[HN Gopher] Show HN: Shepherd.com - Discover books in a new way,...
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Show HN: Shepherd.com - Discover books in a new way, like wandering
a bookstore
Author : bwb
Score : 270 points
Date : 2021-04-20 07:19 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (shepherd.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (shepherd.com)
| robbiejs wrote:
| I love the layout, the font combo and spacing really work for me.
| The website looks very "genuine" and "sincere". A lot of work
| must have gone into it! Have bookmarked it.
| zackkatz wrote:
| Seconded. Very easy to read!
|
| I'm also impressed by the speed of the site. Well done!
|
| One thing book stores have is gifts for people. "Someone who
| wants a book about dream interpretation may enjoy a rare
| minerals Rubin's cube" may be a good way to increase your
| average referral fee.
|
| And don't forget cards and stationary!
|
| You've got the layout down. Now I want to see more of the other
| items I see when browsing a bookstore!
| bwb wrote:
| Thanks, we are using CloudFlare and heavily cached. Plus I
| have an amazing developer who did an amazing job (and we use
| only Plausible.io for some basic stats). It is so nice to
| launch a site with no user component... :)
|
| Ah great idea, added to my list!
| bwb wrote:
| Thanks :), a lot of data entry over the last 6 weeks... I
| manually created 410 book lists, 2,311 books along with book
| cover images, and 2,453 author profiles. I've got a better
| backend system now so that I can get some help with the data
| entry to speed up that side of things.
| varispeed wrote:
| I am increasingly finding it difficult to read books. It feels
| like it takes ages to read - like reading 20 pages feels like an
| hour gone by, but it was only 10 minutes. That adds anxiety, as
| if I am missing out on other things while I read. To keep up, I
| got the app Blinkist. I listened to dozens of excerpts from
| topics that interest me, but now I can't do that as I found that
| most books follow the same patterns and it is all the same. What
| to do?
| bwb wrote:
| Ya, I've hit moments like that. For me, I look for a purely fun
| book that is just about escaping and enjoying a story. No
| pressure to learn or to think just escape. That is usually
| fantasy or a good space science fiction book.
| haffi112 wrote:
| The name of the wind by Patrick Rothfuss is a good start to
| get hooked on fantasy stories.
| bwb wrote:
| I love that one :), any other suggestions for me?
| barry27 wrote:
| missing out on what? people arguing on twitter? people standing
| in front of something and taking a photo of themselves? just
| take a deep breath. you will be ok disconnected from the matrix
| for a little while.
| coffeeri wrote:
| I feel more or less the same way. But forcing myself to stick
| to one or two books at a time helped me. Eventually you will
| catch the fun in it. I also find audiobooks to be my favorite
| format for consuming books, as I can do it at any place and
| listen at my desired speed.
| tyronehed wrote:
| I feel bad for you. I read constantly and have completed 12
| books so far this year. This year is my Year of the Brain. I am
| reading books on neuroscience. Deep reading is my life, outside
| of work. I have a clawfoot bathtub and do a lot of reading
| there. I just find that short internet articles are hardly
| worth the time. They offer no depth.
| senko wrote:
| > That adds anxiety, as if I am missing out on other things
| while I read.
|
| I'd wager this right there is the problem.
|
| Sounds like you're reading through books like they are a chore.
| Instead, find one book with a subject/theme that interests you
| (so the subject itself is not boring) and then try to relax and
| read slowly.
|
| If it's fiction, savor every word and phrase, try to visualise
| the description/emotion/action. If it's non-fiction, think
| through what what you just read means, why is that's so (it's
| okay to not have answers, questions are important).
|
| I know "try to relax" is unhelpful. But one approach I'd try is
| to carve out a block of time (say, 1hr), put your phone/devices
| on Do Not Disturb, set an alarm for one hour (so you don't
| think too much time's slipping away) and just read.
|
| It's purely anecdotal, but both me and a couple of friends
| commented on how consuming short content (eg. youtube videos,
| short blog posts) led to "attention atrophy". If the content
| doesn't "get to the point" immediately, we get anxious and
| bored.
|
| If this describes you as well, try consuming less short-form
| and more long-form content (longer videos, longer in-depth
| articles, etc).
| varispeed wrote:
| > "attention atrophy"
|
| That is probably true. Now if something is longer than 5
| minutes I don't watch it end to end, but keep skipping "to
| the point". When I listen to lectures, I am always listening
| at fastest speed possible and also skip. I tried meditation
| as well, but I have this feeling of doom crawling around my
| thoughts when I meditate. Like I am sitting here meditating,
| and worry that work is not being done. I need to get to the
| bottom of this.
| nocturnes wrote:
| This sounds a lot like ADHD, especially in terms of the
| focus on getting 'to the point' (which can be maladaptive
| if it results in routinely skipping over the 'filler',
| which is very often crucial to developing deep
| understanding).
| varispeed wrote:
| I need to read more about this. I thought you can't
| develop ADHD in adulthood. I suffer from chronic pain and
| when the symptoms were worse I had to constantly do
| something to take my attention away from pain. Now I am
| getting quite good medication so I don't have to do that
| often. But I was definitely able to watch even very long
| lectures and I read many books when I was younger without
| problem. Brain is such a fascinating device :-)
| dave84 wrote:
| I read physical and ebooks a lot but I also listen to an
| Audiobook on my walk each day, I'd recommend trying it out if
| you feel the to read something. The only value I found in
| summary services is using them to decide if I'll read the full
| book. I feel the missing context and stories don't anchor the
| summaries as well in my mind as when I read a full book, the
| experience is almost devoid of the joy of reading and feels
| like an exercise in trivia assimilation.
| whatgoodisaroad wrote:
| I don't know if this helps, but I had a similar problem getting
| through even one page in a good book. My mind would wander
| somewhere else mid page and when I realized it, I'd feel silly
| and have to rewind and rebuild context to continue reading.
| Usually felt a little ashamed to reread part of the page I had
| scanned the words of but didn't actually read with my thinking
| brain.
