Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader • Hacker News Board

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#261

Post by Fnoord » Wed, Feb 20, 2019, 2:39 PM UTC

skillachie wrote: post #227

kingaillas wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was like you, until my library grew to a certain size and I needed/wanted to organize it and display it better. Calibre lets me tag books, so I can pull them up by arbitrary categories which I can't EASILY pull off only using filesystem features. With Calibre I split my ebooks into two libraries (one for computer books, one for not computer books) and tag to my hearts content and requirements. I keep it simple to 2…

I would even venture to say the average user also finds Calibre complex. Would you mind taking BookFusion for a spin? We have uses with over 30,000 eBooks in their libraries and will be able to support your collection without issues. BookFusion allows you to easily upload, read and organize(tags and categories) your eBooks. Your entire Calibre eBook collection will be available across all your devices while keeping y…

I'd rather not. The beauty of Calibre is that you run it locally, or on your NAS (with Calibre-Web). If I want my dat in "the cloud" I'll just buy some Kindle device and be done with it.

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#262

Post by skillachie » Wed, Feb 20, 2019, 8:38 PM UTC

sdrothrock wrote: post #248

skillachie wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you use to read your eBooks now? Also does your current solution sync all elements of your eBook activities across multiple devices? Take BookFusion for a spin and let me know what you think. BookFusion allows you to easily read your entire eBook collection and sync your bookmarks, reading progress, highlights and comments across all devices. BookFusion has native Android, iOS and Web apps. More at https://ww…

I use Google Books. It syncs all elements of all of my activities across all platforms (Windows, OS X, Android, iOS) that I use. My main issue with it is that I can't download the stuff I uploaded, so it's not really good as a storage/backup solution, but that's fairly minor.

Thanks for sharing. As you mentioned it works well for Google based books but you cant download the books your upload.

Would be interesting to hear your feedback if you decide to try BookFusion

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#263

Post by sdrothrock » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 2:52 AM UTC

skillachie wrote: post #262

sdrothrock wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Google Books. It syncs all elements of all of my activities across all platforms (Windows, OS X, Android, iOS) that I use. My main issue with it is that I can't download the stuff I uploaded, so it's not really good as a storage/backup solution, but that's fairly minor.

Thanks for sharing. As you mentioned it works well for Google based books but you cant download the books your upload. Would be interesting to hear your feedback if you decide to try BookFusion

It works well for all of my books; I've only bought one or two books through the Play Store, and everything else I've uploaded.

Does BookFusion let me re-download books I've uploaded?

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#264

Post by tbe » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 8:09 AM UTC

FabHK wrote: post #175

HeadsUpHigh wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Metadata. The same way you might group music files per artist or per album or per genre or in playlists but the filesystem only allows for 1 type of grouping without duplicating the files or some weird shortcut kind of thing. You can group per author or per genre of ebooks or whatever. Granted it's less useful compared to music but it does make sense and I prefer media to be displayed as a library myself.

Exactly. I am a big fan of Calibre for books, iTunes for music (granted, iTunes is mediocre monolithic software), and generally software (adapted to the specific media type) that manages the library and metadata, so I don't have to touch the filesystem. How are you going to play music you've added in the last three years, but not heard for a month, from the "Latin" genre, with two or more stars, using only the file s…

> How are you going to play music you've added in the last three years, but not heard for a month, from the "Latin" genre, with two or more stars, using only the file system?

BeOS actually solved this 20 years ago with its file system BFS. Haiku is an open source reimplementation of BeOS that recently progressed from (high quality) alpha releases to its first beta.

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#265

Post by kingaillas » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 1:37 PM UTC

skillachie wrote: post #227

kingaillas wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was like you, until my library grew to a certain size and I needed/wanted to organize it and display it better. Calibre lets me tag books, so I can pull them up by arbitrary categories which I can't EASILY pull off only using filesystem features. With Calibre I split my ebooks into two libraries (one for computer books, one for not computer books) and tag to my hearts content and requirements. I keep it simple to 2…

I would even venture to say the average user also finds Calibre complex. Would you mind taking BookFusion for a spin? We have uses with over 30,000 eBooks in their libraries and will be able to support your collection without issues. BookFusion allows you to easily upload, read and organize(tags and categories) your eBooks. Your entire Calibre eBook collection will be available across all your devices while keeping y…

I'll try it! Thanks for the info.

