Behind the Scenes with StoryStats Creator Shawn Buck
One of our favorite things about the Silent Book Club community is how our local chapter organizers find so many unique ways to support and encourage each other.
If you've spent time on Instagram or TikTok lately, you might have seen readers sharing custom graphic cards featuring their daily reading stats—like pages turned, hours logged, and book progress over their morning coffee.
Those graphics come from StoryStats, a new tool built by Shawn Buck, the organizer of our SBC Cape Town chapter in South Africa. Shawn wanted to give readers a simple way to celebrate their pages without turning it into a competition, and we were thrilled to help him host it right here on the SBC website.
We caught up with Shawn to chat about the viral trend that inspired him, vibe-coding with AI, and the joy of seeing how people use it all over the world.
What inspired you to create StoryStats?
StoryStats was inspired by a trend that went viral last year with a certain running app, I don’t know if I’m legally allowed to mention it, but basically people were posting their stats from their runs and making all sorts of fun creative videos with them. It was nice for people to share and be proud of being active and doing something they enjoyed. I was definitely jealous!
I don’t run. I don’t like running at all, but as a reader, I was jealous that there wasn’t the same kind of thing for us. I mean there are trackers for reading that show you how much you’ve read over the year, but nothing I could find that focused on the singular experience of sitting to read. We should be proud that we sat down and turned off from the world for 60 minutes, 30 minutes or five minutes. That is something worthy of bragging about, which sparked the idea of how we could create a similar thing for readers. People started making little graphics on Canva, but I thought, “I’d love to democratize this and make it very easy for people to get their stats card.” And thus, StoryStats was born! I used Claude’s vibe-coding to build out the functionality and Silent Book Club was generous enough to let me host it on their website.
How does it work?
It’s free to use and doesn’t require any account or login. All you have to do is put in your your stats for your reading in the short form, like how how long you read, how many pages, and how far you are in the book. It then automatically generates a little graphic for you that you can download and use however you like. You can put it on top of a photo or a video, showing your view while reading, a selfie of you and your book, or the coffee you were having. It’s really nice to just share that you read today. It’s not about competition or bragging about who read faster, it’s just about being proud that you got in some time to read today, and that’s special.
What kind of feedback have you gotten from the community?
The feedback has been really amazing! People have provided really cool suggestions and shared such amazing pictures and videos of them using the tool. It’s been really great to hear from people who have been really struggling with reading, but said this might actually get them excited to read again. There are a lot of returning users, which is exciting. People are using it regularly as part of their reading habits. That’s what I wanted it to be: Something useful, not just a fun one-off gimmick.
What have you most enjoyed about seeing it out in the wild?
I’ve really enjoyed seeing how many different places in the world this tool is being used and different people’s views of where they’re reading. That paired with whatever book they’re reading is awesome. A Silent Book Club gathering allows you to get so many good book recommendations just by looking around, and similarly, in StoryStats, you can share the book you’re reading with the world.
Have any stats you want to share?
Watching the backend usage has been fun! We’ve had over 1000 downloads so far, which is mindblowing. That’s 92,200 total pages read, 2,293 hours of reading, and 160 books marked completed. It just keeps gaining more and more traction!
Any plans for the future of StoryStats?
I’m not totally sure yet! I want to keep building features that make the experience more customizable yet simple and easy. I definitely want to provide for different modes of reading, so you can track your stats whether it’s for a physical book, an e-book, or an audiobook. There are also so many other activities that don’t get the same treatment athletic activities get, so I’ve already talked to friends in the crafting world who want something similar. Whether it’s running, reading, or knitting, these activities are important and we should be proud of them!