[HN Gopher] Show HN: A more social, Amazon-free alternative to G...
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Show HN: A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads
Hey HN, I know reading books isn't everyone's thing, but it's
certainly been mine for as long as I can remember. Unfortunately,
I felt like the online book space was missing a platform that does
the book community justice. Goodreads is the go-to "social
platform", but if you've been on Goodreads before, you'll probably
agree that it's not all that social, and overall not all that
exciting. So I set out to build what I personally was looking for
(but could never find). The goal: to give the book community a more
social and streamlined alternative to Goodreads or StoryGraph. We
also felt like it was important for Booqsi to be independent of
Amazon; we care about supporting local bookstores, so every book in
Booqsi links you to Bookshop.org to purchase that book (not
Amazon). Here are some of my favorite features launched as part of
beta: - A book-focused social feed (finally!) - Beautifully-
rendered custom bookshelves to show off to your friends -
Streamlined book recommendations to friends - Easily track reading
goals and books you've read And many more... It's completely free
and easy to use, and we would love your feedback as you explore the
platform.
Author : justinberding
Score : 185 points
Date : 2022-02-28 18:29 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.booqsi.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.booqsi.com)
| bduerst wrote:
| As a potential power user of your platform, let me just say I
| really hope you solve the book recommendations problem, agnostic
| of sales or other influence. I spent almost as much time hunting
| for new books/authors as I do actually reading them.
|
| Social feeds, custom bookshelves, etc. are all already-solved
| problems or window dressing compared to this real gap of creating
| a truly usable book graph.
| all_usernames wrote:
| I really like the idea of a book graph. Heck, if the platform
| suggested that I read the references for books I'm currently
| reading, that would be interesting.
| lacker wrote:
| Very interesting... some feedback.
|
| So I search for "Proust", and the top 8 results are not Proust.
| Since Proust has one extremely famous book, I thought it would
| show up, rather than a bunch of different commentary on Proust.
|
| So I finally find the page for In Search Of Lost Time. However,
| it says none of my friends have read it. Well, of course not - I
| don't have any Booqsi friends yet. So, there's just nothing I can
| do on this page.
|
| Next I looked for The Power And The Glory. At least this page has
| a summary of the book. But, also none of my friends read it, and
| there's nothing I can do here.
|
| Next, Consilience. Same thing. Basically I search for a book, I
| get maybe nothing, maybe a summary, and then there's nothing else
| I can do on that page.
|
| So, I want to like this site, but I'm just finding nothing I can
| do here.
|
| Personally, I love books but I hate Goodreads. I just don't care
| that a hundred thousand random people prefer The Twilight Saga
| Complete Collection to The Death of Ivan Ilych.
|
| I would be really interested to read a well-written paragraph
| that said, hey, if you like Nabokov and Borges, then you might
| like this other author. That sort of recommendation is what I
| occasionally get from reading blogs or tweets from people with a
| similar literary taste to mine, and it's very useful, I find most
| books through some sort of recommendation.
|
| Goodreads has this mistaken idea that I care about the average
| person's opinion of a book. A book is not a can opener. Everyone
| wants to open a can, everyone opens cans in the same way,
| everyone appreciates a can opener that successfully opens cans.
|
| Anyway, I hope you do succeed in building a Goodreads
| alternative, because I would love to spend more time reading
| about books, reading good books, discussing books, and Goodreads
| is just not providing that experience.
| justinberding wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback! The book's info page doesn't have a
| lot going on, except to see some info about the book (or add it
| to a shelf, or recommend it to a friend) and see if any of your
| friends have read it.
|
| Your comments about Goodreads and the average random person's
| opinion is spot on and one of the inspirations for wanting to
| build something new. I noticed that its my actual friends and
| family -- not necessarily a random person -- that have the
| biggest impact on what I read next. A book rec from a friend
| you respect goes a long way. Booqsi is attempting to harness
| some of that.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| Dear @justinberding is there an API for Booqsi data? Are you
| welcoming corporate re-tweets of content? Who is the best person
| to reach out to?
| justinberding wrote:
| We're pulling all of our book data from the Google Books API,
| so Booqsi itself doesn't store any of that data. As for
| reaching out, feel free to email contact@booqsi.com.
| underyx wrote:
| Another alternative I've seen recently is https://oku.club/
| [deleted]
| wnolens wrote:
| I'd love to have a reading list well-managed and with minimal
| friction to add and track (without buying yet).