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#266

Post by sctb » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 4:47 PM UTC

skillachie wrote: post #241

Hi HN Crew, I would like to introduce you to Bookfusion, a multi-platform reader that allows you to organize and read your eBooks across Desktops(Windows,Linux, iOS) and Desktop via web and on Android and iOS devices with a native app. More details at: https://www.bookfusion.com/reading/cloud-library Quick Overview Of Features Cloud Library – create your own eBook cloud library to manage all your eBooks in one place…

Please don't use Hacker News solely to promote your stuff. You've done this way too much already and eventually we ban accounts that continue.

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#267

Post by kevingrahl » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 9:47 PM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #49

kevingrahl wrote: post #41

How does it handle huge (>500.000 files) libraries?

Good question. If you have such a library you could probably easier install the 20MB app and test and report back than others can acquire such an extensive library. I would think calibre on a local note remote filesystem would perform acceptably. The portion that you want readily available on mobile could be easily synced wirelessly via calibre companion. Note that you can select a query for syncing and include the c…

Alright so I got around to testing this out (on elementary OS 5.0 Juno). I found it utterly impractical to use for anything more than 1k ebooks.

The biggest problem is that on startup bookworm loads all book covers one after another. It takes forever until every cover loaded for huge libraries. At around 2.5k ebooks the interface becomes so laggy that it’s unusable. Scrolling is no longer possible. I gave up testing this with 5k ebooks.

Another thing I dislike about this application is the inability to adjust the width of the columns in the list view. There are some books in my library with very long titles. Bookworm seems to use the longest title to set the width of the title column for all books.

The memory usage got to above 11% when idling after starting the App with 5k books.

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#268

Post by carstonpie2 » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 10:17 PM UTC

This is cool stuff homie, count me in, I'll use it! I am sick of this apple book thing crashing,

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#269

Post by carstonpie2 » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 10:55 PM UTC

carstonpie2 wrote: post #268

This is cool stuff homie, count me in, I'll use it! I am sick of this apple book thing crashing,

So how I install this? I don't see this app in the store,

Re: Bookworm: A Simple, Focused eBook Reader

#270

Post by dustinblake » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 4:27 AM UTC

skillachie wrote: post #228

hombre_fatal wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incredible. Top HN comment is wondering why anyone uses UI software to manage a library instead of the filesystem. I'm not even sure where to start. But that you can't even envision a few reasons why someone would use something is very limiting. At least on an empathy level but probably on a professional product-design level as well. I can certainly appreciate your point when the software's backing database is unusab…

Find it incredible as well. The average user finds Calibre to be too complex. With that said, I would be happy if you could take BookFusion for a spin and let me know if you have any feedback. Our users have libraries with over 30,000 eBooks and as a result we will have no issues with your collection. BookFusion allows you to easily upload, organize and read all your eBooks regardless of format on iOS, Android and We…

I went to check out BookFusion, which at first glance, seems like an interesting idea.

Unfortunately, I could not find anywhere on your site that indicated the cost associated with an individual user account. (Free to signup, of course, but how long is that trial, or what limits will I face? and then how much money will this subscription service cost me?)

End-users have serious account fatigue, and I seriously debated whether I should bother signing up for the site and create yet another login to a web app I might or might not want to use. Please, just be up front about pricing, free trials, limitations, requirements, etc.

If you have a 7-day free trial and I'm currently busy, I won't have time to kick the wheels before I'd need to pay. If you instead limit the number of books or the storage space I can use, just tell me so I can decide if it's worth bothering to test it out. As far as I can tell, you might or might not have a limit for a new/free user, but no idea what that is.

Finally, I see in the settings that you offer an early bird subscriber deal, at $4.99/mo (vs $9.99/mo) and $39.99/yr (vs $60/yr), for unlimited storage. I think you might have better luck with a tiered setup. Someone with a lot of ebooks might find $40/year to be a great deal, but most users likely don't have that large of a collection - they're looking for more of an ease of use and convenience factor. Take advantage of that, and then allow them to move up and give you more money once their collection grows.

$10/year = 4GB storage or 2000 ebooks? (count # of books, and not storage, to make it seem less technical?) $20/year = 8GB storage or 4000 ebooks? $40/year = 20GB storage or __? $60/year = unlimited

or $10/$30/$60 year, with 2000/10,000/unlimited? and only allow monthly payment as an option for the $30/$60 levels?

at $10/year, it would be an impulse buy for most readers, and then you not only have a paying relationship with them right away, you have a whole year to demonstrate the ease of use and utility of the product.