pecia

Blog · 5 November 2026 · 2 min read

How to export your Goodreads library

Step by step, from the website: what the file holds, what it leaves out, why not to open it in Excel, and what to do with it, like seeing what your to-read list costs second-hand.

A spreadsheet with one row per book turning into a shelf, with a second-hand price tag on one of the books

Years of books shelved on Goodreads fit in a single file. Exporting it takes a minute, deletes nothing from your account and leaves you a copy that's yours: to keep, to take to another app, or to look at differently.

Step by step

Goodreads only exports from the website, not the app:

  1. Sign in at goodreads.com on a computer. On a phone, the browser works if you ask for the desktop site.
  2. Go to My Books in the top menu.
  3. In the left column, under Tools, click Import and export.
  4. At the top of the page, click Export Library.
  5. After a few seconds a link appears next to "Your export from…" with today's date. Click it and goodreads_library_export.csv downloads.

If the link takes a while, reload the page: large libraries can take a couple of minutes.

What the file holds

One row per book, every book on any shelf. For each one:

  • title, author and, if the edition has one, the ISBN;
  • your rating and the Goodreads average;
  • publisher, page count and year;
  • when you added it and when you read it;
  • its main shelf (read, currently reading or to-read) and your own shelves;
  • your review and your private notes.

What it leaves out: the reading progress you logged, saved quotes, your friends and other readers' lists.

Why not to open it in Excel

You can look, but don't save it from a spreadsheet before importing it elsewhere. On saving, Excel often drops the leading zeros of ISBNs, turns them into scientific notation or breaks accented letters. The file still looks fine, but apps can no longer find your books by ISBN.

If you want to work with it, make a copy and open the copy.

What to do with it

Keep it. It's the backup of your reading history. Exporting again every so often costs nothing.

See what your to-read list costs. In Spain new books have a fixed price, so the saving is second-hand. With our tool you upload the file and see which books on your to-read list we have and their best second-hand price, shipping added. It's read in your browser: the file isn't uploaded.

Take your library with you. StoryGraph and other apps import it as it is. Pecia will too once the library opens: what you've read and want to read, paper and ebook, and an alert when a to-read book drops in price.

Coming from StoryGraph

It exports to CSV as well, from the website: your profile → Manage Account → Manage Your Data → Export StoryGraph Library. The link to the file arrives by email. The tool takes both formats.

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