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Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning

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Re: Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning

#401

Post by johnfn »

storystarling wrote: post #248
johnfn wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't mind some unsolicited and blunt feedback: I suspect the reason this didn't get a lot of traction is that it is unclear why customers would want this. Sorry, that's probably too harsh, but I find it difficult to imagine anyone buying this: - Children's books, at least the well-reviewed ones, are pretty good - This is AI generated, so I expect the quality to be significantly lower than a children's book. F…

Thanks for the blunt feedback - genuinely appreciate it. You're right that children's books can be excellent, and for generic topics a well-reviewed book from a skilled author and illustrator will beat what we generate. No argument there. Where we see real value is in the gaps the publishing industry doesn't serve. Bilingual families who can't find books in Maltese/English or Estonian/German. A child with an insulin…

I have to be honest with you: I am the biggest AI booster alive, and even I would never buy a book fully written by AI. Maybe ask me again in 5 years, but I just don't think the quality is there.

That being said, I think you might be on to something with the bilingual book idea - it might be worth exploring there. But if you want to keep the AI angle, you'd have to come up with a pretty clever twist.

Re: Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning

#402

Post by teo_zero »

encom wrote: post #297
airstrike wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we need a Vibe HN

This, but unironically. Every submission should have an "AI?" checkbox, to indicate if the content submitted is about AI or made by AI, because I'm just absolutely fed up with 2/3 of HN front page being slop or meta-slop. I'm not an anti-AI luddite, but for gods sake talk about (ie. submit) something else!

Yes please! I don't know what's worse: reading an AI-generated post or several comments that go like "I've spotted an em-dash, it must be AI generated".

Re: Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning

#403

Post by BrunoBernardino »

I did a Show HN a couple of days ago for a EU-based Kagi alternative [1] and was pretty disappointed to see it get 7 votes in the first hour and then disappear (from the first page).

I've been told it was probably shadowbanned because I shared the direct link in a small community (I didn't _ask_ to upvote, I shared the post, and mentioned people could upvote if they thought it was worth it), but I don't see it as flagged or anything. It just seems like there's too much volume nowadays, indeed.

If it's clear for someone else I've done something wrong in the post, I'd love to be told and learn from it.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47035142

Re: Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning

#405

Post by storystarling »

disiplus wrote: post #342
storystarling wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the blunt feedback - genuinely appreciate it. You're right that children's books can be excellent, and for generic topics a well-reviewed book from a skilled author and illustrator will beat what we generate. No argument there. Where we see real value is in the gaps the publishing industry doesn't serve. Bilingual families who can't find books in Maltese/English or Estonian/German. A child with an insulin…

As a father of two boys, i can give you some feedback. The AI stories you will generate will probably be crap and not worth paying for. What my kids love is when i put them (like i take a picture of them, and then generate them in jungle or whatever setup it is with gemini banana) They want that i print them those out, i know it's temporary but its fun for us all. So you could combine those two things.

yes - we do combine those both and you can upload photos to get your kids into the book.

Re: Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning

#407

Post by storystarling »

cyberrock wrote: post #400
storystarling wrote: post #230

Similar experience. I posted a Show HN two days ago for a children's book generator - type a story idea, get a fully illustrated printed book shipped to you. Offered a free printed book including shipping to the HN community via voucher code. Got 7 points, 2 comments, and zero voucher redemptions. Nobody even ordered the free book. One of those comments was genuinely useful feedback from Argentina about localization.…

Are you sure it's not just the delivery? If I want a storybook I don't want to wait 2 business days for it to print, ship, and deliver, and I'm sure most parents/guardians don't think that far ahead. The physical delivery factor turns your product into a mental burden. If you (or Disney or Hasbro) shipped ebooks that unfolded when you tell it a prompt (in the format of "bibbidi bobbity boop tell me a story about an e…

That's a fair point about friction, but we're intentionally focused on physical books - the whole idea is to get away from screens. Most parents we talk to have the opposite problem: too much digital content, not enough tangible things. A printed book that lives on the shelf, gets read at bedtime, gets dog-eared and carried around - that's the product. You're ordering it for a birthday, a holiday, a first day of school. It's not impulse content, it's a keepsake.

Re: Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning

#408

Post by storystarling »

haute_cuisine wrote: post #312
storystarling wrote: post #230

Similar experience. I posted a Show HN two days ago for a children's book generator - type a story idea, get a fully illustrated printed book shipped to you. Offered a free printed book including shipping to the HN community via voucher code. Got 7 points, 2 comments, and zero voucher redemptions. Nobody even ordered the free book. One of those comments was genuinely useful feedback from Argentina about localization.…

Personally, I find AI generated text disengaging. A also heard some professional writers immediately notice disorganized storytelling patterns. Have you found a way to fix this? Is there any soul in generated texts?

Honestly, for children's books specifically - yes. A children's book is 28 pages, simple language, short sentences, clear emotional arc. That's a very different challenge than writing a novel. We've put a lot of work into the prompting and story structure, and the results are genuinely good for this format. Parents can also edit every page of text before approving for print if they want to tweak anything.

The soul comes less from the prose and more from the fact that this story exists for this child. A book about their specific fear, their favorite thing, their family situation — that's what makes a kid ask to read it again at bedtime.

Re: Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning

#409

Post by storystarling »

rjh29 wrote: post #293
storystarling wrote: post #230

Similar experience. I posted a Show HN two days ago for a children's book generator - type a story idea, get a fully illustrated printed book shipped to you. Offered a free printed book including shipping to the HN community via voucher code. Got 7 points, 2 comments, and zero voucher redemptions. Nobody even ordered the free book. One of those comments was genuinely useful feedback from Argentina about localization.…

AI art is massively downvoted here and on Reddit, but boomers on facebook seem happy to share it. So I think you'll do better on other platforms. The opinion of AI generated creative work is just very low here. I personally agree, I've never seen an AI generated story that was interesting and I don't want to expose my children to it. I'd rather they get real stories written by real people.

Fair perspective. But the parent isn't passive here — they're the creative director. They decide what the story is about, who the hero is, what happens. The AI does a lot of the writing, yes, but the parent is the editor: they review every page, rewrite lines, regenerate illustrations they don't like. It's closer to working with a ghostwriter than pushing a button.

Most AI content feels empty because it's made for nobody in particular. A StoryStarling book is the opposite - a parent shaping a story around their specific child's world. That's a real story. They just had help telling it.

Re: Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning

#410

Post by storystarling »

mathgladiator wrote: post #371
haute_cuisine wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I find AI generated text disengaging. A also heard some professional writers immediately notice disorganized storytelling patterns. Have you found a way to fix this? Is there any soul in generated texts?

Not OP, but Opus 4.6 is crazy good at writing. I generated a 500 page book, and it took until around page 275 for things to... go off rails. My strategy was to leverage ralph and a bunch of personas, and it good my act structure, major points and was able to just GO. For the first part, it was, by far, the best sci-fi book I've read. The problem is that I can tell in the writing where context collapse happened. It's…

This matches our experience. For a 28-page children's book there's no context collapse - the entire story fits comfortably in context. The format actually plays to LLMs' strengths: short, structured, clear emotional arc. It's a very different problem than generating 500 pages.
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