[HN Gopher] Show HN: I built a modern Goodreads alternative
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Show HN: I built a modern Goodreads alternative
Since 2005, Goodreads has been the default book tracking site,
connecting millions of readers. But let's be real--it's barely
changed in 20 years. It's the same site it was, just with more ads.
Still no half-star ratings. No proper DNF (Did Not Finish)
option. UI still looks like it's from 2005. Amazon
owns it and doesn't care. So I built Kaguya, a modern
alternative, over the past 9 months. What's live:
Custom shelves (Organize however you want) Rich-text
reviews (format your thoughts properly) 10-star rating
system (More nuance than 5 stars) DNF, On-Hold, and other
reading statuses Likes, shares, comments on reviews
Import your library from Goodreads/StoryGraph A beautiful
design that doesn't make you feel like you're using an ancient
website Coming next: Deep tagging system
(Genres, moods, character traits, tropes) Beautiful stats &
insights (Visualize your reading habits) Discussion forums
for every book (Think subreddit-style discussions) Would love
feedback. What do you think?
Author : vasanthk1125
Score : 213 points
Date : 2025-03-02 14:50 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kaguya.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (kaguya.io)
| vasanthk1125 wrote:
| Tech Stack Backend: Elixir & Phoenix
| Database: PostgreSQL with Supabase (originally CockroachDB, big
| mistake) Auth: Supabase Frontend: Next.js
| UI Components: shadcn GraphQL API: Absinthe
| Hosting: Fly.io (Phoenix) + Vercel (Next.js) Storage:
| Cloudflare R2 + CDN
| cyberpunk wrote:
| What happened with cockroach? :)
| osm3000 wrote:
| I am curious too
| _huayra_ wrote:
| They switched to a non-free license about 6 months ago [0].
| This is not just the usual BSL terms of "do not compete with
| our hosted offering, but use it in your own product without
| issue", but they mandate telemetry from the free version.
|
| Oxide and Friends did a great episode on it at the time [1].
|
| [0] https://www.cockroachlabs.com/docs/stable/licensing-faqs
|
| [1] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/whither-
| coc...
| BozeWolf wrote:
| Why do you use supabase and not just postgres?
|
| Do you use supabase's api interface to do the queries? Or do
| you use supabase for other features?
| vasanthk1125 wrote:
| When I first started working on the website nine months ago,
| I didn't even know what Postgres was, so going with an easier
| option made sense. Right now, we also use Supabase for auth
| and emails.
|
| For queries, we don't use Supabase's API interface--we
| interact with Postgres directly through our backend
| BozeWolf wrote:
| Thanks for your answer. Interesting take that you did not
| know about postgres, but chose an api for storage instead.
| I would have done the opposite.
| SpaghettiCthulu wrote:
| Well, they use Supabase for auth. Perhaps there's other
| integration there.
| julienmarie wrote:
| Why Next.js and not Liveview?
|
| Little note: It seems the search is only by book title, not by
| author and not resilient to typos.
| vasanthk1125 wrote:
| LiveView just has fewer libraries. For example, we use a
| rich-text editor called TipTap, and I'm not sure there's
| anything similar for LV.
|
| Yeah, search is currently by book title and series name. It
| should handle typos pretty well--Meilisearch allows for up to
| two--but I still need to tweak it further
| mmanfrin wrote:
| Does Phoenix have auth? Any reason you chose supa over phoenix?
| And do you store user info (reviews+stuff) in phoenix and just
| reference it with the supa uuids or do you store user generated
| info on their own in supa?
| vasanthk1125 wrote:
| Phoenix doesn't have built-in auth, and setting it up with
| Guardian (the JWT library for Elixir) took too much time.
| Since we were already using Supabase for Postgres, we decided
| to go with its auth to move faster. Supabase provides a UUID
| after authentication, which we then use throughout the rest
| of the database.
| noveltyaccount wrote:
| Where are you sourcing book metadata?
|
| If this site takes off, you'll need a moderation strategy.
| Goodreads has been plagued by extortionary negative reviews.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2023/12/17/1219599404/goodreads-review-b...
| ForTheKidz wrote:
| I just assume all reviews are lying unless I know the reviewer
| or have validated their past reviews. I don't know why these
| sites don't lean into the social angle and weight reviews by
| social-graph distance. This certainly doesn't mean you have to
| HIDE the public reviews by unknown people.... just give an
| incentive to give input at what sort of reviews you want.
