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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

#81

Post by pessimizer »

justinberding wrote: post #45
kevmo wrote: post #27

This is awesome, but I feel like you're going to struggle to compete if all the content is behind a membership wall.

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.

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.

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

#83

Post by itake »

randomcatuser wrote: post #59
hombre_fatal wrote: post #18

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…

Oh this is so neat!! Thanks for the idea Anyone want this? Can have it up in March

I'd be curious about this too. where can I signup to get a notification?

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

#86

Post by dymk »

justinberding wrote: post #53
criddell wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the downside to letting people who are just checking out your site actually check out your site?

No downside, it's just not something the site provides today as part of beta. An anonymous experience is something we're exploring.

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.

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

#87

Post by dymk »

RobertRoberts wrote: post #80
justinberding wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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"

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

#89

Post by greenie_beans »

criddell wrote: post #70
greenie_beans wrote: post #58

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 affili…

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.

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.

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

#90

Post by nicbou »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #18

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…

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.
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