|
| Eventually what I realized was that these books were actually
| stimulating my thoughts at a higher frequency than the author
| intended. This is only really a bad thing if you need to get
| through the book under a certain deadline. Stimulating new
| thoughts is precisely why I read books in the first place!
|
| These days, when some sentence sends me on a mental rabbit
| trail and then consciously pause and follow it as far as I like
| before returning to the text. Overall this is a much more
| satisfying reading experience for me.
| [deleted]
| phromo wrote:
| For me, the most enjoyable part of reading is adding my own
| thoughts to the experience. It might be vivid imagery as part
| of reading a sci-fi, or musings on life and truth in a non-
| fiction. If you frame reading as achieving a predefined goal
| ("learn topic X"), it's easy to forget this part and become
| obsessed on speed, with the focus on "consumption" instead of
| "co-creation". Try setting aside 2 hours where you can either
| be bored or read. I typically start by relaxing. Sometimes I
| just relax the entire two hours and dont read at all. When I
| feel I'm ready, I start reading. Use a watch that measures
| heart rate variability if you need some extra bio-feedback to
| get that tension out of your body. When relaxed, your mind will
| do the rest.
| whatgoodisaroad wrote:
| This reminds me of how Roland Barthes would categorize prose
| as either "readerly" or "writerly", whereas a readerly work
| is a straightforward and passive experience for the reader, a
| writerly work is a sort of framework for the reader to
| participate in the writing, and co-create as you put it.
|
| Recognizing that a work is writerly isn't always obvious.
| It's often obscured by the fact that reading it can be so
| stimulating and enjoyable.
| yoz-y wrote:
| Personally I like either fiction books or
| historical/biographies-kind. Books that try to teach me
| something often do feel like a chore. (e.g.: i'm trying to read
| GEB after all the recommendations, but I just can't get into
| it)
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| > What to do?
|
| Buy a dumbphone, strictly restrict access to the internet via
| computer. Wait a year to regrow your abilities.
|
| Sorry to sound like your dad.
| presentation wrote:
| Ive come to enjoy audiobooks as an alternative for the same
| reasons. Somehow just listening instead of reading makes the
| same texts feel a lot more enjoyable to me.
| james-bcn wrote:
| The great thing about audiobooks is that you can do physical
| things at the same time (gardening, running, cooking, gym,
| etc). Using audiobooks has increased by book consumption by
| about 5x.
| kamranjon wrote:
| I'm skeptical of the retention of information when it comes
| to audio books because of this very reason. Do you find you
| have the same sort of recall when it comes to dicsussing
| what you've read with audio books?
| crocsarecool wrote:
| I usually do chores while I do audiobooks. I am very
| imaginative and get so immersed that I feel like I've
| been watching a movie.
| latexr wrote:
| > but now I can't do that as I found that most books follow the
| same patterns and it is all the same.
|
| Most _self-help_ books do; not most books. I'm using that term
| in a broad sense to encompass books which explore one major
| "life-changing" /"perspective-shifting" idea, like any by Cal
| Newport or Simon Sinek.
|
| Those books have little substance. They're pamphlets padded by
| examples supporting the one thesis. Find an online talk by the
| author and you'll get 90% of the juice without spending a penny
| and by a fraction of the time investment of the book.
| mindwok wrote:
| Wow, this is amazing. I have a really hard time finding books I'm
| interested in reading, but basically every list I clicked on on
| here got me excited about every book. Having someone well versed
| in such specific topics not only sorts the wheat from the chaff,
| but reading their passionate descriptions of each book they chose
| makes me excited to read them. Thank you this is fantastic!
| bwb wrote:
| Sweet, that is so great to hear! If you have any ideas on how
| to improve it, help you sort, or anything shoot me an email
| (ben@shepherd.com).
| alfonsodev wrote:
| Congrats! lovely idea!
|
| A humble suggestion would be to remove "The Best Books On .."
| prefix for every title, maybe just having it once at the top, as
| it creates a bit of friction while skimming trough the list, and
| I think is already implicit that it's a selection.
| jordanpg wrote:
| I would also add that the "best" label is so overused by
| marketing best-of list sites on the internet these days that
| its very presence is a little suspicious. I would consider
| different wording. Perhaps "richest," "most worthwhile,"
| "excellent," etc.
| bwb wrote:
| Ya the problem is that people use it to search for books 95%
| of the time, and they think that way :). It is this weird
| thing where I'd like to avoid it, but you can't if you want
| to connect with how people think and search for books.
| bwb wrote:
| Thanks for the suggestion :). I am playing with some new card
| formats and I'll see how it looks if I remove that. No promises
| but I'll give it a try.
| dt3ft wrote:
| I actually was hoping that this would be a 3D game-like
| environment, where you walk around a library and are able to
| click on a book and it appears in your hands and you can flip
| through a few pages, rotate it, examine the cover...
| cik wrote:
| Well that's not what I was hoping for. I want to see bookshelves
| - like in the physical store. I want to go to a section (sci-fi,
| fantasy, cooking, whatever) and browse the bookshelf, with a
| rendered cover.
|
| Then, I want to click on that cover and read the back of the
| book, on the book jacket. A sample of a page or two would be
| nice, but for me it's unnecessary. Finally, buttons to purchase
| the treepub, epub, audiobook, etc. are all fine - keep that
| experience digital.
|
| I keep visiting physical bookstores for this reason. Book
| discovery online is nowhere near as fun, as it was in a physical
| store.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| One website that might provide that is the Open Library
| Explorer https://openlibrary.org/explore
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| Physical bookstores across Europe have dwindling stock of
| actual books. Instead, a relative few books are kept around as
| token attempts at being a bookstore, while the owners seek
| higher profit margins on things like gimmicky stationery, tea
| sets, vinyl records, etc. So, even physical locations are no
| longer very useful for discovery. You are lucky if you still
| have a local bookshop as capable of surprises as back in the
| 1990s.
| adventured wrote:
| That's an interesting trend for Europe. In the US physical
| bookstores have thrived over the past decade. I can't
| remember the last place I was - small town or large city -
| that didn't have a normal physical bookstore filled with
| actual books, as was common 30 years ago.
