Goodreads doesn't get enough love from Amazon, It always seemed really odd to me that the recommended books in the kindle store were better than goodreads even though it's all the same company. It seems like a wasted opportunity. There are also numerous bugs I've ran into on the app that I just work around.
I Want to Fix Goodreads
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Re: I Want to Fix Goodreads
#72The status quo regarding Goodreads and it's position in the industry is really interesting.
There is not a single competent alternative to Goodreads, yet Goodreads just sucks! As simple as that, the UI is horrible, the UX is disgusting, the perfomance is that of toaster and still people are using it.
I personally am using it for the last 5 years while continuously searching unsuccessfully for alternatives. If you think the website is bad, you should check out the Android app, never in my life have I seen a worse app by a popular company.
I got so frustrated by Goodreads that on multiple occasions I thought of starting a competing product just to challenge the status quo, but as soon as I started dwelling deeper into it, I realized that there is just no real viable business model for it to be worth it.
I guess that explains the current status of Goodreads and why there are so few competitors.
How do you monetize a social network about reading books? I have spent way too much time thinking about it, yet failing to achieve a result.
1)You can't really sell books, since Amazon is already so well entrenched and honestly books aren't a really hot commodity.
2)Subscription for audiobooks? Again there is Audible, and Scribd is also doing a phenomenal business doing it, you pay $9 and listen to as many as you want audiobooks.
3)Affiliate marketing? Goodreads already does it, and it isn't really a business model with a good foundation.
4)Customized ads? This might be the "least" worst solution, although what could you advertise to people who read books? Their LTV (lifetime value of customers) isn't really high.
5)A paid social network? Good luck trying to grow a social network which asks it's users to pay $1 monthly.
6)The latest and craziest idea I had regarding it, was to make it a hybrid of Goodreads and LinkedIn. Where employers can see what types of books are their applicants reading. I.e. if I am looking to hire a backend intern, I am sooner going to hire the intern who read in his free time Effective Java, Clean Code, etc. since you can pretty much gain a good overall picture about a person by looking at the books he reads.
I spent way too much time obsessing over this...
Re: I Want to Fix Goodreads
#73Good lord what I wouldn’t give for a better goodreads. Never has so much useful and actionable data been squandered. For example, I could write pages about how bad the “top books” lists are. The Goodreads Choice Awards are purely and literally popularity contests, for example. Why would this be the case - you have millions of user ratings, you should be using those to surface exciting and unknown books rather than th…
I'm confused. What you describe is really just another form of popularity contest, no? Unless you have a set of reviewers that you value over others. One might call them the critical reviewers. (No, I'm not trying to be subtle) So, what books did you find? Why not make a post on your method?
Not exactly. Goodreads will value a million people giving a book 1 star higher than 20k giving it 5 stars. I just sorted by average score.
I posted the books in this thread (sorry, on mobile right now).
Re: I Want to Fix Goodreads
#74Isn't it the same problem with Amazon? It shows me different versions of the 5 products I last viewed. And unlike, goodreads it seems like there is clear monetary value for amazon in fixing product recommendations but somehow it is the same for years.
Re: I Want to Fix Goodreads
#75> I wish there was some way to note books that I don’t want to read.
Minor point but there is a "Not interested" button in the screenshot shown above this paragraph. While Goodreads' initial suggestions were off-the-mark, I wonder if using that would help?
Re: I Want to Fix Goodreads
#76A buddy of mine has started on a better designed alternative to Goodreads. It's in early access right now but it has potential and I'm looking forward to seeing what else he adds to it: https://readng.co
Re: I Want to Fix Goodreads
#77I am a Goodreads employee. this is a burner account. i could be fired for posting. we love Goodreads and we know it is bad today. we are working to fix it. there are very few of us. we are trying. we are making big changes soon.
Happy to read that you are working on improvements! GoodReads is my most-used and most important database. I love it, I also actually like that it feels more like an “older” webpage before all this craziness with stealing the attention and time of users came up (Goodread in its current state is already addictive enough for me). I hope you fix the bigger issues (like slow loading times, recommendations, convoluted UI) but keep the aim-at-making-the-page-actually-useful (and not a manipulative time sink) approach.
Feature wishes: Extensions on book statistics, a function for discovering like-minded users, marking books as „finished“ / „decided not to finish“ and showing this information (this could provide some very useful additional information on books), and maybe a „listened to the audiobook“ marker.
Re: I Want to Fix Goodreads
#78Howdy, Mek here -- I run https://openlibrary.org over at the non-profit Internet Archive (the folks that bring you the Wayback Machine). Open Library is an free, online California Library with millions of digital books to read and borrow. It's additionally an open catalog of millions of books which you may track like goodreads. Best part? If it's not to your liking, the whole project is open source! https://github.co…
Thanks for your work mek!
Re: I Want to Fix Goodreads
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you share the titles and authors of those two books?
Infinite jest by David foster wallace and only forwards - forget the author name off the top of my head. Infinite jest is pretty popular these days. The other I have yet to hear anyone say they have read.
I’ve read Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith. It stuck in my mind the same way that Vurt did. I still think about the man with no head sometimes, and the idea of a road being different when you’re going the other way on it.
Re: I Want to Fix Goodreads
#80I am a Goodreads employee. this is a burner account. i could be fired for posting. we love Goodreads and we know it is bad today. we are working to fix it. there are very few of us. we are trying. we are making big changes soon.
> i could be fired for posting. Yikes, that's rather dramatic! Especially since all you've said is "we're working to fix it. changes soon." That's a pretty harmless statement, I would think. What gives you the idea that such statements put your employment at risk?
> we know it is bad today
This is the kind of thing companies love their employees to share publicly!