|
| I use both 1. Amazon shopping list, and 2. a custom chrome
| extension -to- airtable action.
|
| The second lets me track who recommended this to me and why I
| would want to read this. Usually I have this context only at the
| moment of discovering a new book (often on HN, or blogs I
| frequent) but it's incredibly helpful when deciding what next
| book to read.
| erikwiffin wrote:
| Ironically, the feature that keeps me from using Goodreads is
| that I want it to be _less_ social. Do you have the option for
| private bookshelves?
| justinberding wrote:
| Ha, totally get that as well. Yes, private bookshelves are
| available! The only ones that are "public" are the shelves on
| your Profile.
| snthd wrote:
| https://openlibrary.org/help/faq/reading-log
| [deleted]
| supermdguy wrote:
| I've been using this for a few months now and it's great! Love
| the more nuanced options for reviewing and tagging books.
| muhammadusman wrote:
| I'm building something similar over at https://bookends.app.
| Still relatively new as well.
|
| Good luck and I wish you all the success!
| justinberding wrote:
| Looks cool. Good luck!
| personjerry wrote:
| There's one of these every other week. IMO "more social" and
| "Amazon-free" aren't the 10x improvements you need to compete
| with Goodreads
| Dave_TRS wrote:
| "more social" and "Amazon-free" may also not lend themselves
| well to bundling together. For me personally I'd love an
| Amazon-free version of goodreads that was built by someone who
| actually cared and updated it. The social stuff is a huge turn
| off though especially knowing it is being forced on the user
| judging from the other comments here
|
| Reminds me of Brave browser that lumps "privacy browser" with
| "browser stuffed full of weird crypto crap", the latter I could
| do without.
| kevmo wrote:
| This is awesome, but I feel like you're going to struggle to
| compete if all the content is behind a membership wall.
| justinberding wrote:
| Totally get the sentiment, but also felt like a membership wall
| was required for building out a platform that is primarily
| social in nature. Would be interesting to see what anonymous
| features we can provide down the road.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I suspect the anonymous features are how you get more road. I
| assume that 99% of people, even with an interest in an
| alternative to Goodreads and Librarything, are going to
| bounce when faced with registration, and since they haven't
| seen anything, won't remember anything.
|
| If you're going to demand registration, I think you have to
| make a good value proposition off the bat. Probably in the
| form of a specific practical way the site can be used as an
| application, with the social thing as a bonus. Right now it
| looks like a site that after I spend a lot of time entering
| my books into for the dubious benefit of seeing a picture of
| them on a virtual bookshelf, will be a ghost town abandoned
| within a year.
|
| Maybe make the database tools very general and flexible, with
| easy exports and reports, and push that first? I think of
| Goodreads, Librarything, and for a slightly leftfield
| comparison Boardgamegeek, as database-first sites that build
| community on the fact that they provide free, specialized,
| and sometimes publicly accessible databases to hobbyists.
| uneekname wrote:
| I'm a huge Letterboxd fan, and have thought for a long time that
| a similar app could gain traction for books. I hope this is it!
| databased wrote:
| I'm not too into the social activities when it comes to the media
| I consume, but I do use https://rate.house/ to keep track of
| everything.
| slickdork wrote:
| I'm glad someone's making this! I've been wanting an alternative
| for a while. I do have two questions:
|
| 1) Why can't I browse the site without an account? Is this
| temporary for the beta phase or a persistent design choice?
|
| 2) Do reviews allow GIFs? (I'm not willing to make an account
| just to see if existing reviews have gifs, and oddly enough, gifs
| would be a deal breaker for me).
| mminer237 wrote:
| After using it a few minutes, it's apparent that it's a very
| social site. There are no public reviews. You can write reviews
| and share them with specific friends or post them to your wall,
| but they're only ever visible to your friends. Presumably this
| is a privacy-focused design decision intended to increase
| sociability, but it would make an anonymous account useless.
|
| There are no GIFs.
| justinberding wrote:
| 1). Persistent design choice, as its built to be primarily a
| social platform. We felt like an account with your name was
| bare minimum for something like this to function correctly.
|
| 2). No GIFs. But, noted that GIFs could be a fun add.
| slickdork wrote:
| I actually wanted to make sure there were no gifs. I feel
| like gifs ruin reviews and make low quality reviews get the
| most 'engagement'.
