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App Imp

Books & reading

  1. Market

    Installs
    4288.9M

    Across 9 of 12 apps we could match.

    • Google Play Books & Audiobooks: 3,850,215,150 installs
    • Wattpad: 344,651,632 installs
    • Goodreads: 32,383,948 installs
    • WebNovel: 32,099,920 installs
    • Epic: 14,121,179 installs
    • Inkitt Galatea: 12,208,140 installs
    • Bookmory: 2,717,988 installs
    • Yestory: 461,459 installs
    • Skybrary: 1,593 installs
    • 90% leader share. Google Play Books & Audiobooks, by Google Play installs, across the 9 of 12 apps we could match
    • #6 Book rank. Wattpad, top grossing, the best rank any app here holds
    • $3.99 median price. Lowest in-app price, median over the 9 apps that list one. 9 of 12 charge.
    • 11 of 12 recently updated. Updated in the 30 days before 2026-10-05

  2. Competition

    1. Goodreads23 Sep756k ratings
    2. Wattpad1 Oct706k ratings$59.99 to $89.99 a year
    3. Epic2 Oct519k ratings$4.99 to $13.99
    4. Inkitt Galatea1 Oct297k ratings$69.99 a year
    5. Apple Books14 Sep97k ratings
    6. WebNovel28 Sep48k ratings$0.99 to $99.99
    7. Manobook20 Sep37k ratings$1.99 to $29.99
    8. Bookmory4 Oct16k ratings$30.99 a year
    9. Yestory22 Sep11k ratings$4.99 to $24.99
    10. Google Play Books & Audiobooks17 Sep10k ratings
    11. Skybrary17 Sep3k ratings$49.99 a year
    12. WeRead18 Aug1k ratings$1.99 to $49.99

  3. Reviews

    What 6,906 reviews talk about, every star counted.

    1. Ads+2.1%11 of 12 apps
    2. Wishlist+1.8%12 of 12 apps
    3. Content+0.4%6 of 12 apps
    4. Sync & data+0.2%9 of 12 apps
    5. Login & auth+0.1%11 of 12 apps
    6. UX−0.6%11 of 12 apps
    7. Support−1.3%11 of 12 apps
    8. Limits & caps−1.4%12 of 12 apps
    9. Performance−2.4%12 of 12 apps
    10. Billing−7.9%12 of 12 apps

    We have not counted the wishes for this market yet.

  4. Searches

    Position in Apple’s suggestions
    1510
    010203041
    Countries

    Checked. Nothing to show.

    Google suggests no wishes for this term.

  5. Traffic

    Google Ads, United States, 10 September 2026.

  6. Your test

    Free for 7 days

    What to call it. Where to launch. What a user costs.

    • What to call it
    • Where to launch
    • What a user costs
    • Every review, word for word
    Start free for 7 days

    No card. Nothing to cancel. The counted page stays free either way.

Is there a market for a new books & reading app?

12 apps compete here. They hold 4,288,861,009 installs on Google Play, counted across the 9 we could match. We hold 6,906 of their App Store reviews. Those are counts, not a verdict. The page shows what is unfixed, not whether to build.

How much do books & reading apps charge?

9 of the 12 apps we could check charge inside the app. Half of them start at $3.99 or less.

What do people search for when they want a books & reading app?

We scan 41 App Store storefronts. Typing Books & reading completes to “bookshelf” in 41 of them. Then “booksy” in 37, “woodwork bookshelf” in 32. These are Apple’s own suggestions. They show what gets typed, not how often.

What do users complain about most in books & reading apps?

1. Wishlist: in 12 of 12 apps, 13.1% of reviews (11.3% in Book apps); 2. Ads: in 11 of 12 apps, 12.1% of reviews (10% in Book apps); 3. Content: in 6 of 12 apps, 0.8% of reviews (0.4% in Book apps); 4. Sync & data: in 9 of 12 apps, 0.8% of reviews (0.6% in Book apps). Counted from 6,906 reviews of every star on the 2026-10-05 snapshot, never estimated.

Cited: What RevenueCat measures across subscription apps

Their report has no category matching Books & reading apps, so only all-category figures are shown. A near-match would be a guess.

  • the median app barely grows; the tails are extreme

    median MRR +5.3% YoY · top decile +306% · bottom decile contracting

  • the launch flood vs the incumbency moat

    ~2,000 → 14,700+ new subscription apps per month (Jan 2022 → Jan 2026), yet pre-2020 apps still hold 69% of subscription revenue

  • even top categories take over 100 days to reach $10k revenue

    >100 days to the first $10k

RevenueCat, State of Subscription Apps 2026, 115,000+ apps · $16B+ tracked revenue · >1B transactions. Published industry figures, shown for context; App Imp’s own numbers are counted from reviews and never mixed with these.

How this is counted

We count the reviews we hold again every week. Nothing is guessed. A topic is found by the words a review uses, so the same review always lands in the same place. Every star counts. A share is the part of all reviews here that mention a topic. We compare it with the same share across 339 Book apps, the group most of these apps are in. A topic is a gap when at least 20 reviews mention it, at least half the apps have it, and it comes up at least 1.15 times as often as usual. A problem in one app is that app’s bug. A problem in every app is nobody’s gap.