This is great! I love the aesthetics and I've been waiting years for someone to provide a viable alternative to Goodreads.
Brought a smile to read, thank you baumandm!
Show HN: Zeneca – Share and discuss your favorite books
11–20 of 56 posts
Re: Show HN: Zeneca – Share and discuss your favorite books
#12This is really helpful, thank you! It's been mentioned before here, but what are your plans for privacy/monetization? Also (out of curiosity) where are you getting the book data from? It's pretty exhaustive and fast, but the only problem is that it doesn't prioritize the "real" version of the book (ie when I start typing Fahrenheit 451, the actual book is further down and stuff like the cliffnotes version or literary…
Hey Aninuth, co-creator Joe here! Thanks for all the comments. Will try to respond to all of them below
1) Privacy / Monetization: We're big believers that users should own their own data. We have no plans to sell your data to anyone. In terms of monetization, there are several approaches. We can add affiliate links to all books on bookshelves. We can build a freemium model. We can have authors promote books. The list goes on. For now we aren't focusing on monetization -- but rather focusing on building an awesome product that gives people what they actually want :)
2) Source of data. For now we are using Google Books api!
3) Thanks for the feedback re: ordering. We'll keep this mind and think about how we can improve our search results.
Re: Show HN: Zeneca – Share and discuss your favorite books
#13This is really helpful, thank you! It's been mentioned before here, but what are your plans for privacy/monetization? Also (out of curiosity) where are you getting the book data from? It's pretty exhaustive and fast, but the only problem is that it doesn't prioritize the "real" version of the book (ie when I start typing Fahrenheit 451, the actual book is further down and stuff like the cliffnotes version or literary…
Hey Aninuth, co-creator Joe here! Thanks for all the comments. Will try to respond to all of them below 1) Privacy / Monetization: We're big believers that users should own their own data. We have no plans to sell your data to anyone. In terms of monetization, there are several approaches. We can add affiliate links to all books on bookshelves. We can build a freemium model. We can have authors promote books. The lis…
Appreciate the response and love the product! I've tried multiple alternatives to Goodreads for organizing my books and have resigned myself to spreadsheets; really hoping this turns into something mainstream. Best of luck!
Re: Show HN: Zeneca – Share and discuss your favorite books
#14Hey HN, We're Joe & Stopa, from https://zeneca.io . We're building the successor to Goodreads. For now, you can create public bookshelves (i.e https://zeneca.io/stopa ), discover like-minded readers, and share your favorite quotes and thoughts (i.e here's all I learned from PG: https://www.zeneca.io/stopa/details/shycAgAAQBAJ ) We left our jobs in June last year to build a company together (but we didn’t have an idea…
I LOVE the idea!! (as long as you don't become the next FB and sell-off everything you can collect:) it's a very useful tool to find more good reads and 1) are you planning to introduce passwords? 2) what are your thoughts on adding privacy settings? 2a) perhaps I want my account to be visible to only a few people, and not to everyone 2b) perhaps I like reading 'naughty' books that I don't want visible to everyone, b…
Co-creator Joe here! Thanks for all the questions! Will try to address each one point by point below
1) Initially we went with magic links because we thought that would be a better UX. It's been surprising and amusing to see how much feedback we get on this. We hear you loud and clear and will budget some time to move auth from magic links to passwords / o-auth
2) Privacy settings make sense! We'll be baking this in the near future :)
3) Comments and discussion are coming soon!
In terms of paying -- Stopa and I are both running on our savings for now :) Our main focus is to build something awesome that we ourselves love and other people want. Assuming we succeed at that, when the time for monetization comes we will never sell user data (this is a first principle for us).
Prior to this Show HN we hadn't gotten any feedback re: adding a privacy policy -- we hear you loud and clear and will add that in. For GDPR, we are big believers that users should own their own data and will build out data export and account deletion features in the future.
Re: Show HN: Zeneca – Share and discuss your favorite books
#15Hey HN, We're Joe & Stopa, from https://zeneca.io . We're building the successor to Goodreads. For now, you can create public bookshelves (i.e https://zeneca.io/stopa ), discover like-minded readers, and share your favorite quotes and thoughts (i.e here's all I learned from PG: https://www.zeneca.io/stopa/details/shycAgAAQBAJ ) We left our jobs in June last year to build a company together (but we didn’t have an idea…
I signed up and started playing around with it, and I think it looks promising. Some general thoughts: - Moving over my shelves is an undertaking that'll probably take more than 30-40 minutes. Before I do that, I'd like the know about the privacy policy you folks intend to put in place. - On a similar note, potential monetization is also something which worries me because many-a-times monetization comes at the cost o…
This is such awesome feedback! Thank you for taking the time to go so deep geraltofrivia
Privacy Policy: Hear you loud and clear. We'll prioritize this
Monetization: Both of us believe users should own their data, and we would reject any monetization that would involve selling data. There are some paths we're considering (freemium, community memberships, working with authors), but our first priority, is to make something people actually use.
Export: Heck yeah. We'll prioritize this. In the meantime, if you need to export data, send a ping and we'll do it manually
1) - 5) We'll fast follow on all of these -- excellent points!
Gratitude again, can't wait to iterate.
Re: Show HN: Zeneca – Share and discuss your favorite books
#16Great idea! But,
I'm not going to give you MY content, for free, if you don't AT LEAST allow for my content, and the content of my peers on your website, to be in a format which is easy to export and edit.
You know why?
Because in a couple of years you will raise more money, and your VC will tell you that a subscription business is a great idea, you will follow him, and I will need to decide between paying you $X per month, or stop using the service. I don't want to get there again.
Nothing against you personally. But perhaps there's a way to promise potential customers that you're not going to screw them eventually.
Edit: to be clear, a "format which is easy to export and edit" means two things: something like markdown, and a single button which allows me to download everything I ever wrote on your website.
Re: Show HN: Zeneca – Share and discuss your favorite books
#17Hey HN, We're Joe & Stopa, from https://zeneca.io . We're building the successor to Goodreads. For now, you can create public bookshelves (i.e https://zeneca.io/stopa ), discover like-minded readers, and share your favorite quotes and thoughts (i.e here's all I learned from PG: https://www.zeneca.io/stopa/details/shycAgAAQBAJ ) We left our jobs in June last year to build a company together (but we didn’t have an idea…
I dig the simplicity.
Is there an email address to send feedback to? I don't use Twitter.
Re: Show HN: Zeneca – Share and discuss your favorite books
#18Great idea! But, I'm not going to give you MY content, for free, if you don't AT LEAST allow for my content, and the content of my peers on your website, to be in a format which is easy to export and edit. You know why? Because in a couple of years you will raise more money, and your VC will tell you that a subscription business is a great idea, you will follow him, and I will need to decide between paying you $X per…
I concur and support you! It will play out like that.
Re: Show HN: Zeneca – Share and discuss your favorite books
#19Congrats on your launch! I once had a similar idea for which I registered but never actioned thereadinglog.com. Fear of Failure! :facepalm:
Re: Show HN: Zeneca – Share and discuss your favorite books
#20Great idea! But, I'm not going to give you MY content, for free, if you don't AT LEAST allow for my content, and the content of my peers on your website, to be in a format which is easy to export and edit. You know why? Because in a couple of years you will raise more money, and your VC will tell you that a subscription business is a great idea, you will follow him, and I will need to decide between paying you $X per…
Likewise, I don’t see this working for me in a few years time. Are there compelling reasons to use this today if I hope to use it in 5 years?
This is why I generally only use things online that I can pay for, these days. It tends to ensure some degree of longer term service.