What is the Litsy app and should you get it?

Litsy is a place to share and discover your favorite books with your favorite people.

The Litsy community is a groundswell of passionate readers, authors, celebrities, and more. Share bookish moments with Quotes, Reviews, and Blurbs. Measure Litfluence to discover your “bookprint” in the world. Explore recommendations from readers, not algorithms.

Oh yeah, want to organize your reading list? Our app has stacks for that, too.

So I’ve seen Litsy referenced in a couple of internet articles now and thought that I would see what the deal is.

What is it?

First of all -because the website doesn’t actually say it- Litsy is an app. A social networking app aimed at us booknerds. The quote above is from the Litsy website and pretty much sums it up. Book Riot described it as “if Instagram and Goodreads had a perfect baby”. This is pretty right. It has the photo aspect of Instagram but the book catalogue of Goodreads.

What device can I use it on?

As far as I can tell, the app is only currently available through the Apple store so you can get it on any iOS/Apple device such as iPhone (which is what I tried) and I’m guessing iPad.

What can you do on it?

You can only do 3 different things: Blurb, Quote and Review. The unique thing about Litsy is that when you want to post something, you must link it to a book. The catalogue of books seems good so far; everything was available when I added some of my read/TBR books onto it, although a couple didn’t yet have covers.

So when you want to post a status update like you may on Instagram, you have to choose a book that is to be associated with the photo. I really like the idea of this because you’re pretty sure that your going to be seeing all bookish things in your feed. I did see some photos that were not books (it was a coffee/pastry or something similar) but they of course still had to be linked to a book, so in general I think the posts will always be book-related. You can also get your “stacks” organised by read, to be read and currently reading.

What’s good about it?

So I’ve only just started using this app but so far, I do like it. It’s easy to use, it looks good and the people I followed via the “suggested list” seem to post some great stuff. It’s not like Bookstagram where it’s all about the photo and it’s different to Goodreads which is primarily for keeping track of your books and posting ratings/reviews.

There is a points system which is measured by “Litfluence”. Ok, I’m not really sure what this is for. It goes up the more people like your reviews etc. but I think that’s all it offers. I guess when people are searching for users to follow, the higher Litfluence you have, the more appealing you’ll be? It’s something unique to Litsy anyway!

What isn’t good about it?

I don’t know if it’s because I’m an older millennial but I’m not glued to my phone 24/7 and I couldn’t care less about apps. I prefer the viewing experience of a PC/laptop and I would really like to see this app move over to browser or desktop app. The app is still really new and I’ve not seen much buzz about it so for this reason, there isn’t a ton of people on it. The “suggested people” were just a few super users and even after adding books and reviews to my profile, it didn’t give me any more suggestions based on genres I read or something similar. You can search for Facebook friends but not for people you follow on Twitter.

Will it help book bloggers?

As a book blogger myself, I am always looking at how I can get my blog noticed (I know it’s not all about the numbers but it is nice to see that people care about what your spending time and hard work on!). Much like any social networking site where you can suggest that people visit your blog, you could sneak some promotion into Litsy. I know the idea of the app is grow the community and give good recommendations/reviews and not use it as a platform for self-promotion so I wouldn’t suggest spamming people. I posted a couple of reviews for books I’d read but at a maximum of 300 words per review, I couldn’t fit much onto it so ended with – “full review is on my blog (link in bio)”.

Should I get it then?

Yes! I think any platform or medium where people can express their love of books is great and should be nourished. The app is still a baby and it may fade into obscurity or it may get huge. I’m going to stick with it and see where it goes so if you want to connect with me on Litsy, my username is BookishDaayla

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Disclaimer: The images used in this post were not taken by me. I am in no way affiliated with Litsy and this “review” is my honest opinion of the app.

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Daayla

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