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Monthly book wrap up graphics
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macthekatSep 1, 2022
A lot of people like to do monthly book wrap up posts. It would be really neat to have an easy way to see what you read in a month. So like the stats page (or on the stats page) just a list of the titles you read. Or even better the covers of what you read that month
UPDATE by Nadia (23/06/24): Updated the title to fit what's being delivered!
UPDATE by Nadia (1/07/24):
There'll be three varieties:
- A cover collage (with and without ratings)
- A summary view, similar to our annual wrap-up, in (IG Story and IG post/square format), with two pages/sections: overall summary view and stats charts view
- A calendar/Gantt chart view
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The two-page square/grid format of the summary view is now out, wrapping up V1 of our monthly wrap-up graphics. Just in time for your August wrap-ups! :-D
Nadia Oh, I do love the extra detail added in the two-page flavour. Very sexy indeed!! I ❤️📊 🤓
tuftymctavish Haha, so glad you love it!!
An idea for improvement: Align the rows in the cover collage as the current version looks a bit unaesthetic because of different ratios of the picures adding app row to row. See my August one attached.
alva_seal I'm using the same cover collage algorithm we use everywhere, namely in the annual wrap-up, so sometimes the bottom is out of line, but it means all covers of different shapes and sizes fit together like a puzzle. Thank your for your feedback though. I may look into possible adjustments later on.
I’m loving the new monthly wrap ups. The only thing I don’t like about the calendar is that it overlaps books that you finished on the same day so you cannot see both books.
super_jane19 Intentional decision after a bunch of experimentation, hence the key, but thank you for the feedback. Will play again with V2!
Hi everyone! Soft launching the calendar graphic here! Check it out.
Later this month the grid/square version of the summary view will drop!
Nadia looks awesome! A quick bug report that when 2 book images are on the same day.....One completed and one DNF.... my DNF book was on the bottom but the DNF label was on the top with my completed book picture in the middle. A bit confusing since it looks like my completed book was the DNF book. This example is in my July 3, 2024 data.
Nadia I do like the little 🏆 to indicate the best reading day of the month. Just noticed that little detail 🤓
debbilynn42 Ooh, this is very helpful, thank you. Will fix this today.
It doesn't happen all of the time but I've got a way so that it should never happen.
debbilynn42 Fixed! You might need to add a book to your to-read or do some other reading activity if you haven't since to force your graphics to update!
Nadia I really like this feature, as I like to see how the books I read overlap, and how my mood reading evolves over the month.
However, I don't log pages read every day; I only use start and stop dates. My books only get logged on the calendar for the days I begin or finish them. It would be neat if each book's duration line included all the calendar days between my start and stop date, even if I don't log pages read.
allisomethings Hello! Thank you from the feedback! It was intentionally done this way, heavily influenced by our customer research, and to change it to show a line through all days loses the detailed data for daily trackers (who were the most keen for the calendar template). They want to see when they put a book down for days, then come back to it, days where they don't pick up a book at all, etc. We may have a customisation option in the future for people who don't track daily, but it's not a priority at the moment. In the meantime, I hope that you still enjoy the visual that is generated!
Nadia I came here to ask about this as well! I do track daily but I know plenty of people who don't, and having a setting where people can indicate if they want the line to be broken or unbroken depending on daily tracking would be really cool.
onthesamepage I think this is a great candidate for a new post! Because it's definitely not going to be done as part of the V1 one work. :-D
Nadia Really digging the new chart!! One tiny piece of feedback: I'd love something that distinguishes "day I started a book" vs "day I picked it back up". Right now every "start" event is a rounded ( on the left side of the bar, and with my calendar, I can find it hard to read.
In this pic, the green arrow is pointing to a day where I really did start the book (and binged it all in a few days, so no gap in the bar). For the yellow arrows, it's pointing to the bars on the first day of the month, even though I'm pretty sure both of those books got started in the previous month, and pointing out a book that has multiple bars visible but it still is a book I know I started in the previous month. Maybe having true "start" days stay as rounded and "pick up" days be flat ends, like the "put down" ends are on the other end of the bar, if that makes sense? The "true end" of the reading is clear because of the connection with the cover art, but the starts are ambiguous and with enough simultaneous reading 🫣 it can be a little confusing.
jaina8851 Yes, my friend Saron helped me with the design and did it like that. I went back and forth on whether I liked it and decided to stick with it, but may change it.