| dhosek wrote:
| Really? I've noticed a _huge_ decline in the numbers of
| bookstores over the last 30 years. There was a stretch of
| about 3 blocks near DePaul University in Chicago that had
| about 8 bookstores in the 80s /90s and now I don't think
| there's a single bookstores there. 3rd Street Promenade in
| Santa Monica used to have about a dozen bookstores and now
| only has Barnes & Noble (plus an arts and architecture
| bookshop whose name I don't recall at the moment which used
| to be on the promenade but moved to Wilshire). Venice Blvd
| in Venice also had 3 or 4 bookstores which are all gone
| now.
| bwb wrote:
| The number of independent bookstores in the United States
| was impressively high in 2019, with 1,887 independent
| bookselling companies running 2,524 stores.
|
| That said, compared to numbers in the 1990s it is down.
| But lately going up.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/282808/number-of-
| indepen...
| dhosek wrote:
| Bookselling is truly a _sui generis_ endeavor. A bookstore
| will typically have thousands of distinct items in inventory
| with most having only a single copy in stock. For better or
| for worse, non-book inventory has a much better rate of
| return for the bookseller than actual books. The trend you
| describe is not unique to Europe, but has been happening in
| the US as well. That said, while my local indie does have a
| lot of non-book inventory for sale, the bulk of their square
| footage is still books. It 's been a while since I was in
| Europe, but when I was, the bookshops that I visited (mostly
| in Paris, but I think I may have looked into one in Bruges as
| well), were all well-stocked with books. Same with my visit
| to Prague and Vienna in 2008. What I have noticed is that the
| density of bookstores in the US has declined greatly over the
| last 30 years. I used to travel a lot to give workshops in
| LaTeX and I would pull out the pages in the hotel yellow
| pages to visit all the local bookstores wherever I was
| teaching1. This would occupy my evenings for the whole week
| of my trip. On my last business trip, to Atlanta, about 6
| years ago, there were only 6 bookstores I could find in the
| whole city and two were chain stores.
|
| 1. One memorable moment happened in Denver when I didn't
| realize that the bookstore I was visiting was an _adult_
| bookstore. I wandered the shelves wondering why I didn 't
| recognize any of the authors. It wasn't until I returned to
| my rental car and looked back at the store that I realized
| what had happened.
| smoe wrote:
| I love my local small book stores, but I rarely explore the
| bookshelves on my own. I go straight to the owner and tell them
| what book i recently read and what aspects about I liked, which
| not and ask them what they recommend me reading next. And over
| time they have a better and better understanding about my
| tastes. This has worked better for me than any algorithm or
| crowd sourced recommendations, because neither of them
| understands _why_ I enjoyed something.
|
| This only works in the small shops where the people there live
| for books, not in the big chain stores where they just work.
| bwb wrote:
| Yep I hear you :)
|
| I am working to add Topics which I am calling Shelves toward
| July/August to expand the experience and get closer to what I
| hope to achieve.
|
| Here is a really rough preview of part of that:
| https://forauthors.shepherd.com/shelf-pages
|
| Please keep in mind that is a very early mockup and I am
| currently redoing it heavily. But the idea is to recommend
| books one by one to start, as well as better ways to view them
| (ignore the bottom of the mockup as that is all being redone).
|
| The back of the book jacket costs about $1,000 to $2,000 a
| month to license, so I can't do that yet. But down the road I
| might look at that. For now people can click through to the
| store to see that too.
| SamBam wrote:
| Wait, does the text of the blurb cost $1000-2000/mo? If so,
| does GoodReads pay that? Because they have the back blurb of
| every book, don't they?
|
| If it's the specific image of the back of the book, I don't
| actually see that being make-or-break for anyone. You can put
| the blurb that's styled vaguely like the back of a book if it
| makes people read it more.
| ilaksh wrote:
| $1k-2k per month for the back cover of a single book makes me
| think that the publishing industry should be explosively
| disrupted. Not sure how exactly, but that is ridiculous.
|
| Here is an idea: a movement towards exclusively epub with
| open source DRM and cryptocurrency. And local physical stores
| can just start printing jackets.
| bwb wrote:
| Well that includes all the books metadata like cover image,
| author etc, but ya I agree :). I think part of the problem
| is that fee to Ingram is for flat files or their API, and
| you are basically paying them to centralize what they
| collect from authors.
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| I am not a lawyer, but there is no way that using all
| these things to sell a book is not fair use.
| hampelm wrote:
| Possibly, but someone still needs to do the work of the
| aggregation and QC.
| GordonS wrote:
| > The back of the book jacket costs about $1,000 to $2,000 a
| month to license, so I can't do that yet.
|
| Wow, _what_?! If true, that is absolute madness... I mean, it
| 's basically advertising material - as an author, why on
| earth wouldn't I want it to be as available as possible?
|
| Plus, surely online book shops are not selling $2,000+ of
| each single book before they break even?
| bwb wrote:
| $1k to $2k a month for api / flat files with most book data
| :). It is available to use on the site, but not in a
| programmatic way.
| GordonS wrote:
| Haha, that makes much more sense, it seemd read your
| original comment too literally :D
| waihtis wrote:
| This reeks of some ripoff publishing scheme authors are
| tricked into by publishers (where they essentially lose
| control if their own product.)
|
| Walled gardens are the main scenario where you'll see
| absolutely mental cost schemes like these.
| mellosouls wrote:
| Also maybe we could bump into and chat with other store
| browsers? This started off as a tongue in cheek thought but now
| I'm thinking this would be a very cool function... :)
| bwb wrote:
| That is a really cool idea :), noted!
| jonplackett wrote:
| Same - and I also want the same thing for the supermarket. I am
| soooooo bored of what I order online each week and have no
| inspiration.
|
| I miss wandering around putting random things in a trolley.
| GordonS wrote:
| Given the submitted title said "like wandering a bookstore",
| the actual site didn't meet my expectations _at all_ :(
|
| What you are describing sounds pretty cool though. I'd only add
| 2 things:
|
| First, for non-fiction books, an inside preview is a _must_ for
| me (e.g. for recipe books).
