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Show HN: I built a modern Goodreads alternative

kaguya.io

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Re: Show HN: I built a modern Goodreads alternative

#131

Post by philistine »

rendleflag wrote: post #125
philistine wrote: post #123

The landing page is mostly filled with sci-fi. I know it's what's popular on the site and what's reviewed recently but it's sending the wrong message that the site is exclusively for sci-fi. Most readers don't read sci-fi, and readers who read sci-fi tend to mostly read sci-fi, so the average reader would think the site is not for them. In harsher words: women don't read sci-fi, and are your target audience. Make sur…

“Women don’t read sci-fi”?

Sci-fi and Fantasy *together* account for 15% of the sales, and the majority of buyers are female.

Re: Show HN: I built a modern Goodreads alternative

#132

Post by vasanthk1125 »

BozeWolf wrote: post #64
vasanthk1125 wrote: post #2

Tech Stack Backend: Elixir & Phoenix Database: PostgreSQL with Supabase (originally CockroachDB, big mistake) Auth: Supabase Frontend: Next.js UI Components: shadcn GraphQL API: Absinthe Hosting: Fly.io (Phoenix) + Vercel (Next.js) Storage: Cloudflare R2 + CDN

Why do you use supabase and not just postgres? Do you use supabase’s api interface to do the queries? Or do you use supabase for other features?

When I first started working on the website nine months ago, I didn’t even know what Postgres was, so going with an easier option made sense. Right now, we also use Supabase for auth and emails.

For queries, we don’t use Supabase’s API interface—we interact with Postgres directly through our backend

Re: Show HN: I built a modern Goodreads alternative

#134

Post by vasanthk1125 »

n4r9 wrote: post #119
vasanthk1125 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure we do. I'm planning to have reddit-like forums for each book over 500 ratings at the bottom of the page like IMDB used to do. Also, I'm considering forums for genres like romance, fantasy.

Forums per book is a good start, but I find that the groups are a bigger draw in Goodreads. They have a more personal touch and allow you to discuss broader topics and get recommendations from accounts you know and trust. For example I'm in a group called "Evolution of science fiction" and have learnt a lot from joining in their monthly novel / short story reads.

Do users create and moderate the group themselves? It seems like a subreddit, but for book related topics?

Re: Show HN: I built a modern Goodreads alternative

#135

Post by BeetleB »

fcarraldo wrote: post #116
BeetleB wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does one really get anything meaningful out of saying this was a 6-star book vs a 7-star book? I rate for myself, and not others. And for over 20 years I've used a 10 point system. 10 = Easily amongst my favorite 9 = Awesome, but not in all time favorites 8 = Really liked it, and would recommend 7 = Liked it, was worth my time, but not so much that I would happily recommend to others 6 = Liked it, but wasn't worth…

It kind of seems like you use a five-point system, then?

The difference being that I don't want someone to think that because I rated something 2 out of 5 that I didn't like it because it's less than 2.5. And for most people, a 3/5 doesn't mean "yes, I heartily recommend". But they can believe it for 8/10

(Actually, 7 points as someone else pointed out - by my point stands even with a 7 point system).

Re: Show HN: I built a modern Goodreads alternative

#136

Post by vasanthk1125 »

noveltyaccount wrote: post #4

Where are you sourcing book metadata? If this site takes off, you'll need a moderation strategy. Goodreads has been plagued by extortionary negative reviews. https://www.npr.org/2023/12/17/1219599404/goodreads-review-b...

We'll definitely implement automatic review bombing protection. I'm thinking something like Steam does.

Re: Show HN: I built a modern Goodreads alternative

#138

Post by scouw »

Seems pretty good! However, like all of these websites, it's only so useful without a large userbase to get ratings and reviews from.

Some feedback:

- Visually pleasing!

- It seemed to have failed to import some books from StoryGraph for me (e.g., "The Hive" by Camilo José Cela and "The Epic of Gilgamesh"), and as far as I could tell it did not notify me anywhere. I had no idea until I noticed that they were missing from my "Read" library.

- The book "Zone" by Mathias Énard seems to be completely impossible to find via searching, despite existing on the website (https://kaguya.io/books/zone).

- Adding a feature that allows clicking on 'Read Books' or 'Want to Read' on a user's profile to directly view their complete library in that category would be nice.

- Only five "Similar Books" seems rather low, would love to have a "See more >" option there!

- A "Neighbours" feature similar to what Last.fm has for finding other users would be great.

- This is a minor nitpick, but the grey box that represents a missing book under "Favourite Books" on a profile is taller than the actual covers.

Re: Show HN: I built a modern Goodreads alternative

#139

Post by vasanthk1125 »

dotdi wrote: post #90

I came here to ask "how is this better than StoryGraph", but before I could hit send, it occurred to me: This doesn't need to be better than StoryGraph. This just needs to be different, cater to different persons, needs. Maybe not even that. It can just be there next to StoryGraph. My gripe with GoodReads is not that it didn't evolve, or that the UI is dated. My gripe is that it's owned by Amazon. So to the new kid o…

Thanks!

Re: Show HN: I built a modern Goodreads alternative

#140

Post by arh68 »

NAHWheatCracker wrote: post #32
roland35 wrote: post #8

Goodreads does indeed suck in many ways, but I am in favor of a 5 star system! I think oftentimes we need to commit to one rating or another and not waffle around with this "4.12425/5" type reviews :)

I think most n/x rating systems are extremely weak and the level of detail is irrelevant. Averaging leads to a soup where nearly everything that isn't objectively awful falls in 60-80% rating. There's no signal to determine if it's good or just mediocre based on the rating alone. Goodreads and IMDB have been utterly useless to me. Rotten Tomatoes' system has a lot of positives and I see a ton of signal in Rotten Toma…

Criticker does relative rankings, percentile-matched, in kinda the same way. For films (not books).

So if I rate Feature Film I II & III as 30 50 70, and you rate them 70 80 90, we would basically "agree". It's a neat system that I wish other rating systems would use.

[1] https://www.criticker.com/

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