How to track your reading
To track your reading, record each book when you start and finish it, and log the minutes or pages you read each day. A notebook, a spreadsheet or an app all work, and the best one is the one you'll keep up. Our free spreadsheet template counts your books, pages and reading streak for you.
By Ellis Newton, Co-founder and CTO, ChaptifyPublished
What should you track?
At minimum, track each book's title and the dates you started and finished it. That's enough to count your books for the year and see how long each one took. Add more only if you'll use it:
| Track this | If you want to know |
|---|---|
| Title, author, start and finish dates | How many books you read, and how long each took |
| Pages | How much you read, not just how many books |
| Format (print, e-book, audio) | Where your reading actually happens |
| Rating and a line of notes | What to recommend, and what to reread |
| Minutes or pages each day | Whether reading is becoming a habit, and your streak |
The daily log is the part most people skip, and it's the one that matters if you're trying to read more. A list of finished books shows the result. A daily log shows the habit behind it, including the weeks it slipped.
Free reading tracker template
Download the reading tracker (.xlsx). It's a free spreadsheet with three working sheets:
- Books: one row per book, with title, author, pages, format, start and finish dates, rating and notes. It works out how many days each book took.
- Reading log: one row per day, with the minutes and pages you read. It keeps a running reading streak, which resets if you skip a day or log a zero.
- Summary: set the year and your goal, and it counts books finished, books still to go, pages, minutes, the days you read, your current streak and your longest one.
It uses ordinary formulas, with no macros and no account, and it's a standard .xlsx file, so it opens in Excel, Google Sheets (File, then Import) and Apple Numbers. It's free to use, copy and share.
Paper, spreadsheet or app: which is best?
The best way to track your reading is the one you'll keep doing. Each option suits a different kind of reader:
| Paper journal | Spreadsheet | App | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Costs | A notebook | Nothing | Often free, sometimes paid |
| Good at | No screen, and writing it down is part of the pleasure | Totals and streaks worked out for you, your data stays in your own file | Logging from your phone in seconds, timers, reminders, seeing what friends read |
| Weak at | Adding things up by hand | Fiddly to fill in on a phone | Your data lives with a company, and features differ a lot between apps |
| Suits | Readers who journal anyway | Readers who like numbers and want control | Readers building a daily habit, or reading with friends |
If you're not sure, start with the template. If you find you've stopped opening it, that tells you an app might suit you better, not that tracking doesn't work for you.
How I track my reading
By Ellis Newton, co-founder of Chaptify
Before Chaptify, I didn't use anything. I would read a book on occasion, and then forget to ever read another. When I made a goal of reading more, I liked using Goodreads to track my books. It worked well, but I had another problem: I couldn't actually get myself to sit down and read each day. With Chaptify I've been able to do both. I hope that what has helped me will help others reach their own reading goals.
How do you track reading progress within a book?
Track progress as a page number for print books, as a percentage for e-books, and as time listened for audiobooks. Pick one unit for each book and stick to it, because a page count and a percentage can't be added together. For the daily log, minutes are the most consistent unit across formats: a minute of reading is a minute whether it's print, e-book or audio.
How do you track how long you read?
Time your reading with a timer, and write down the minutes when you stop, rather than guessing at the end of the day. A timer also works as a start signal, which is the idea behind the Pomodoro Technique for reading.
Chaptify, the app we make, works this way: each session you run with its reading timer is logged automatically, counts toward your streak, and adds to your stats. It also doesn't cap how many books you can track for free.
How do you keep tracking once you start?
Log at the moment you stop reading, not at the end of the day, and look back at the log once a week. Tracking is a habit too, and it sticks the same way: attached to something you already do, in this case closing the book. How to build a reading habit has the research behind that, including why one missed day doesn't matter.
A year of records is also more accurate than memory. Most surveys of reading ask people to recall how many books they read in a whole year. Our reading statistics page explains why those figures vary so much.
Sources
- Lally, van Jaarsveld, Potts and Wardle, European Journal of Social Psychology 40 (2010). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. Checked 23 September 2026.
Published by Chaptify LLC, the maker of Chaptify, a reading tracker and social reading app for iPhone.