|
| Second, I want the same kind of _quantity_ of books you 'd find
| in a book shop - one of the things that makes it hard to find
| books on the likes of Amazon is just how many there are. A
| curated library of books would be preferable.
| bwb wrote:
| Thanks Gordon, yep we are a starting point and a ways to go.
| We've got some good stuff coming next month and then a big
| update toward July/August to get closer to that goal.
|
| An inside preview would be great, we point to Amazon for that
| as that isn't data available to anyone beyond the big guys
| who pay to scan every book.
|
| We have around 2,500 books on the site now, and should have
| around 10,000 by the end of the year. So far more than most
| book shops I believe.
| msla wrote:
| > Second, I want the same kind of quantity of books you'd
| find in a book shop
|
| Boutique book shop with airy rooms and lots of places to meet
| with authors and hold readings, or used book shops with books
| piled on books and all larger spaces subdivided into warrens
| and alleys using bookshelves which are, quite often, double-
| stacked? The former is more manageable, sure, but you'll only
| find that one philosophy book with interesting marginalia in
| the latter.
| FlyMoreRockets wrote:
| There are a few ways to search by book cover.
|
| The Internet Archive Open Library is good, and Z-library.
|
| Also:
|
| https://bigbooksearch.com/
|
| http://bookcoverarchive.com/
| bonoboTP wrote:
| I'd say it can never be as fun online. Part of the experience
| is being physically there, touching the books, feeling their
| weight, seeing the inside, sitting down on the sofa to read a
| bit, wandering around, in many stores you can also grab a
| coffee etc.
|
| Getting a randomized "book feed" is not the same as randomly
| wandering in a bookstore.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| The other thing is that in a bookstore, you can just start
| reading the book. There's no limit on how much you can access
| for free, other than the length of time you're willing to
| spend in a bookstore. Which _is_ a real limit, but it doesn't
| stop me from becoming invested in what I'm reading, because I
| know I could theoretically read the whole thing.
| ghgdynb1 wrote:
| This site is actually doing something interesting through its
| curation, and I would be pretty impressed if that was how it
| was pitched to me.
|
| But I have to agree, expecting a bookstore and then getting
| something totally other is too much of a clash. If you want a
| bookstore, nothing's going to beat a bookstore. If this site
| offers something different, it should be sold on its merits.
| wdb wrote:
| Great idea, and interesting website. But I will try steer away
| from it to protect my wallet (hopeless) :D
| bwb wrote:
| You are telling me, as the creator it is crushing my wallet
| because I talk to these amazing authors and I am buying so many
| books :)
| totetsu wrote:
| Does it do the thing where you can find a book that fell down
| from the shelf behind in another topic that might actually be
| more interesting than what you were looking for?
| bwb wrote:
| Hah it will soon... kinda :). When I ship the related booklist
| feature in mid May it will suggest random best-book-lists to
| kinda achieve that...
|
| Preview of that feature here:
| https://forauthors.shepherd.com/related-book-lists
| [deleted]
| grawprog wrote:
| This isn't like 'wandering through a book store' at all. This is
| a bunch of best of lists written by authors. It's not even close
| to being comparable to wandering through a book store...this
| isn't even a new way to discover books. It's just a bunch of
| recommendations on books on various topics by authors.
|
| Why would you make the description so disingenuous?
|
| Just call it what it is, a curated collection of best of lists...
|
| Then again, I guess that's not really something you can make a
| Show: HN about.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| Here's an idea I have for an online bookstore.
|
| I like old books.
|
| Right now my interest is on Watchmaking, Electronics, and
| Machining.
|
| The books I like are are usually old, and only found while
| browsing used bookstores in person. Books with no isbn's. Books
| that are rare. Books I didn't knew existed. Manuals I didn't know
| about.
|
| My idea is having the owners of used book stores take pictures of
| the books they have on shelves(Just the spines. They would need
| to walk down the isles, and take clear pictures of each wall of
| books. They would send the pictures to me, and I would somehow
| stitch the pics into an app.
|
| I have taken pictures of my books on my shelfs, and even with an
| old iphone, I can zoom into read titles on books.
|
| The end result would be a website where the customer could
| digitally walk down book store isles (navigation like google
| maps?) , and order books they might fancy. Think of the way we
| look at digital paintings in museums?
|
| The owner would get 95% of each sale, or more? Or, all of the
| money, if the entity was set up as a 501c3 to benefit used book
| stores.
|
| Imagine all those old books out there, and walking down an isle
| on books in Ohio, or Ireland, and ordering a book you see on the
| shelf?
|
| On a certain level, I hope an app like this is never built by
| anyone. The internet has ruined so many things I liked. Finding
| an obscure book, at a reasonable price, in a musty book store is
| an experience I enjoy.
|
| (I'm suprised Google hasen't attempted it already. They could
| probally do it very well in a virtual reality setting? Oh yea, I
| like the app this guy did.)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That's a great idea! My sister-in-law owns an independent
| bookstore. I suspect the idea could get some traction.
|
| However, you'd probably need more than spines. One of the
| things about being in a store, is the ability to pull the book
| out, and look into it; maybe even ask questions of the staff.
| EveYoung wrote:
| I guess you could use OCR and object detection to identify
| books from their spines and link to Google Books or
| Goodreads.
| webmaven wrote:
| _> I guess you could use OCR and object detection to
| identify books from their spines and link to Google Books
| or Goodreads._
|
| Google has a patent on doing just that:
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US20150371085A1/en
| 101008 wrote:
| I like the idea, I love to wander on old bookstores as well.
| But that's the magic, isn't? Walk there, be there, listen the
| sounds, see tourists as well, see the owner (often an old
| person with his own "methods"), the smell, the closed spaces. I
| like the idea but the feeling won't be the same at all if I can
| navigate it from the couch.
| wdb wrote:
| I was looking on this website to find some good books about
| Watchmaking! Got any suggestions?