| paxys wrote:
| This is great but I'm not going to sign up just to see what the
| site looks like. There's no reason for a large part of the
| functionality (book info, ratings, reviews) to be behind a login
| wall. As it stands right now Goodreads is a lot more open.
| justinberding wrote:
| To be honest, if you're looking just for book info, ratings,
| and reviews, Booqsi probably isn't the right site for you
| anyways. It's specifically meant to be a social platform, not a
| ratings or reviews site, which is why we don't actually have
| give users the ability to do either.
|
| We built it to be a social platform for you to engage with your
| community about books, with the underlying motivation that a
| book recommendation from a friend (or seeing what their
| favorites are) is inherently more powerful than a random review
| online.
|
| Having a login and simple profiles that represent your person
| seemed like the bare minimum for a social platform to function.
| Also worth noting... we're trying the magic link approach for
| logins, so a one-time email input is all that's required.
| coupdejarnac wrote:
| There's zero chance I sign up for this if I can't see it
| beforehand. It's not a good look for something that purports
| to be more open than goodreads.
| elefantastisch wrote:
| From what I can tell, there is literally nothing to show if
| you don't sign up. The site is entirely social. You have a
| feed and recommendations which are shared among friends.
| It's basically like saying there's zero chance you'll sign
| up for email if you can't see it beforehand.
| criddell wrote:
| What's the downside to letting people who are just checking
| out your site actually check out your site?
| justinberding wrote:
| No downside, it's just not something the site provides
| today as part of beta. An anonymous experience is something
| we're exploring.
| dymk wrote:
| A sign-up wall for a site which should be able to show me
| public book reviews and recommendations is a non-starter
| for me (and probably 99% of users clicking the link). I
| really don't need another social media platform, I would
| like a book discovery system though.
| [deleted]
| drcongo wrote:
| You're going to miss out on a hell of a lot of organic search
| locking it away like that, and given your social platform
| goals, I would have thought growing the user base would be
| pretty important.
| impalallama wrote:
| signed up and the rating system is borrowed wholesale from
| google books and there are no reviews at all; so rating and
| reviews are not even a feature (yet?). not a good look, i'd
| love an alternative to goodreads but not even having a basic
| rating system is kinda defeats whatever purpose this site might
| be going for
| justinberding wrote:
| The goal isn't to be another reviews or ratings site; that's
| been done before. The goal is to leverage the power of your
| personal book community to help you better decide what to
| read next. Drop book recommendations to each other, post
| about books to your feed and engage in discussion, see what
| your friend's favorites are by viewing their top 10 favorites
| shelf, etc.
| RobertRoberts wrote:
| But that is not an alternative to Goodreads' public view.
| It's only a copy of Goodread's social system.
|
| Why are you more trustworthy than Amazon with my book
| reading habits?
|
| NOTE: Your IP address for booqsi.com appears to be run on
| ... AWS ... seems ironic or shady, can't tell which.
| jrd259 wrote:
| You can quite reasonably want to be independent of
| Amazon-the-online-retailer while being agnostic about
| cloud service providers. Speaking personally, I very much
| want local bookstores in my neighbourhood, but do not
| care whether there is a cloud data centre in my city or
| province, or which one it is.
| jeromegv wrote:
| Are you purposely trying to be in bad faith? It's fine to
| give ideas and suggestions, but you are being VERY
| antagonistic. They are using Heroku FFS, this isn't a
| "shady" service because of that.
| justinberding wrote:
| Yeah, we're using Heroku, which host all of their own
| services on Amazon's EC2 (meh), which was an
| unfortunately short-sighted tech decision early on that
| we're looking to remedy. We're hoping to transition to
| Azure or Google Cloud. Any recommendations?
| dymk wrote:
| Double ironic when the creator is saying things like:
|
| > "... having Booqsi be independent of Amazon was one of
| the inspirations for wanting to build it in the first
| place"
| yosito wrote:
| This 100%, if you can't show me your site/app without
| collecting my personal information, it's a dark pattern, and
| I'm not interested in using an app that leads with a dark
| pattern.
| adamontherun wrote:
| this looks great Justin! I've always found Good Reads to be very
| unappealing.
|
| What did you use as your source of book data?
| justinberding wrote:
| Thanks! Google Books is our source currently.
| stanislavb wrote:
| I want a password login, not a magic linkery :crying:
| boplicity wrote:
| Looks great! I wonder if it would be possible to import data from
| Goodreads; many people use Goodreads to keep track of what
| they've read, and what they're planning on reading. They wouldn't
| want to lose that information by switching.
