction between fiction and non fiction. I don’t think we need a laundry list of genres tacked onto every book(im looking at you Goodreads) but genres exist for a reason. I’m genuinely surprised this has not been brought up more because I feel like it makes the discovery aspect of this app completely useless. I personally need to know if a book is erotica so I can avoid a genre that I don’t like to read and I imagine those who cannot read horror would feel the same. Having to go digging on a different app or googling a book just to see if you can read the thing is a little ridiculous considering this is a book app. Also book stores are organized by genre!! Trying to find the book I've shelved on Pagebound while in a physical store is a joke!! Another problem I have is the audience this app seems to cater to. The discover page is made up of the top books shelved/read/etc. which is flooded with New York Times best sellers and romance and leaves zero room to actually discover anything. I can’t speak to the “clique -y” aspect of discussions brought up in other reviews simply because I’m not reading books anyone else on this app seems to want to read. The horror/splatterpunk community is basically nonexistent on this app as of writing this review which means I have been the first forum post/review on more than one book. This isn't the end of the world but I do feel like it ends up skewing the ratings as a whole. A book's rating should not rest on my back, and when I am the first negative review on a book with only 4 reviews total I end up feeling like I’m talking to the wind. But why is the horror community so nonexistent? It probably has something to do with the fact that every promoted list/quest/discussion prompt is very clearly geared towards straight women who read romance and memoirs. It’s not subtle either. I really want to like Pagebound simply because of the ethics upheld by the creators but honestly I don’t think it’s currently usable on its own. I’ll probably use it till the end of the year because I can’t be bothered to set a 2026 reading goal on another app but I highly doubt I will be using it this time next year.