| bwb wrote:
| Added to my list and I'll see what I can do about that :)
| wdb wrote:
| Awesome :) Sometimes I just wish I could have my private
| library at home. Slide alongside the bookshelves etc
| personlurking wrote:
| My main pet peeve while browsing in person is the constant
| turning of my head (sideways) from left to right, because
| titles on book spines aren't always facing the same direction.
| Google could fix that.
| intrasight wrote:
| It'll be a thing - 4 years tops. Hopefully there will still be
| such cool independent bookstores by then.
| chrisjarvis wrote:
| That would be extremely cool for many niche interests and
| hobbies.
|
| I think it would be a lot of work for book store owners however
| because along with taking pictures they would also need to fill
| in some metadata as well about the book to make any kind of
| searching/categorizing possible. Maybe an intrepid entrepreneur
| could start with a few bookstores and do that categorization
| for them as a "do things that don't scale" experiment.
| martyvis wrote:
| Aisles. (I'm sorry to be that guy).
|
| But, yep this is a great idea. And you could probably do it
| from a video walking down those aisles - and present it via a
| VR or AR technique.
| 1-6 wrote:
| There are various examples of people creating storefronts in
| applications like Minecraft and Roblox. I think it's just a
| matter of time before we see a better 3D World constructed in
| webassembly to represent millions of stores across the world.
| That marketplace will be huuge!
| ryanar wrote:
| From the title, I was expecting some sort of google maps style
| walk through a library thing. But this is good! I found a
| category I was interested in and wanted to buy every book in it.
| Loved the personal notes.
| corobo wrote:
| I love the idea but could you put a link to fiction or Best
| Science Fiction or something somewhere on the page to jumpstart
| my browse?
|
| I have no interest in any of the homepage topics and have given
| up browsing. I probably just don't get it to be fair.
|
| In an actual book store though I'd beeline to the scifi section
| and then browse from there if I wasn't after anything in
| particular
| bwb wrote:
| Yep, I am working on adding true topic support and search to
| get you to the right place toward July/August :). Right now the
| homepage is pretty basic as we are just getting started.
| corobo wrote:
| Awesome! Bookmarked + reminder set, I'll check back :D
| kokanator wrote:
| Escaping the suggestion algorithm is what the physical bookstore
| does for me. Yes suggestions can be helpful to a point but limit
| the ability for discovery.
|
| Books in general are about discovery whether that is discovering
| knowledge or discovering new worlds. A bookstore is an extension
| of this.
|
| Lists do this to some degree but someone has done the discovery
| for you. ( and I don't have the answer here ) But we need to find
| a way to allow the discovery to occur.
| mhb wrote:
| Minor suggestion: Don't include leading _The_ when alphabetizing
| titles.
| bwb wrote:
| Yep, that is due to some of the mess with the fake topic setup
| we have now. It is due to be cleaned up as we build out real
| topic support long term, and short term I am looking to improve
| that card format.
| yosito wrote:
| Is there more to this than just "curated book lists"? I found
| that the only option was to scroll through the list and see if
| there was a topic that caught my attention, and once I found an
| interesting one, it was just a list of books. Plenty of platforms
| have this feature. For me, having someone else pick my reading
| list doesn't have much appeal to me either, especially if that
| "someone else" is a startup that has an agenda of their own.
| bwb wrote:
| Yep, good question, this is just the start, and next we will
| relate those book lists to each other to help you follow topics
| you might be interested in. As well as eventually pages around
| topics like WW2, Grief, The Cold War, etc.
|
| These book recommendations are all recommended by experts in
| those fields and they they pick those with no input from us.
|
| And, just me on the project.
| [deleted]
| chaostheory wrote:
| I dig your Netflix style categorizations, but it would be nice to
| have a Netflix like UI to go along with it. Still nice though
| bwb wrote:
| Thanks, so you want to browse purely on book cover? Or some
| format with book cover + breakdown?
| bwb wrote:
| Hi all, the creator here :)
|
| I am trying to create an online experience that is like wandering
| through your local bookstore. Along with little notes pointing
| out great books by people who really know that topic. For the
| beta launch, I've got a little over 400 book recommendation lists
| by authors on specific subjects. These are all hand curated.
|
| Some of my favorites:
|
| The Best Books On The Power And Wonder of Mathematics
| https://shepherd.com/best-books/power-and-wonder-mathematics
|
| The Best Books On The Meaning Of Life https://shepherd.com/best-
| books/meaning-of-life Tom is one of my favorite video essayists
| and worth a watch.
|
| The Best Books For Understanding Human Nature
| https://shepherd.com/best-books/understanding-human-nature
|
| This is just the start and I have a lot of improvements coming. I
| will be adding related book lists so that you can keep following
| your curiosity from list to list.
|
| I know the homepage is a bit shitty. I will add actual topic
| support and topic pages this summer (and an improved card format
| coming soon for the listings on the bottom).
|
| I am hoping to get into NLP later this year to help me with
| topics around the books and book lists.
|
| Feel free to ask me anything!
|
| My email is ben@shepherd.com if you want to say hi or share some
| thoughts, Thanks, Ben
| ncallaway wrote:
| I'm excited to see this. I've started to become really
| convinced lately that online shopping (for everything!) really
| needs a next leap forward.
|
| I'm sick of everything I can buy on the internet being
| presented as a grid of images with a title, description, and
| price, with a detail page if I click on it.
|
| The presentation of a physical stores is so varied! A small
| bookstore is _so_ different from a large bookstore, which is so
| different from a toy-store, which is again so different from an
| auto-parts store.
|
| I think the online UX for shopping is in dire need of iteration
| at this point. There's a _reason_ each of those physical stores
| are presented differently, and I feel like we 've lost so much
| of that in online shopping.
|
| I'm really excited to see the ideas you come up with for ways
| to make buying books online different from buying shoes or
| auto-parts online. I hope you're able to find some of that
| magic that bookstores were able to create.
|
| Good luck!
| afpx wrote:
| I might have missed it, but it doesn't seem to have any books
| about Christianity. Lots of other religions, though. How can
| that be? Was it a conscious decision?