|
| Giving authors tools for self-promotion is also a big deal -- and
| something many authors actively engage in with Goodreads.
|
| One more thing, that should be higher priority: The ability to
| add books to the database. There's nothing more frustrating than
| wanting to add a book to a shelf, and not being able to! (Maybe
| it's already an option? If so, it's not easy to find.)
| justinberding wrote:
| Definitely! Goodreads import is in the pipeline.
|
| Agree on the author-sentiment too. The long-term vision is this
| to not just be a site for readers, but a site for authors,
| publishers, bookstores, etc. A true ecosystem. As a reader, you
| can follow your favorite authors and bookstores and receive
| updates, but as an author you can engage with your audience and
| self-promote. A win-win.
|
| We pull all of our data from Google Books currently (so to
| avoid needing to maintain an internal database right away), so
| if it's not on Booqsi it's because it's not on Google Books.
| It's been fairly broad in scale, but we've certainly seen
| situations where books don't show up. Thanks for the feedback!
| derekzhouzhen wrote:
| I'd recommend to add social login options. It greatly reduce the
| initial barrier to sign up. Besides the usual suspects like
| Google or Microsoft, Github, Discord are also very good options.
| justinberding wrote:
| Definitely. On the roadmap, with Google as one of the first
| we're rolling out. Not only does it reduce the barrier to sign
| up, it also helps you discover (or invite) friends.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I once was part of a now-defunct reading forum in my teens.
|
| On the forum, people would package three related books into
| quests. A boring example would be a dystopian quest pack with
| three books about three very different dystopian scenarios.
|
| But the quests people put together were usually more interesting.
| I remember a "Weird Magic" quest had books with really
| unconventional magic systems. I found Motherless Brooklyn
| (detective with Tourette's) in a quest pack of "heroes with
| issues". Other quest ideas would be evil protagonists, alien
| first-contact with the wrong guy, and stuff like that. You can
| often find three books for even the goofiest of quests.
|
| It was a cool way to find new books. And whenever you didn't know
| what to read next, you'd look at what quests you were still
| working on and choose among them. Once finished, your completed
| quest count would increase.
|
| Long append-only lists of genre-related books were never as
| interesting to me. Quests only having three books made them a fun
| thing to collect. Maybe there's something fun there that new
| goodreads competitors can experiment with.
| nicbou wrote:
| This is a great idea. I often go on a month-long tangent of
| related books, films, podcasts and articles. Currently it's the
| space race and the war in Afghanistan. It would be cool to have
| "an introduction to _____" lists for this.
| Lanley wrote:
| Are you familiar with shepherd.com ? It's a site with short
| curated lists on just about any topic. It's still in beta, so
| growing
| [deleted]
| justinberding wrote:
| Love this idea. Gamification of reading is something people
| have dabbled with for awhile; would be great to eventually
| build in something like you mentioned.
| randomcatuser wrote:
| Oh this is so neat!! Thanks for the idea
|
| Anyone want this? Can have it up in March
| Kooshaba wrote:
| I'm in, let me know when ready
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| It's hard to imagine ideas like this living as a stand-alone
| idea rather than a feature in a more general book-tracking
| platform.
|
| Maybe I'm just uncreative, or maybe I'm too tempted to always
| generalize everything, but it seems like as soon as you
| implement a user log-in system for any sort of interactivity,
| you would then be tempted to import a book dump into your
| database, and the next thing you know you're now a Goodreads,
| Storygraph, Librarything, Booqsi, Bookwyrm, Booksloth,
| Oku.club, etc. competitor.
|
| After all, most of the magic was in the community users
| creating and sharing fun quests and the natural curating
| effect of being able to sort by the most popular quests. And
| as you can imagine, most quests were generic and bad.
| "chuck123's sci-fi quest"
|
| It was also fun to see how many quests you started by
| completing a single quest. Due to overlap, you'd be one book
| away of completing other quests, usually a book you would
| have never read otherwise which was part of the fun, and then
| you'd be another book away from finishing even more quests.
|
| Too bad Goodreads' API is dead, else you could at least build
| interesting things on top of a "Login with Goodreads" button
| without recreating an entire platform. Kind of like how
| health apps on iOS get read/write access to HealthKit instead
| of all of them building their own pedometer and asking you to
| constantly reenter and update your data.
