Reading Tracker Spreadsheet 2022

Apparently it’s already been SIX years since I shared my very first Google spreadsheet to track my reading throughout the year and it’s all kinds of amazing that people are still using them after such a long time.

After so many years, the yearly reading tracker stayed mostly the same and I think I haven’t updated the spreadsheet in the last two years. There just wasn’t much left to add/change. BUT this year I felt like adding a little something extra. So, if you’re new here, buckle in for a wild ride of awesome stats for your reading year, if you’re already familiar with my spreadsheet: this year I finally have something new again for you too. (also, as was requested: space for more genres!)

What will you get from this reading tracker?

• Keep track of all the books you read and find lots of statistics on them (including: genre, target audience, book length, authors and their gender, translators, narrators, and much more)
• Keep track of all the books you acquired (including keeping track of ARCs!).
  Stats will even include how much you saved by borrowing a book instead of buying it.
• Tag books (to track topics, how you felt about the books, settings and more) and later compose a list of books by tags (and of course statistics on them as well)
• Always see the state and progress of your TBR (if you want, it’s optional)
• Track reading challenges
• Easily choose your own color scheme with just one small change in the settings

Some important things to know about this spreadsheet:

• this reading tracker is made in Google’s Sheets and only to be used there!
  Downloading a copy and importing it into Excel won’t work. There are too many functions and scripts at work that are exclusive to Google’s sheets.
• I HIGHLY recommend reading the manual I put together, to understand how the spreadsheet is to be used. While a large part will be apparent, there are some things that won’t be.
• When following the link to the spreadsheet, you will be asked to make a copy of the file to get your own that is just a copy of mine

How to get the most out of tags

When it comes to keeping track of my reads I make extensive use of tags, and by that I mean by now I have easily 300 different tags in use. Not only does it give me even more interesting statistics, but it also helps me find books again to make all kinds of lists.

If you are new to the idea of tagging, I’ll give you some examples to take your reading tracking to the next level in 2022.

Tagging can really be used for all kinds of information. Everything you think could use its own column can actually just be tracked as a tag. Example: Something I’m always curious about is my most read publishers. So this is something that can easily be tracked via tags.

One of my most used tag categories is all about diversity. I use tags like “BIPOC author”, “queer MC” (I even go into detail here and have a tag for every queer identity too), “MC with disability”, “BIPOC MC”. There are lots of options!

Something else I really like to track, not so much for stats but to later easily find those books again, are tags that describe how I felt about a book. “Favorite” is an obvious one, but I also use tags like “made me laugh/cry/sad/…”. I track if a book was a disappointment or went beyond my expectations.

Another fun thing to track via tags is settings. While “set in space” and “set in the US” are probably always my most used ones, I’m happy to see that I also visited some other places too.

In general, I highly recommend thinking about what you’re usually interested in / what stats you would like to see at the end of the year (e.g. compare how many white VS BIPOC authors I’ve read) Have a look at other people’s statistics and think about what you want. Start doing this at the beginning of the year, so you don’t have to go back later to add these tags and maybe forget some books.

What is new in 2022?

The 2022 reading tracker did not get any mayor update like last year’s did. I did add a translator column to the Read tab though which was an update that happened early/immediately in 2021 and some might already be aware of that change.

Note for long-time spreadsheet users

If you tweaked an old version of mine (pre-2021) that you want to reuse in 2022, instead of my new one, be aware that there might be an issue with the “released” column in the Read tab! Those values are still limited to 2020 as the max value (in case you didn’t already fix that in 2021)

How to fix the release year issue

(you don’t need to do this if you’re going to use my 2022 version of the spreadsheet!)
Simply mark the whole column minus the top (header) cell. Go to: Data > Data Validation. Here you can adjust the Criteria value to allow higher values than 2020.

Get the 2022 reading tracker spreadsheet

You can now access the 2022 version of my book tracking spreadsheet and its manual.

My copy includes a few data entries as examples to better understand how to use some tabs and cells. Feel free to immediately delete those.