| bwb wrote:
| It is just how topics timed out :), I did a big focus on
| Buddhism, meditation, and stoicism in the first couple of
| months. So they are over represented right now. I've
| redesigned how I do topics now so that they flow in more
| evenly, but there is a lag and that will take 3 to 4 months
| to start shaking out.
|
| There are these though if you are interested:
| https://shepherd.com/best-books/christian-apologetics
| https://shepherd.com/best-books/early-christianity
| https://shepherd.com/best-books/christian-right
| https://shepherd.com/best-books/meeting-christianity-and-
| ger...
|
| I am hoping authors notice me more now and that will help
| diversify what comes in without the cold outreach I do.
| james-bcn wrote:
| How did you get all those authors to contribute?
| bwb wrote:
| Cold emails :)
|
| And, a great pitch about how this is a win/win, they get to
| feature their book alongside the list forever (plus switch it
| out when they have a new book coming out). And, they get to
| share their voice and expertise.
| busymom0 wrote:
| Would you mind sharing examples of your cold email to them
| which got them to open and reply to your email?
| bwb wrote:
| Yep happy too, can you email me at ben@shepherd.com? I
| should note I personally customize them based on the
| author's book and genre, so that adds a lot of magic to
| this. Especially if I have read their book and can talk
| about it.
| celestialcheese wrote:
| small bug or UX issue - most of the bookshop.org links on
| https://shepherd.com/best-books/scientists-who-write-science...
| lead to 404's.
| bwb wrote:
| Thanks, about 15% of the links to bookshop.org goes to a 404
| page as they don't stock used books and don't have all the
| books Amazon does. We are working with them to find a way to
| make our system smarter, as right now they block our server
| from even checking their site for a 404.
| publicola1990 wrote:
| Fivebooks.com is similar in some aspects, their interviews with
| experts I find very enlightening. By now they do have lists on
| very wide variety of topics including eclectic ones.
|
| Eg: they have lists on books about Indonesia, about biographies
| of Charlemagne, about understanding Modern Greece, etc.
| freddie_mercury wrote:
| This is a great idea!
|
| It is so great I'm already paying https://fivebooks.com/ every
| month for it :-)
|
| Seriously, though, the more the merrier when it comes to reading
| and recommendations if you ask me!
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| I've pretty much taken to automatically buying any book anyone
| recommends on HN[1]. So far it's lead me to a few interesting
| books I wouldn't have read, for example The Overstory is the
| most recent one.
|
| [1] Within reason.
| bwb wrote:
| You might like this site that I run too:
| https://hackernewsbooks.com/
|
| We have a weekly newsletter for it that sends out the top 20
| books discussed on HN that week. Be warned, it can hurt your
| book budget :)
| genmon wrote:
| This is amazing! Is the email newsletter critical to your
| model, or would you consider supporting RSS?
| bwb wrote:
| Thanks, I am not the orig creator but working with them
| on this as they are amazing (he even weighted it so it is
| based on HN Karma). I added RSS to my list of features,
| but not sure on ETA. Hit me up at ben@shepherd.com and I
| can update you once I get it added.
| bwb wrote:
| I love Five Books (their long form format is fantastic)!
| Agreed, I am hoping the emergence of Bookshop.org helps a lot
| more book/reading related sites make enough money to flourish.
| sndean wrote:
| The fact that there's a list for a topic so narrow ("The Best
| Books On The Parthian Empire" [0]) on the front page makes me
| like this a lot. Definitely bookmarked.
|
| Not that I've looked elsewhere for a list of books on the
| Parthians, but that does certainly fulfill the "discover" part in
| the title.
|
| [0] https://shepherd.com/best-books/the-parthian-empire
| bwb wrote:
| Thanks :), we have another two you might like:
|
| The Best Books On Parthia And The War with Rome In The 1st
| Century BCE https://shepherd.com/best-books/parthia-and-war-
| rome-1st-cen...
| marton_s wrote:
| I am the engineer who built the software behind Shepherd.com and
| published my "backstage" perspective of the project here:
| https://salomvary.com/building-shepherd.html
|
| Ask me anything!
|
| tl;dr It's built using Django + PostgreSQL + Heroku + Cloudflare
| + Cloudinary + GitHub Actions.
| bwb wrote:
| Bump, Marton has done an awesome job and found him via HN
| luckily :)
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| I'm sick and tired of curated lists of books, whether it's by
| Amazon or anyone else.
|
| Does Amazon present enough of an API that a person could write a
| user interface that allowed browsing of books by Dewey Decimal
| (or LOC)? Searching by name or some internal search engine's idea
| of how to maximize profits is crazy-making.
|
| As a side note, I didn't like the bookstore model when it was
| applied to some libraries, much less a website. It's not
| appropriate for large collections and God knows there's plenty of
| top ten lists on the web.
|
| note to self: Could libgen be presented in Dewey Decimal form?
|
| I realize that Dewey doesn't apply to fiction.
| bwb wrote:
| For any NLP experts out there, I'd really appreciate your
| thoughts on what I could do with NLP to help me tag book lists
| and possibly books with topics...
|
| I am super new to NLP, but I am looking at training a model to
| help me identify what the book-list is about such as specific
| person, place, specific event, group of people, medical
| condition, etc...
| grayne wrote:
| Hi Ben, nice site. I'm no NLP expert but it might be worth
| taking a look at huggingface; they offer a simple API for all
| sorts of models. It looks like you'll be interested in their
| Zero-Shot Classification models in particular, e.g.,
| https://huggingface.co/facebook/bart-large-mnli. Try dropping
| some text in the box and see how it goes. Good luck!
| bwb wrote:
| Thank you, I will do that :)
| randallsquared wrote:
| Suggestion: remove leading article words before alphabetical
| sorting. "A Gardening Guide" and "Gardening Guide" are better
| sorted together.
| bwb wrote:
| Yep, topics is really a hacked together concept right now and
| we are adding a full implementation over the coming months.