Nadia I just reloaded my August chart and noticed a small change! 😄 It looks so nice!! So much easier for me to parse 🤩
Hi everyone!
Soft launching — by only announcing here — a new monthly wrap-up section in the app (accessible via a month's stats page) AND a new template/graphic: The IG Story/Vertical version of the summary view!
Oh AND launching on desktop!
Enjoy!
Nadia Thank you for all your hard work! I’m trying to test it out but I keep getting this message.
aftereliza Nadia I second this! (Using an Android)
Nadia Just gave it another go and, ohhhh boy, that is a super sexy new feature!!! Immediately went, “oooOOoooOOO,” out loud just now 😁
Nadia Thank you so much for putting this out on desktop!
waterthepages aftereliza Sorry, both. That was when the feature was still behind an admin block!
It would be great if comms about this feature specified that it's available only on the app - I'm a desktop only user and it was disappointing to look forward to it, not be able to find it in my stats and discover it was app only through kestrellady's comment here. I don't mind it being only on the app, but I'd like to have known!
galaheadh In all the comms I've sent so far, apart from here (will rectify going forward), I've mentioned that you have to be in the app to access these. I'm currently working on offering the ability to download the images via desktop too.
A couple quick thoughts/suggestions for future iterations of the monthly graphics:
kestrellady The second bullet is a known Android bug, which affects other aspects of the app, with pull-to-refresh sensitivity. I will eventually fix it—and have attempted to do so in the pass to no success—but for now you can swipe backwards to get out of it after scrolling down (or keep pulling to refresh). Sorry about this. As to your first point, we may provide the graphics on the desktop site!
I'm really excited about the developments! I've already shared the cover collage with ratings as part of my 2024 6 month check in post, but based on the data in StoryGraph (using the total ages read entry in the reading journal per book, I created this Gantt chart animation (available here: https://www.instagram.com/p/C83xtVjgi9e/?img_index=10 and https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/18538521/).
Second template is out now: monthly cover collages with ratings superimposed.
Next up: Summary graphic à la our annual wrap-up one.
Really love this concept, the current ones already look great!! I was wondering if it would be possible to have an option to exclude "not a book" items from the wrap up graphics. I use that feature to give myself credit for fanfic that I read, but I feel like that I don't always want to include those if I'm sharing on social media, for various reasons. Also they typically don't have cover art, so doesn't look so great with the cover collage.
toopunkrockforshul This will probably be handled when we give the option to exclude certain books from the reading goal or have 'private books'!
Nadia I love this feature and can't wait to use it more. Without an option for private books, I'm limited though. I want to share my stats with my work bookgroup... but not all my reads are work friendly. It'll be great advertising for StoryGraph if I can share these graphics more widely. Giving an option toe exclude certain books is essential.
First template is out now: monthly cover collages without ratings. A version with ratings coming soon.
To get your graphics, head to any month's stats page and click the share icon up top or the "Share cover collage" link down below!
Nadia This is a fabulous enhancement! As on 🔥 as the UK weather currently 🥵
😁
I had to restart my app, but there it is, “generating graphic” once I click the link. Splendid 👏
tuftymctavish So glad you love it!!
We'll be delivering monthly wrap-up templates soon!
There'll be three varieties:
Well, that's the plan anyway! Let's see what we can do! :-D
Aiming to have at least the cover collage option out before July 1st.
Nadia that all sounds wonderful
It will all be really easy to print the covers for a reading journal that way!
So neat
Nadia Would it be possible to have a pretty “in progress” template too? Here are all the covers for the books I’m currently reading - that aren’t featured in the wrap-up (yet) - and my percentage progress through the active ones? Perhaps from the Currently Reading panel on the home page?
tuftymctavish This only graphics coming in this round are the ones listed above but maybe that's an idea for the future. The calendar graphic will have in progress reads. For now, I guess you could screenshot the progress tracker or the currently reading page. One day we'll have thumbnails by the progress tracker on the homepage too.
Hello! Do you mean separate to the monthly Stats and Books Read pages? Because eventually we'll have a cover view that'll enable you to just get a collage of covers for the month when looking at the books read in any given month. Attached is a screenshot of my August Books Read page.
Nadia That's pretty much exactly what I meant!