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Show HN: A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads

booqsi.com

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Re: Show HN: A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads

#31

Post by softwarebeware »

justinberding wrote: post #30
softwarebeware wrote: post #3

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 remin…

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…

That actually sounds really cool! I’m signed up and will be trying it out. Thanks!

Re: Show HN: A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads

#33

Post by dybber »

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.

Re: Show HN: A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads

#34

Post by mistrial9 »

karaterobot wrote: post #29

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.

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.

Re: Show HN: A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads

#35

Post by justinberding »

paxys wrote: post #14

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.

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.

Re: Show HN: A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads

#36

Post by dybber »

hwers wrote: post #15
number6 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDPR demands a machine readable export of your data. You could import that and I can't see how this could violate any ToS.

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.

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?

Re: Show HN: A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads

#37

Post by justinberding »

finnh wrote: post #20

+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.

Definitely a must. We're working on it; stay tuned!

Re: Show HN: A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads

#39

Post by justinberding »

erikwiffin wrote: post #25

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?

Ha, totally get that as well. Yes, private bookshelves are available! The only ones that are "public" are the shelves on your Profile.

Re: Show HN: A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads

#40

Post by justinberding »

silas wrote: post #19
hwers wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are goodreads imports allowed? Isn't that kind of data sometimes against terms of service (for obvious anti-competitive reasons)?

Goodreads allows you to export your library via CSV.

Right, if the question is asking about exporting your book lists from Goodreads and then (eventually) importing them into Booqsi, that's definitely allowed.
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