| That will be shipped toward July and fix all that :)
| croon wrote:
| This looks really great! The browsing part of book/record/media
| stores never translated online for me, even if finding something
| specific became instantaneous.
|
| Slight hijacking: Does anyone have any tips on how to find/browse
| books for children of varying ages? When I google I find mostly
| listicles with maybe a couple of takeaways, and amazon categories
| aren't very helpful to me.
|
| Commonsensemedia (a nonprofit) is good for evaluating some
| specific piece of media, and has some curated lists, but I'm
| hoping there's something better for discovery.
|
| My 3 year old loves books, but isn't reading a lot on her own
| just yet, but any recommendations in the ~5-6yo range welcome.
| She likes science, food, superheroes, inventions, fantasy
| probably works too.
| bwb wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| I have a 4-year-old so trying to figure out how to make this
| work for children's book is high on my list (I am hoping to
| ship a full Children's and YA section toward the Fall 2021). I
| did try a round of emailing teachers to see if they would be
| interested in recommending books but that didn't work. I am
| running tests now with children's authors to see how well that
| works. And, I am hoping toward the end of the year to use the
| Ingram API to show age recommendations on books and sort it so
| you can find books for specific ages (i want this too)...
|
| Personally, I spend a lot of time on Amazon reviews to try to
| sort through and find good kids books. I still get a fair
| number of duds there that we give away.
|
| My son is 4 and his favorites right now is the dory
| fantasmagory series. Some others he loves are big blue truck,
| snail and the whale (great book and all their books are
| amazing), gruffalo, mixed up chameleon, the tiger who came to
| tea, good day good night, Lion Inside (all their books are
| good), here we are (ditto for his books), the darkest dark (by
| astronaut), and Giraffes can't dance.
| croon wrote:
| Glad it's on the roadmap!
|
| > My son is 4 and his favorites right now is the dory
| fantasmagory series. Some others he loves are big blue truck,
| snail and the whale (great book and all their books are
| amazing), gruffalo, mixed up chameleon, the tiger who came to
| tea, good day good night, Lion Inside (all their books are
| good), here we are (ditto for his books), the darkest dark
| (by astronaut), and Giraffes can't dance.
|
| Perfect. We only have a few of those, and the Gruffalo is a
| real hit, so I'll definitely check out the others. Thanks a
| bunch!
| bwb wrote:
| No problem :), have you seen the Gruffalo on Amazon Prime?
| It is very well done, and they have also done Snail and the
| Whale and Witch on a Broom.
| croon wrote:
| I did, and was impressed, but she found it a bit scarier
| than my reading rendition, so she didn't like it. :)
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| The darkest dark by astronaut _Chris Hadfield_ FTFY
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| To get started with reading we found the "endless reader" apps
| really caught children's interest and are quite well done. They
| help introduce the basics of recognizing words and spelling in
| an interactive way. Use in conjunction with actual books of
| course :)
|
| Elephant and Piggie (Mo Willems) are great, they have simple
| pictures and large, short colourful text mostly in word
| bubbles, and the stories are quite fun and tend to have plot
| twists (children love surprises). Highly recommended.
|
| We also had a lot of success with good old Dr. Seuss classics,
| though those will take a bit longer as they are more complex
| (though this should give you an idea of how simple Elephant and
| Piggie are heh)
| jamiegreen wrote:
| Hi Ben, really nice site, bookmarked. I am curious, if you are
| open to sharing, what your business model is? I assume Amazon
| affiliates or similar, but do you have other plans for
| monetisation or is this more a side project for you? Either way,
| congrats!
| bwb wrote:
| Yep I am very happy to share details. And, I will write more
| about this as I test monetization options here
| (http://build.shepherd.com/).
|
| This is a FT project for me (and a huge passion project as
| well). I am lucky in that I have had several business exits and
| I can afford to work on this without worrying about the money.
| That said, I need to eventually build a business around it
| because I do have costs for the amazing developer I work with,
| the amazing designer, and a few PT people that help with data
| entry. And, I'd like to accelerate development with the money
| the site generates.
|
| For the next 3 years my focus is on growing the content,
| features, and traffic.
|
| In the short term I have affiliate links to Amazon and
| Bookshop.org. I am not sure that will be enough to create a
| sustainable business but I should have more data within 3 to 6
| months to know how that is going to play out.
|
| I have some crazier/wild ideas I want to try eventually, but
| those require a lot more traffic. For example, I'd like to try
| putting a book ad in between books 4 and 5 on every book
| recommendation page, and see if that is a good model (the idea
| being like Google PPC to do book ads on specific topics and
| thus a higher CTR / interest from readers). I'd like to find
| ways to help authors make more while I also am making more.
| Such as autographed book sales, selling posters/art related to
| books and trying to monetize some of their IP more, and so on.
|
| I am also playing with the idea of doing a Kick Starter or
| similar where I match what readers give to help get this going
| a little faster and giving a group VIP status within the site.
|
| Thoughts?
| haffi112 wrote:
| That's a nice plan. I hope you succeed.
|
| I would love personalized recommendations as well (something
| that a person working at a book store could perform). That
| is, you've read and liked A, B and C, have you also read D?
| Or something like: "You've read many books by author X, he
| just released a new book".
|
| In that regard, I would also like to know the sequences of
| books that people read to get involved in a given topic. What
| are the books to enter a field? What books should you read
| after you've dipped your toes in?
|
| I'm developing algorithms for these kind of tasks. Get in
| touch if you want to discuss it.
| bwb wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| Yep, I am dreaming about something called BookDNA but it
| requires user accounts and a book API to make it function
| (I believe). I am hoping to start that late this year or
| early next. Can I grab your email or send me one as I'd
| love to chat about this! (ben@shepherd.com)
| jamiegreen wrote:
| Hey, thanks for sharing more info. I am always interested in
| how people think about monetisation. I don't have any
| particular suggestions other than to wish you best of luck
| with it, I will be along for the ride :)
| publicola1990 wrote:
| Fivebooks.com is very similar, and their interviews/articles are
| usually high quality content, not just publishing industry fluff
| that just want to push recently released books of questionable
| quality, in your face.
