Shortform: My favourite App for Book Summaries

Over the past 6 years, I've tried almost every paid and free book summary app on the market.

I discovered Shortform about a year ago from Youtuber and author Ali Abdaal. Since then, I have been using Shortform weekly. (My mom, too bought it and cannot stop reading 🤓)

Shortform vs. other book summary apps

What are the features of Shortform that make it stand out from other book summary apps?

"Way more than book summaries" - Shortform

💎 Quality over quantity: By offering only a carefully chosen selection of book summaries, decision fatigue is reduced.

🔄 Book comparisons: The Authors' statements are analyzed and compared to other literature and current research.

❓ Reflection Questions: Acquired knowledge is tested through self-reflection questions helping to implement the learnings into your daily life.

🧅 Shortforms unique content structure: Shortform rarely follows the table of contents of the summarized book. They create their logical content structure.

🖨 Printable PDF downloads: Shortform offers printable PDF downloads. You can print out the summaries and underline them by hand.

🌲 Offline mode: Shortform has an offline mode that allows you to read without an internet connection.

📌 Recommendations feature: Shortform has a “Recommendations” feature that suggests books based on interests and reading preferences.

👁‍🗨 Sentence View feature: Shortform provides a “Sentence View” feature which allows you to read through a sentence-by-sentence breakdown of the book.

My idea to improve Shortform's book summaries

I don't want to give the impression to possess the competence to do a better job than the people at Shortform. However, I have noticed 2 things that could be improved.

📹 A short 3-minute video summarizing the overall concept of the book.

🔎 When clicking the table of contents, no subheadings or headings are shown. Having a table of contents with hyperlinks to the corresponding paragraph would be nice.

This post is not sponsored by Shortform. However, if someone from Shortform reads this, I am happy to collaborate :) - edit 27.10.23

I've been using Shortform for about 2 years and now I’ve partnered with them as an affiliate! Use my link for a 20% discount on the annual subscription. That’s about 2 and a half months of the service for free.

Shortform Book Summaries I am currently reading

Have a look at the post on my favourite Book Of 2023: The Productivity Project by Chris Bailey.