StoryShots Review: The Best Free Book Summary App?
StoryShots is a free book summary app that lets you quickly read, listen to, or watch the key takeaways from tons of books in just minutes.
The app also has a subscription plan that removes ads and unlocks extra features.
But is the free version good enough, or should you consider upgrading?
Let’s dive in and find out.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Free version offers good value.
- Affordable pricing plans.
- StoryShots AI for custom summaries.
- Visual infographics/mind maps.
- Easy-to-navigate interface.
Cons:
- Small book collection.
- Poor text summary design.
- No interactive features.
- Premium features lack value.
Free vs Paid
To make it easier to understand, here’s a comparison between the free and paid versions of the StoryShots app.
| Features | Free | Paid |
|---|---|---|
| Access to all summaries | Yes | Yes |
| Ad-free experience | No | Yes |
| StoryShorts AI | No | Yes |
| Offline reading and listening | No | Yes |
| Read and listen at the same time | No | Yes |
| Full customization in text summaries | No | Yes |
| Full ebooks and audiobooks | No | Yes |
| PDF, Kindle, and desktop support | No | Yes |
| Infographics/mind maps support | No | Yes |
| Multi-language support | No | Yes |
| Suggest and upvote new books | No | Yes |
| Suggest and upvote new features | Yes | Yes |
The comparison table alone isn’t enough, so I’ve also added some screenshots to help you see the difference between the free and paid versions for yourself.
App Interface: First Impressions
StoryShots keeps things simple with its user-friendly interface.
The homepage is packed with book summaries, making it easy to get started right away.
If you want to explore more, the Discover tab is where the real treasure lies—a gold mine for book lovers.
Read more: Headway app review
There’s a lot to unpack in the Discover tab, so I’ll save the details for a separate section to give you a clearer picture.
What Stands Out
If you’re wondering what makes the StoryShots app unique, this section covers the highlights.
1. StoryShots AI
One of the standout features of the premium plan is StoryShots AI, which lets you generate summaries of books outside the app’s collection.
For example, if you want a summary of How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell, but it’s not in the app’s library, you can create one using this feature.
Here’s how:
- Open the Discover tab.
- Tap the Search icon and type the book’s name.
- Tap on the “Generate AI Summary“.
- Enter the book title and author’s name (make sure the spelling is correct).
- Check the publication date. The book must have been published before the listed date for the tool to work.
- Tap Generate Summary.
While this feature helps get a general idea of the book, don’t expect it to match the quality of summaries written by humans.
It’s more of a tool for quick insights than a replacement for detailed summaries.
If you’ve used Blinkist, you’ll notice they offer a similar feature, but theirs extends to videos, articles, and PDFs.
That said, StoryShots could make this feature more accessible by placing it in its own tab instead of hiding it under the Discover section.
2. Suggest New Books and Features
Initially, I didn’t pay much attention to these options, but they’re worth mentioning.
Under the Settings tab, you’ll find two features:
- Suggest and Upvote New Books: You can suggest up to 30 books for the app to add. Books with the most votes get prioritized.
- Suggest and Upvote New Features: Similarly, you can propose up to 10 features to enhance the app.
Note: You need a premium membership to suggest books.
3. Infographic / Mind Map
If you prefer a quick visual overview of a book instead of reading or listening to the full summary, this feature is for you.
When you tap the Read button on a summary, you’ll find an option for Infographics/Mind Maps.
These provide a concise, visual representation of a book’s main ideas.
This is especially useful if you want to share ideas with someone or include them in a project.
4. Watch Summaries
StoryShots offers a unique feature that lets you watch book summaries.
Using AI, the app generates videos and uploads them to YouTube, embedding them directly into the app.
Additionally, it includes relevant interviews or podcasts about the book, if available on YouTube.
While not everyone may use this feature, it’s a nice bonus.
Read more: Wiser app review
5. Audiobook or Podcast
For a deeper dive into a book, you can choose the Audiobook or Podcast option under the Listen button in the summary.
This gives you access to longer, more in-depth audio content.
Like the video summaries, this feature is available with the subscription plan.
6. Organized by Sections
The app excels in organizing content.
In the Discover tab, you’ll find a quick menu on the left side with categories like eBooks, audiobooks, and more.
One feature I found especially convenient is the ability to sort books by audio length (<10m, <20m, <30m, and <40m).
This makes it easy to find summaries that fit your schedule.
7. Personal Bookshelf
StoryShots provides a personal digital bookshelf where you can:
- Add your favorite books.
- See your downloads.
- Track finished summaries.
- Check books you started but didn’t finish.
8. What’s Missing?
While StoryShots has some great features, it does fall short in a few areas:
- Interactive Tools: Many users expect features like daily goals, badges, or leaderboards to keep them engaged. Unfortunately, these are missing.
- Highlighting and Notes: You can’t highlight or save notes from summaries. While the app claims this feature is available for premium users, I couldn’t find it anywhere. If you do, feel free to DM me on X.
- Smaller Library: Although the app claims to have over 300,000 summaries, the actual collection is much smaller—around 400 books as of now. However, they do frequently add new titles.
Despite its limitations, StoryShots offers a solid mix of unique and useful features, especially for book lovers who want quick takeaways.
Read more: 12min app review
Audio Summaries: My Experience
When it comes to audio quality, the StoryShots app does a great job.
Most of the audio content is narrated by human voices, though you will come across some AI-generated audio as well.
I personally enjoy the podcast-style audio summaries where two people discuss the book and share their thoughts.
This format feels more engaging, and I’m glad StoryShots includes it.
However, the audio controller could use some improvements.
It offers basic features like play/pause, skip buttons, and a speed controller, but that’s about it.
You can’t minimize the controller to browse other books while listening, which is a bit inconvenient.
Overall, though, I had a great experience with the audio quality on the StoryShots app.
Text Summaries: My Experience
Unfortunately, my reading experience with StoryShots wasn’t as good.
If you’re using the free version, the book summaries are presented in an article format.
Essentially, they write the summaries, publish them on their blog, and embed those articles into the app.
This means you can’t adjust the font, background, or anything else—it’s just a basic blog layout with headings.
For premium members, the experience is slightly better.
You get a built-in reader where you can change fonts, text size, and background.
However, even with these features, I found the text summaries disappointing.
The structure is poorly designed, with large empty spaces and an overall clunky layout.
This might just be my personal opinion, but I’ll include some screenshots below so you can judge for yourself.
Pricing Plans
When it comes to pricing, StoryShots is the most affordable book summary app I’ve come across so far.
Here are the subscription options:
- Monthly: ₹499
- Yearly: ₹3,999 ($20)
- Lifetime: ₹1,499 ($60)
Note: Pricing may vary depending on ongoing promotions or discounts. Keep an eye out for deals to get even better value.
My Takeaway
Let’s wrap this up.
I have two perspectives on the StoryShots app:
- Compared to competitors: If we put StoryShots side by side with apps like Blinkist, it doesn’t quite measure up. The book collection is much smaller, and it lacks certain key features.
- Subscription benefits: What do you actually get with a subscription? An ad-free experience and access to StoryShots AI. While these are nice additions, the other premium features don’t add much value for an average reader.
Overall, StoryShots is a solid app if you’re using the free version. But if you’re considering going premium, I wouldn’t recommend it.