| hsndmoose wrote:
| Lmk if you want contributors, I was looking at building
| something like this as well.
| [deleted]
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| I imagine this sort of Quest thing could also be used to
| incentivize reading, ala the BookSmart program (personal pan
| pizzas as a reward worked quite well when I was younger). Or
| to otherwise gamify reading. Or... it could be a mess of
| trying to tie points to yet another social media account.
| notenoughhorses wrote:
| Yes
| webmaven wrote:
| Sure, I'd be interested.
| itake wrote:
| I'd be curious about this too. where can I signup to get a
| notification?
| skeaker wrote:
| That's a really fun and interesting concept! The way that quest
| names can be more specific than broad genres while still
| encompassing several books is great, because you kind of know
| what you're getting into without giving away the whole book.
| "Weird Magic" makes me want to look deeper immediately because
| that alone is a great hook. (If you happen to recall what the
| Weird Magic books were, I'd love to know!)
| justshowpost wrote:
| skn0tt wrote:
| awesome to see a Blitz.js-built app on the front page :)
| ramoz wrote:
| Random question - Did goodreads ever make money through Amazon's
| affiliate program? (Before Amazon acquired them). If so, how does
| the site not break affiliate partners terms of service? It could
| effectively list every single book product on it's site and slap
| an affilate link on there. The ref link exists now, but a unsure
| how that gets rolled into current amazon metrics/accounting.
| mminer237 wrote:
| Do the affiliate terms of service say anything about linking to
| too many things? I would think Amazon would be thrilled to have
| a popular site link to millions of their products.
| justinberding wrote:
| That's a great question. I can't say for sure that Goodreads
| was part of Amazon's affiliate program prior to them being
| acquired in 2013, but I don't see why they wouldn't have been.
|
| Booqsi is specifically not part of Amazon's affiliate program
| and instead of focused on the local bookstores via
| bookshop.org, so I'm not an Amazon affiliate expert, but I
| would imagine that Amazon wouldn't have any issue with a site
| like this linking users to purchase books from them.
| snthd wrote:
| Does this contribute to the internet archive's open library?
|
| https://openlibrary.org/help/faq/about#what
| greenie_beans wrote:
| cool, looks nice and easy to use. def gonna try out.
|
| but, this doesn't support indie bookstores if it's using a
| bookshop, unless it's the affiliate link for a specific
| bookstore. instead, it's likely an affiliate link for the creator
| of booqsi. if you're trying to let consumers support indie
| bookstores, then linking to indiebound with the isbn in the url
| will let them choose a local bookstore, and not booqsi's
| affiliate bookshop. example:
| https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781612194196
|
| sorry, but as a former indie bookseller, i get bothered by these
| tech apps who link to their affiliate bookshop and try to sell
| themselves as helping out indie bookstores. they're not.
|
| edit: might be a cool feature for a user to choose their
| preferred indie to link to. if you did that, you could probably
| market it to the bookstores and they might want to use it too.
| criddell wrote:
| When you were a bookseller, why didn't you use bookshop.org? Is
| there some problem with it?
|
| All of the independent book stores that I know about around me
| are on there.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| I don't have a problem with a brick and mortar indie sharing
| a bookshop link to their own shop, because they get a cut
| from that transaction. I don't like it when a bookish SaaS
| app uses the bookshop affiliate thing and tries to market
| itself as a win for the independent stores, it seems a bit
| misleading to me.
|
| And when I was a bookseller, bookshop didn't exist except for
| an idea. I stopped working for the store right before it
| launched. I actually learned to code from doing a frontend
| redesign of my store's online store, which was offered by
| indie commerce. If done right, indie commerce can be a better
| deal for a bookstore because the store gets the full cut and
| just pays indie commerce a monthly subscription (at least
| when I was there, i think i've seen news of them changing
| their model or at least raising their subscription price).
| With indiecommerce, the store acts as a distributor (mostly,
| when the book is in stock at the store). Whereas bookshop
| doesn't use the bookstore's physical inventory, and instead
| ships directly from ingram (the monopolistic book
| distributor) and gives the bookstore a cut like an affiliate.
|
| Bookshop is not a bad deal for a smaller store without a lot
| of resources or staff, but it doesn't always let an indie do
| what an indie does best: sell some of their unique physical
| inventory, like signed or rare or small press books that
| aren't distributed by ingram.
| [deleted]
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| For less social readers, I find openlibrary good for tracking
| books I want to read.