| misthop wrote:
| Really great site! I just found a handful of books to add to the
| pile. One piece of hopefully constructive criticism. In the topic
| list drop "The" from the leading word for alphabetizing, or at
| least disregard it. As someone who often looks for a topic/title
| in lists, I hate having to consider if I will find it where I
| expect, or if I need to dive into the great morass of "The..."
| bwb wrote:
| Thanks :), ya I don't actually have topic support yet, that is
| hacked together from a variable I use to construct the meta
| description. I am working to add true topic support along with
| topic pages and will ship that toward July/August to really
| improve it.
| knight17 wrote:
| In a similar vein: Five books. It recommends books by experts on
| a particular topic.
|
| - https://fivebooks.com/
|
| "In case you're new to Five Books, the format is: an expert, a
| topic and the five best books on that topic, explained in an
| interview. Tip: you'll normally learn quite a lot about the topic
| from our interviews, even if you don't get around to reading all
| the books."
|
| Some random lists:
|
| Best books on Sin: https://fivebooks.com/best-books/paula-
| fredriksen-on-sin/
|
| Scientific differences between Women and Men:
| https://fivebooks.com/best-books/scientific-differences-betw...
|
| Favourite Science books for kids: https://fivebooks.com/best-
| books/science-books-for-kids-alic...
| 07121941 wrote:
| I love this site, use it all the time.
|
| Also I know it goes without saying but goodreads lists are
| great for this sort of thing too.
| ddoster wrote:
| Awesome site, Ben! Curation is really hard. I was with a company
| called Roadtrippers where we were curating road trip destinations
| and had the same passion about travel as you do about reading.
|
| There is a zen about browsing in a bookstore, and I see what
| you're going for here. The aisle experience, the recommendations
| from the wonderful book nerds who work there, author
| recommendations.
|
| Some of the best bookstores host live author readings and Q+A.
| Have you thought about doing these to promote your site?
| Platforms for that are taking off (CH and Spaces). Keep up the
| good work!
| bwb wrote:
| Thanks :), do you have any tips on curation? I could use them
| :)
|
| Great idea! I'd love to do author readings/events. I am hoping
| I can start peeking at what that would require later this
| summer. I felt like they would be ghost towns if I didn't have
| a way to get them in front of the right traffic/readers. I am
| aiming to ship true topic pages this summer and I felt like
| then I can show events to people who might be interested.
|
| For example, I recently attended a paid online talk by an
| author called Guy Walters on the real life Great Escape During
| WW2 (https://www.crowdcast.io/guywalters - he does these talks
| often and they are awesome). I felt like I couldn't effective
| promote it unless I have a topic page about World War 2 to
| gather signups.
|
| What do you think?
|
| How would you connect raw traffic to events they are interested
| in?
| ddoster wrote:
| How would you connect raw traffic to events they are
| interested in?
|
| Go where they hang with ads: ex. wwII podcasts, r/ww2
| subreddit. Where did you see the Guy Walters talk? Advertise
| there! Start with your most trafficked topics. Analytics are
| your friend. Same goes for curated content.
| bwb wrote:
| Thanks :). When they are on Shepherd I am thinking about
| how to divide them out into interest beyond topics. i.e. I
| wouldn't want to pitch a WW2 book reading to people not
| interested in WW2.
| ospohngellert wrote:
| Figure this is as good a place as any to ask this: I have been
| looking for good books to read for learning about foreign policy.
| Didn't see any foreign policy lists on the linked cite, wanted to
| see if any users had recommendations :)
| bwb wrote:
| Sorry I haven't gotten to that topic yet, and no
| recommendations. I did add it to my list to work on :)
| valvar wrote:
| For surprisingly excellent curated lists by anonymous 4chan
| users, I can recommend https://4chanlit.fandom.com/wiki/Charts
| brudgers wrote:
| The thing about a physical bookstore is that everything is not
| smushed down into beige metadata. The neon green cover says
| something. The 6" x 6" x 2" book stands out from its tradebound
| neighbors.
|
| Some books are spine out. Some books are front cover spaced. Some
| wrapped in plastic. Some beaten to soft corners by years of thumb
| throughs.
|
| The smell of paper and ink.
|
| Other people around who love books.
|
| Holding and turning to see the price and opening to a random page
| to see how it reads.
|
| And used bookstores stocked full with pieces of other people's
| life.
| jordanpg wrote:
| So, curated lists?
|
| I like the idea, and the execution, but not sure what it has to
| do with my local bookstores. Perhaps the next evolution of
| bookstores (particularly since this is _linking to Amazon_ )?
|
| One suggestion: for topics that have one or more "sides" to them
| or that are controversial, considering cross-linking to a list
| that captures the other side, or skepticism, or critique, or more
| reading. For example, "Snipers In The Vietnam War" might link to
| "The Vietnam War Era." Emphatically _not_ talking about politics
| here.
| bwb wrote:
| Yep, this is a starting point and I am working toward the goal
| of building an experience that is like wandering through a
| bookstore :). I will never replace local bookstores and my hope
| is to help them get more business. I've been talking with
| authors about ideas there too and as this project gets further
| along I am hoping to extend the recommendations I am collecting
| for them to use in their stores along with the materials. Plus
| I am hoping to figure out ways to get them foot traffic.
|
| Great idea!
|
| How would you identify the other side / challenges to that book
| list?
|
| This is something I am thinking about a lot as I want to combat
| social media who serves up the same worldview to people without
| challenging it. Here is a preview screenshot of the related
| book list feature I plan to add to every list next month too:
| https://forauthors.shepherd.com/related-book-lists
|
| Please let me know what you think and if you want to take this
| to email I am at ben@shepherd.com.
| NickNaraghi wrote:
| I'm reminded of Benedict Evan's quote from "Lists are the new
| Search"[0]:
|
| "All curation grows until it requires search. All search grows
| until it requires curation."
|
| [0]: https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2016/1/31/lists-
| are-...
| ayushchat wrote:
| This is awesome! Good stuff
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