Hi all!

I’ve had people ask about how I keep track of my stats, and with the clear ur shit readathon coming up, I’m probably not the only one wanting to track quite what a challenge that is. I’ve been using both these documents since the beginning of the year, and I wouldn’t be without them now. Both are fairly simple, but can be edited for your needs.

Click below to skip to the bits you’re interested in.

• How do I use them?
• The links
• Editing drop down links
• How do I get my monthly wrap charts?

How do I use them?

So, I swear by these spreadsheets. They keep me super organised, help me manage my book collection and I find them way more useful than Goodreads in tracking my reading stats. The example ones are mostly empty, I’ve left a few example lines in so you can see how they work, but this is how my stats look now that I’ve got a year’s worth of data in them.

2020 Reading Log:

I absolutely love the days per book and books per month numbers as it lets me see how much I’m reading on average, as well as my books per month breakdown. And of course I love to see my genre split. I’ve also read 34 5 star books so far this year, which is amazing. I’m having a great reading year.

My whole library:

Please don’t talk to me about my TBR…. yes I have 222 books to read, this is why I need the clear ur shit readathon! I don’t use most of these stats a lot, but I do like looking at my genre split and my balance of retail sources, as I’m trying to use Amazon a little less. A lot of those are kindle books and audible audiobooks, but I’m trying to reduce the amount of print books I buy from Amazon.

The links:

Blank library document: Click here

Blank 2020 reading log: Click here

Blank 2021 reading log: Click here

Select File > Make a copy and you’ll have your own saved version to edit as you please.

To edit drop down menus:

For my example I will be adding a genre to the Blank Library Document.

In the RAW tab, select any box in the genre column. Right click and scroll to data validation and this box will appear:

Select Cell range and alter the text to RAW!J2:J713:

Add your genres to Criteria as listed, with a comma between each. Make sure you know the specific wording/spelling of your genres as you’ll need that to fix your stats. I’m going to add Picture book here.

Hit save! You can now select picture book, but it doesn’t show in your stats page.

Head to stats! Highlight the following cells: Comics and the two cells after it. Copy and paste those cells directly below, as many times as you need for the genres you’re adding. You’ll get a pop up warning, select ‘Don’t show this again for 5 minutes’ and carry on.

These are showing as ‘false’ as the sample texts in the blank library file do not have any of those genres. As you add books, the ‘false’ result will fix itself. Leave them alone to do that!

Now you have two comics lines, edit the one you just pasted to match your new genre:

You will need to select the cell next to it that shows the number of books, and edit the formula to look for your new genre. Here is a before and after:

You must make sure the spelling/spacing matches exactly. If I had put in Picturebook in the formula, it wouldn’t have found it.

Ta-da!

If you want to edit the existing genres, use these exact same steps but overwrite the ones I already have instead of adding a new one. To edit sources follow these exact steps, but use column K instead of J in the Library Document. If you want to edit the reading log, use P for genre and M for source.

How I get my monthly wrap up chart:

In the Charts tab of the Reading Log document, you’ll find an empty chart. Click the hamburger menu and select Edit chart and you’ll get this menu:

This is pretty simple. Select the grid to the right of data range and it’ll let you navigate your spreadsheet behind a pop up:

Go to Reading Log, find the books you read in the appropriate month, and highlight all of their genres in column P.

Hit OK. Head to Customize > Chart title and axis and you can add a title for the month in Title text.

I tend to use the same chart and update it each month, but if you wanted to keep them, just select the whole chart and copy and paste it each month.

I use these genre split charts in my wrap ups and I use my reading log to pull together my page counts too, which makes it a lot easier for tracking my monthly vs yearly progress.

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If you have any questions, drop them in the comments and I’ll try to help.