|
| They have a lot of data, some a bit messy but the depth and
| breadth is insane. They link to scans of crazy old books, ebooks
| of the classics, are happy to link out to libraries etc. have
| lots of weird and wonderful old textbooks and have open APIs and
| silly amounts of open data for book geeks.
| skrbjc wrote:
| Interesting, but that name is cringey for some reason. I can't
| put my finger on it, but the way it looks and how it is said in
| my head, puts me off.
| sugaroverflow wrote:
| Booqsi looks really pretty and I love that it supports local
| bookstores! Are there plans to support imports from Goodreads? I
| know many people who have curated their shelves for years so that
| might be an important feature for them to switch over.
|
| I've been using and loving an alternative,
| https://www.thestorygraph.com/it has similar vibes to Booqsi and
| also includes a Goodreads import, AI based recommendations, and
| some mood-based book tracking (i.e tags like fast-paced, dark,
| emotional)
| scantron4 wrote:
| Storygraph also doesn't have an api, unfortunately. If they did
| I'd jump over wholeheartedly.
| hwers wrote:
| Are goodreads imports allowed? Isn't that kind of data
| sometimes against terms of service (for obvious anti-
| competitive reasons)?
| silas wrote:
| Goodreads allows you to export your library via CSV.
| justinberding wrote:
| Right, if the question is asking about exporting your book
| lists from Goodreads and then (eventually) importing them
| into Booqsi, that's definitely allowed.
| number6 wrote:
| GDPR demands a machine readable export of your data. You
| could import that and I can't see how this could violate any
| ToS.
| datashaman wrote:
| Just noting that GDPR is an EU law, not an international
| one.
| hwers wrote:
| Well I don't think importing tweets and displaying them is
| allowed by their ToS for instance (even though some apps
| do), nor instagram pics.
| dybber wrote:
| The user owns the data, not the platform. The data is
| just ISBN numbers, dates, review comments and so on
| anyway.
|
| It would probably be illegal to crawl Goodreads, if
| that's what you're thinking about?
| hwers wrote:
| I believe in some cases (e.g. instagram) the user
| agreement you sign when using the site makes your
| copyright over e.g. the pictures you upload be handed
| over to the site owners (again, to prevent competition).
| Just to point out that the common sense idea that "you
| own the data" thing isn't always true. Nevertheless this
| question has been resolved through other comments on here
| so it seems not to be the case in this scenario.
| justinberding wrote:
| Yes! We realized pretty quickly that we need a way to import
| booklists (specifically from Goodreads), so we're actively
| working on that! Should be rolled out soon.
|
| Yes, I've used StoryGraph as well, but felt like I needed
| something that provided a few more social features. The book
| mention feature of the social feed is one of my personal
| favorites with Booqsi.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I'm glad another site for book lovers exists, and I wish you
| well!
|
| But I think it's sad that Librarything has such poor marketing
| and branding that nobody ever thinks "well, there already is a
| better, cooler replacement for Goodreads, and it doesn't cost
| anything". It's been around for 17 years, has 2.6 million users,
| and very few people know about it.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I always thought Librarything was also bought by Amazon.
|
| later: According to some pretty stale info on Wikipedia,
| Abebooks bought 40% of Librarything in 2006, and Amazon bought
| Abebooks entirely in 2008.
|
| edit: https://blog.librarything.com/2008/08/abebooks-news-the-
| scoo...
|
| https://www.librarything.com/topic/152033
|
| > At the same time, it's well known that Amazon has an indirect
| but real stake in LibraryThing--they bought Abebooks, who were
| our first minority partner. People keep reporting that Amazon
| has 40%. That's simply not true--it fails to take account of
| our second funder, Bowker. (I remain the majority; I can't say
| how the rest divides up.) But this certainly muddies the
| message. For what it's worth, I want LibraryThing to make more
| money, and therefore my, Bowker and Amazon's stake to be worth
| more and more, but with Amazon now holding 100% ownership of
| BOTH our competitors (Goodreads and Shelfari), we can hardly do
| so without emphasizing what sets us apart.
| arawde wrote:
| I think the reason is that LibraryThing is significantly less
| UX-friendly than Goodreads. I use both; I use Goodreads to
| track what I consider "personal" reading, and I use
| LibraryThing to track what I consider "technical", but the big
| reason I have it broken down like this is because LibraryThing
| is just not as friendly to a user as the alternatives.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| Agreed. The name "LibraryThing" is like a people-repellent
| compared to "GoodReads." Names matter.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| thx! - all I knew before today was to avoid Goodreads at all
| costs! my "cookie counters" went off the charts at Goodreads -
| I literally will not open a page there for any reason now..
