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There is still the need for a better Goodreads alternative

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Re: There is still the need for a better Goodreads alternative

#31

Post by ZeroGravitas »

The underlying book and author data for many of these is sourced via a lower layer of openlibrary.org and wikidata (which in turn are building on isbns and the collective records of many national libraries) and when they aren't, they should be. The underlying data should be a shared endeavour.

Openlibrary.org provides book tracking (want to read, currently reading, have read) itself, as long as you can cope with it being neither beautiful nor social, which seem to be the key selling points of many of these.

Re: There is still the need for a better Goodreads alternative

#32

Post by d1sxeyes »

gavmor wrote: post #17
everybodyknows wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Goodreads has a one-button link to the Amazon listing, where I can read the first twenty-some pages. That's a "competitive moat", and it's a mile wide.

Browser extensions have also been made for Goodreads that ping my library's Overdive/Libby API for availability, and that's positively addictive!

I wrote a quick userscript to hop over to Libby. Nothing complex, just a link to search your default library for you:

https://gist.github.com/joeinnes/12dfa3c2c76f5f9433837d575ef...

Re: There is still the need for a better Goodreads alternative

#33

Post by cultureulterior »

howenterprisey wrote: post #16
robobro wrote: post #2

here you go lol https://github.com/bookwyrm-social/bookwyrm It's part of fediverse. Open source, decentralized software

Unfortunately I can't recommend bookwyrm due to its license, which starts with: > This is anti-capitalist software, released for free use by individuals and organizations that do not operate by capitalist principles. I don't disagree with the politics here but surely it's hopeless as a legal document.

I disagree with the politics here.

Re: There is still the need for a better Goodreads alternative

#34

Post by MissTake »

hoseja wrote: post #29

Why do you need apps for books. Stop. Buy a bookcase.

Because different people do different things?

Some people love to catalog the collection, to add metadata to it, to know what books and/or editions they have when looking at purchasing more books, and to use it to enhance their overall collections.

Also, care to explain how we can store ebooks on a bookcase?

Re: There is still the need for a better Goodreads alternative

#35

Post by schlauerfox »

philipptemmel wrote: post #26

Hey, author here. First of all, thank you for sharing my post on Hacker News, and secondly, thank you for all the comments. Based on them, I updated the post and added StoryGraph and BookWyrm to the post, both lovely recommendations and alternatives.

I really love my Bookwyrm instance bookrastinating. I've moved off of other social media entirely to mastodon, lemmy and bookwyrm. it's just enough with nice people without the horror show of the commercial ones. I donate to my instances. It's a good time.

Re: There is still the need for a better Goodreads alternative

#37

Post by Suppafly »

howenterprisey wrote: post #16
robobro wrote: post #2

here you go lol https://github.com/bookwyrm-social/bookwyrm It's part of fediverse. Open source, decentralized software

Unfortunately I can't recommend bookwyrm due to its license, which starts with: > This is anti-capitalist software, released for free use by individuals and organizations that do not operate by capitalist principles. I don't disagree with the politics here but surely it's hopeless as a legal document.

I haven't read the license, but it's kinda normal to have an intro describing the intent that is more or less unrelated to the actual terms of the license. Unless it requires you to affirm that you don't operate by capitalist principles, it's not preventing you from following the actual terms of the license.

Re: There is still the need for a better Goodreads alternative

#39

Post by lowiqmarkfisher »

b3lm0nt wrote: post #23

A new alternative that I came across recently: https://www.literary.salon/

Thank you so much for posting my site!!! So awesome to see this randomly in HN. Just got the 500th user. Launched last friday

I definitely wanted to curate a high-brow community (50% of our users are in NYC/London), and the weird corners of the internet with alternative perspectives and taste. It's focused on user customization and """brutalist""" UI. the manifesto of the site is probably either going to be a turn-on or turn-off for you: https://www.literary.salon/about

Re: There is still the need for a better Goodreads alternative

#40

Post by ltadeut »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #31

The underlying book and author data for many of these is sourced via a lower layer of openlibrary.org and wikidata (which in turn are building on isbns and the collective records of many national libraries) and when they aren't, they should be. The underlying data should be a shared endeavour. Openlibrary.org provides book tracking (want to read, currently reading, have read) itself, as long as you can cope with it b…

I really wanted to like open library but last time I tried it (over a year ago tbf), the UI was extremely slow and frustrating to use. I just gave up and started tracking things in a csv file.
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