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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

#141

Post by lancesells »

pavon wrote: post #117
pessimizer wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 boug…

I did not know Amazon had purchased Abebooks. Damn our antitrust regulators have been asleep for a long time.

Yeah, this really bothered me when I found out about it. I still use Abebooks but would happily switch to an alternative if there's one out there.

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

#142

Post by urthor »

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.

It's not just a usability issue.

OP, you need to deliver lots of public value to customers who haven't converted yet.

Always remember. "3 free articles a week" isn't you giving your stuff away.

It's marketing that costs you nothing.

Free marketing. Keep repeating it to yourself. Free marketing.

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

#143

Post by BeetleB »

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.

LT user for over a decade. I'll definitely stick to it as long as it maintains its feature set.

One of the nice things about it is its lack of decent AI (and they're open about it). They're not trying to hit those kinds of user engagement metrics.

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

#144

Post by [deleted] »

stolenmerch wrote: post #61

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 dupl…

[deleted]

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

#145

Post by TheFreim »

Am I able to add more than one "currently reading" books? I will usually read a couple at a time and it'd be nice to select multiple. Also it would be nice to have the ability to quick select books from my "Books I've Read" bookshelf when adding books to my recommended feed since I would almost never recommend a book I haven't read.

Also, are there privacy settings? I might not want a public profile or have only parts public.

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

#146

Post by rmdashrfv »

Dave_TRS wrote: post #108
personjerry wrote: post #99

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

"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…

Oh my god, thank you for saying that about Brave. Brave is by far my favorite browser, but all the crypto-pushing is just weird to me. It makes more sense to have them be add-ons, but the way the browser encourages it as part of it's functionality is indeed off-putting and why I took as long as I did to switch.

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

#147

Post by drusepth »

dymk wrote: post #86
justinberding wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think reviews or recommendations are the goal of the site, as there is currently no way to add reviews or ratings, nor does the site provide any reviews or recommendations of its own. It's literally "just" a social network to talk about books on.

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

#148

Post by kingcharles »

justinberding wrote: post #126
kingcharles wrote: post #122

Ugh. Hate it when I get emails from noreply@ .. how about setting up an email address for support? How do I find other people? I guess I can't find people on the site to network with? I have to find them outside and bring them in? I'd like to have a username and be able to expose a bookshelf, e.g. King Charles' Favourite Business Books

The email you're referring to is just the single "magic link" email to get you signed in for the first time, which is how Slack and other "magic link" sign-in processes do it too. You can reply to every other email you receive from booqsi and someone from the team will see it and get back to you. Or, you can reach out directly to contact@booqsi.com or feedback@booqsi.com.

Why not just set one of those addresses as the reply address for the magic link?

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

#149

Post by drusepth »

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.

I signed up. This is what the site looks like:

* Dashboard/feed: https://i.imgur.com/bUGZX27.png

* Book page (from search): https://i.imgur.com/9BQK7hF.png

* Bookshelves (adding a book is just a modal on this page): https://i.imgur.com/sHzorJE.png

* "Community": https://i.imgur.com/nzI9FNZ.png

* Profile: https://i.imgur.com/kcxitYb.png

There isn't a lot of content to showcase, but the screenshots on the homepage (at https://www.booqsi.com/) seem to show off each of the currently-available pages. It'd be nice to have some kind of search to see book search result pages for yourself without signing up, but honestly there's not much to see (yet?). You can see for yourself: https://app.booqsi.com/books/9781408865446

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

#150

Post by AniseAbyss »

I like books but don't give a shit about book stores. But then reading was never a social thing for me so the whole stupid coffee shop hipster sales person nonsense is not up my alley. I'll take Amazon a thousand times over your average 21st century book store.
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