| same with that ubiquitous picture-collecting site.. pinterest..
| toxic to me now.
| rsolva wrote:
| I use BookWyrm [0], which is not only social but decentralized
| (ActivityPub) and thus interoperable with other social networks
| like Mastodon. It's nothing fancy, it just works and it is nice
| to be able to follow (or share) quotes or reviews on books within
| the Fediverse.
|
| [0] https://joinbookwyrm.com/
| lf-non wrote:
| As someone who has occasionally dabbled with fediverse, but
| never quite dived in, I have always found federated
| applications to be confusing from UX pov.
|
| In this case, what does interoperability mean ? When I sign up
| for the service I see options to create profile with one of the
| instances - how to choose an instance is not very obvious from
| that page. Some instances have specific themes, others don't -
| should I choose based on how much my interest overlaps ? Based
| on reputation of who runs those instances ? What are the
| consequences if I make the wrong choice ?
|
| Also, If I already have a mastodon account I can supposedly use
| that to participate in the discussions on BookWyrm. However I
| have no clue how to actually do that - any attempt to
| comment/like posts takes me to a login page which doesn't seem
| to have any support for connecting to Mastodon.
|
| Until the UX improves for me to be able to make these kind of
| choices in a very short amount of time, I am more inclined to
| pick a traditional sign up and start using kind of service -
| and I'd assume I am not the only one.
| finnh wrote:
| +1 to importing from Goodreads (and, also, from my Amazon digital
| content list aka kindle-purchased books). I'm happy to go through
| an export/import cycle for these, but starting from scratch on
| booqsi without a bootstrap sets the bar too high.
|
| And I agree 100% with your core sentiment: Goodreads is weirdly
| low-value.
| justinberding wrote:
| Definitely a must. We're working on it; stay tuned!
| seaman1921 wrote:
| > if you've been on Goodreads before, you'll probably agree that
| it's not all that social, and overall not all that exciting.
|
| Sorry, not sold.
| softwarebeware wrote:
| I applaud the effort! The "Amazon-free" part is attractive,
| considering that many of us feel that Amazon's business practices
| are abusive of employees, anti-competitive, and unethical in
| other ways.
|
| I have stopped using Goodreads already--probably for a couple
| years now. I found that the only feature I really used was the
| "To read" bookshelf. And I found that I just replaced it with a
| specific "To read" list of reminders in my iPhone's Reminders
| app. For that use case, this seems to work great for me. Can you
| speak to potentially any features of Booqsi that would be an
| improvement over my simple / non-book-specific approach?
| justinberding wrote:
| Thanks! Yes, having Booqsi be independent of Amazon was one of
| the inspirations for wanting to build it in the first place.
|
| You're not the first to use their Reminders (or Notes) app for
| book lists. If you're not interested in the social elements of
| Booqsi and just want to improve upon your current approach, a
| couple thoughts come to mind:
|
| 1. it's built specifically for books (unlike the Reminders
| app), so you'll be able to easily search for and add books to
| your "To read" shelf with the option to then "mark is as read"
| when you finished it, making it easy to track that aspect of
| your reading journey as well.
|
| 2. if you choose to buy it, it'll link you directly to
| bookshop.org to purchase it from a local bookstore instead of
| Amazon.
|
| Now, if you wanted to elevate your experience, I feel like the
| social aspects of Booqsi is where it shines. For example:
|
| 1. if a friend drops you a book recommendation, it'll
| automatically add that book to your Books Recommended to Me
| shelf. If you like that book, you can move it to your "to read"
| shelf, or just go buy it. I've found it makes tracking book
| recs so much easier.
|
| 2. anytime someone in your community mentions a book, it'll
| come through your feed; you can then easily take action from it
| by navigating to the book's info page, adding to a shelf, going
| to purchase it, etc.
|
| Those are just a few that come to mind! Regardless of if you
| want to use the site independently of others or engage more
| socially with others, there's something for everyone.
| softwarebeware wrote:
| That actually sounds really cool! I'm signed up and will be
| trying it out. Thanks!
| stolenmerch wrote:
| I seem to be one of the few people here who likes Goodreads and
| uses it daily. I have no compelling reason to switch, but Booqsi
| looks gorgeous and fast, so I was interested in trying it out. I
| know it's early days, but a few things stand out.
