Readwise is taking on Kindle and Kobo for ebook supremacy

For the last several years, Readwise has been building tools for power readers. There’s the eponymous product, Readwise, which stores and categorizes your Kindle highlights to help you remember what you’ve read. There’s Readwise Reader, an app for reading newsletters, PDFs, and web articles you’ve saved for later. And now there’s Readwise Books, a full-fledged platform for buying, reading, and talking about books. Readwise Books is currently in beta, available through invite or to existing Readwise subscribers.

I’ve been testing the app for a few days, and it’s a much bigger take on reading than most. Tristan Homsi and Daniel Doyon, Readwise’s cofounders, like to call the platform “Strava for reading” because it can track how long, how much, and how fast you read, and it can show that information to friends you make in the Readwise Books app. The app’s homepage is a feed of what other people are reading,