About
What is Luku, and how did it come to be? Get ready to read.
Greetings stranger,
Luku is a personal book tracking app for readers who want to keep track of what they read, how much time they spend reading, and their reading progress. It was built out of frustration with existing book tracking services that lack proper time tracking, have poor data export, or are silos of one system.
The Finnish word "luku" literally means "a chapter" and "something read". It's a brilliant word for both meanings.
Data sources
Luku enriches your book data using several free and legal, online data sources. When you add a book, we search these services to find covers, descriptions, page counts, and other metadata.
Built with
- Supabase — database and authentication
- Cloudflare R2 — image storage and caching
- Vercel — hosting and deployment
- Upstash Redis — rate limiting
- Jimp — image processing
- Next.js — React framework
- TypeScript — type-safe code
- SCSS — styling
Why I built Luku
I'm a CTO at a web agency. I have a team to manage, clients to keep happy, and code to review. I really shouldn't have time to build a book tracking app. I already have plenty of side projects, and you know how those go, some stick, some fade away. Then there's my Mastodon server to run. I'm always working on something, 24/7. No time for new things, right?
But I couldn't find one book tracking app that actually worked for me, and it was slowly killing me inside.
The problem
I read every day. Not "when I find time", every day. It's part of my routine, like morning coffee.
And I read everything. Tech books. AI research. Business stuff. Non-fiction in English about whatever I'm curious about this month. I like learning new things, always have. Fiction less so these days, though sometimes I'll re-read a favourite like Lord of the Rings or listen to the Andy Serkis narration again.
I read in every format too. Physical books. E-books with a speed reader. Audiobooks at 2x speed, yes, even in foreign languages. Constantly. While doing dishes, while walking, while running. I'm a runner, I like my long runs, I can get through a decent chunk of a book during a half marathon.
And I'm a bit of a tracker (yes, I'm downplaying it). I like seeing the numbers. How many books this year. How many hours this week. Am I on pace for my goal or falling behind. Progress bars filling up. Some people find that tedious. For me it's genuinely rewarding. Seeing a reading streak grow, watching the yearly counter tick up, that's motivating. Call it being on the spectrum, call it whatever, but I need the data. I want to see the progress.
So I needed an app that could handle all of this. Different formats, different speeds, proper time and page stats.
Simple, right?
The silo problem
Here's what kept frustrating me: I use a lot of devices. Mac for work. Linux because I like it. Windows for gaming. iPhone in my pocket. I switch between them constantly throughout the day.
Most book tracking apps? iOS only. The beautiful, well-designed apps that actually track time properly, all locked to one platform. So if I'm at my desk on Linux and want to log a reading session, I have to pull out my phone.
I accepted that limitation for years. But my data was still trapped. No export. What if the dev just decides to shut it down some day? There goes everything. These apps are silos. Beautiful silos, but silos.
I don't want my reading history locked in someone else's app. I've been burned before. Goodreads shut down their API years ago. Services disappear. Developers move on. Companies pivot.
I want my data portable. Exportable. Mine.
Own your data. My mantra.
What I tried
Margins is a great app. Handles audiobooks well, tracks time smoothly. But it couldn't find about 10% of my books – mostly Finnish literature. No manual entry, no data export, iOS only. The developer replies to emails quickly, but by then I already had my own ideas forming.
Bookshelf had manual entry, CSV export, supported different formats. But features started changing overnight. Yearly wrapped lost its book covers. Things kept shifting.
Storygraph. Hardcover. A dozen others. Each one had something wrong. Clumsy UI. Too much social noise. Not enough features I needed. No way to add books that weren't in their database. Web versions that feel like afterthoughts.
None of them solved my problem: I read on many devices, in many formats, and I want to track it all in one place I can access from anywhere.
What I actually wanted
A reading timer that works whether I'm reading, speed-reading, or listening at 2x. Progress tracking across all formats. Yearly goals with pace calculations, stats I could look at easily and not buried in menus.
I wanted a web app that works on any device, any browser, any operating system. And a native iOS app for when I want the nice stuff, Dynamic Island showing my timer, Live Activities on the lock screen.
Same data everywhere. Synced. Accessible. And my data exportable. CSV. JSON. Anytime. No restrictions.
So I built one
I'm a web developer by trade, been doing this for almost 30 years. I figured, how hard could coding an app be? Harder than I expected, obviously.
I'll admit, a lot of this app is what you'd call "vibe coded". Coming from a web-only background, I'm not entirely comfortable with software engineering. I know my stuff when it comes to the web, but apps are a different story. I'm also a sysop, though not really a cloud expert. Still, I want to learn. I'm a learner at heart. Being a programmer means learning something new every day.
This is my design, my specs, the result of countless hours of banging my head against the wall. And I love it. The daily tinkering. Breaking things and putting them back together.
I call it Luku. I saw no other app called that.
What Luku does
You add a book. Search finds it, or you add it manually if it's obscure.
You start a timer when you read. Stop it when you're done. Your reading time is logged. Works whether you're reading physical pages, speed-reading on a screen, or listening at double speed.
You update your progress. Pages or percentage, your choice.
You see your stats. Books this year. Time spent reading. Your pace. A calendar showing which days you read.
You use it in a browser. Any browser. Or on iOS with a proper native app. Same data, same account, everywhere.
You export everything whenever you want. Your data, your formats, no restrictions.
The honest reality
Book tracking apps are a tiny niche. This probably won't make money. That's fine.
I built Luku because I needed it. I use it every single day. If other people find it useful too, that's amazing.
The point isn't to compete with Goodreads or become the next big thing. The point is to have a book tracker that works the way I want, on every device I use, with data I actually own.
If you have the same frustrations, give Luku a try. If you don't, that's cool too. Feel free to reach out to me at rolle@luku.app or on Mastodon at rolle@mementomori.social. Happy reading!
– Rolle