|
| Overall, the data seems a bit messy. I tried adding a few books
| from my currently reading list on Goodreads and ran into some
| problems. The first book I tried to add had a duplicate entry.
| Both had identical metadata but are separate records; if I marked
| one as finished it didn't update the other. Many books seem to be
| missing editions, alternate covers, subtitles, and other
| important details. Other times multiple editions seem to be split
| out as separate titles but with no clue to edition. This gets
| confusing fast for certain types of books.
|
| It seems difficult to find people to follow. Everything looks to
| be private by default so I couldn't find people based on the
| books they read. The "people who read it" feature does not seem
| to work as expected. It seems it doesn't include books currently
| being read or books simply put on a favorite shelf without
| marking it 'read' - either that or I'm locked out of seeing what
| people I don't follow are reading. I have to follow them first?
| As it stands, I don't know anyone personally on Booqsi, so I'm
| relying on following interesting strangers based on reading
| habits, which I can't seem to do. It's doubtful my friends who
| already don't use Goodreads very much are going to switch, so I'm
| looking for Booqsi to be more like a "twitter for books", which
| it currently isn't without the option to be public.
|
| A couple more books didn't exist and I didn't see an option to
| add it. I assume some crowdsourcing option like Goodreads is on
| the roadmap for Booqsi though.
| Pacers31Colts18 wrote:
| Our security software flags this as malware (Cisco Umbrella)
| qnsi wrote:
| This is such a fashionable problem. There are startups /
| indiehackers trying to solve this every month.
| justinberding wrote:
| The problem we're trying to solve is that existing book
| platforms don't provide the social features many book lovers
| are looking for and/or are archaically designed. The Amazon-
| less part is a bonus.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Impressive! It's a lot of work building a product like that.
|
| Please support export of a user's data. I just lost all of my
| Goodreads data when some system problem of their's deleted all my
| data. I'm pretty mad about it, but at least I had a data export
| from eight months ago so not all is lost.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30503465
| justinberding wrote:
| Sorry to hear that you lost all of your data. That's rough.
| We're starting first with an import feature so that you can
| move all of your data into Booqsi, but an export feature is a
| natural follower to that. You should see both before too long!
| dybber wrote:
| Yet another alternative: https://www.booksloth.com/
|
| What is your plan for monetization? I'm currently using
| StoryGraph and it seems it will survive through paid users, but
| I'm uncertain whether a site like yours will continue very long
| unless you start monetizing it.
| RobertRoberts wrote:
| The reason I use Goodreads is to get publicly stated opinions on
| books, not for a social community. This is not an alternative to
| Goodreads for people like me at all.
| gnulinux wrote:
| Can't see the site without sign in = I'm not going to sign up
| just to see your platform for the first time. Not a great
| impression.
| johnymontana wrote:
| Looks neat - congrats on the launch!
|
| Could you give a high-level overview of the tech stack? I'm
| specifically curious how you work with the social graph data
| aspects and approaches to generating recommendations.
| bobbytuck wrote:
| Meh.
|
| Reading is a personal experience. I guess I understand the desire
| to make it more social -- but I'm not sure why I would go to the
| lengths to do so.
|
| Is it some kind of gamification thing? I guess that's why I never
| got into Goodreads either.
|
| I might be an outlier -- but I've never seen reading --
| authentic, personal reading -- as anything other than personal.
|
| I'm a social creature for sure, but I don't feel the need to
| share my reading lists. I always feel like social media is for
| creating a persona -- someone who want to be but aren't -- but
| want your "friends" to think you are.
|
| This seems like it veers that way -- but I don't know. I didn't
| sign up -- but I was (obviously) curious enough to take a peek.
| And that probably says more about me than I care to acknowledge.
| :(
| justinberding wrote:
| I agree, reading by nature is very personal. Have you tried
| reading when you're surrounded by a group of friends talking?
| Yeah, hard to do. Doesn't really work.
|
| But, where I've found the "social" element being important is
| more in helping me to determine what to read next (like a
| friend recommending a book to me), discussing books with others
| or sharing something interesting about what I'm reading, seeing
| what my friend's of family's all-time favorites are, etc.
|
| The interaction comes in-between reading sessions and has
| greatly enhanced my enjoyment of books.
| kome wrote:
| An alternative to Goodreads is https://www.anobii.com
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