| lukev wrote:
| Yeah, reviews are inherently social. I'm waiting for someone
| to build a review platform on top of ATProto (bluesky).
| Hrun0 wrote:
| > I don't know why these sites don't lean into the social
| angle and weight reviews by social-graph distance.
|
| Goodreads does that though. Reviews from friends and people
| you follow are shown first
| ForTheKidz wrote:
| Ah, interesting, apologies for the accidental goodreads
| slander. I moved on to storygraph a while ago and haven't
| looked back.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Doesn't that require the user to curate a friends list of
| people with comparable tastes? I've never met someone who has
| my exact (eclectic and multilingual) taste in books.
|
| Besides, I wouldn't even know who to 'friend' or 'follow' on
| a site like this. What's the point? Chances are I'd just end
| up in some bubble, which defeats the whole point of reading.
| ForTheKidz wrote:
| Presumably you'd agree with a review and then follow
| someone.
|
| I can't say I've ever thought of reading as a way to fight
| against a "bubble", nor am I sure that being in a "bubble"
| is inherently a bad thing. I don't think my life is any
| worse for identifying that I'm not into fantasy smut or
| steven pinker or self-help neuroticism and in fact my life
| is better without these authors in it.
| vasanthk1125 wrote:
| We'll definitely implement automatic review bombing protection.
| I'm thinking something like Steam does.
| sega_sai wrote:
| I don't mind a goodreads alternative, but regarding the UI from
| 2005, I am not sure I care. It works and people are used to it. I
| am not a supporter of "let's try build a new interface using
| shiny new technology" for the sake of _new_.
| frankfrank13 wrote:
| Agreed I really don't mind the interface, if anything, I hate
| the new stuff they've aded
| jordanb wrote:
| Arguably 2005 was a high water mark for UIs. That was when
| people were still focused on "human interface design" and
| hadn't adopted the A/B "revealed preference" nonsense.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I view it as a positive. It's easy to find things and obvious
| which parts are interactive.
| Xelbair wrote:
| for me it is the opposite - i actually prefer older UI.
|
| Less optimized for farming my attention and ads, more optimized
| for me discovering things, and not being shoehorned into
| choices.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| A dated UI is fine by me, but at no point did the current
| placement of the search field make any sense for the average
| user. It is de-emphasised, hidden almost below the fold, as if
| searching for reviews of a particular title wasn't the thing
| most visitors come there for.
|
| Of course there are plenty of monetisation and engagement
| reasons for that UI item to be awkwardly placed...
|
| Kaguya seems a little better here, but it too starts with a
| huge 'MAKE AN ACCOUNT OR FUCK OFF' message in mid screen, with
| the search field in the navigation bar on top. If you want
| become _the_ Goodreads alternative, start with realising that a
| lot of people just want to see if the reviews are any good
| before committing to creating an account and contributing in
| turn.
| lkbm wrote:
| I don't mind where the search is. I do mind that the drop-
| down results can't be opened in new tabs--they are links, so
| you can choose "open in new tab", but they're links to "#",
| so you end up opening the current page in a new tab.
|
| It's just a bunch of basic usability problems like that that
| they've never bothered addressing.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| The search bar is only weird on the home page, which I don't
| imagine is visited very much. I bet most people jump to a
| books page from a browser or phone search.
| vasanthk1125 wrote:
| That's totally okay. If it works for you, keep using it by all
| means. The point of an alternative is to serve those who do
| have a problem and are frustrated with the status quo.
| actinium226 wrote:
| I find the Goodreads UI clunky. To note down my start/end dates
| for a book I have to have some activity on it, and then I can
| edit those dates.
|
| There are other corners of it that could be nicer. It's not so
| much about modern tooling as much as it is about using modern
| tooling to achieve better flow and more pleasant presentation.
| mtndew4brkfst wrote:
| I care most about perf/responsiveness as I navigate the site.
| GR was tolerable on this metric while I still used it,
| StoryGraph (for understandable reasons) is abysmally slow
| somehow.
|
| I have the same complaint about BoardGameGeek. If it was super
| snappy to go with the dated design, I wouldn't bat an eye, but
| it is also kind of a slog.
|
| Both are things I use for discovery a little bit more than I
| use to record my thoughts about my previous experiences, so my
| browsing behavior is very breadth-first search and that makes
| the slow loads more of an acute problem for me.
| pier25 wrote:
| How do you add a book to the database?
|
| The book I'm currently reading does not appear when searching.
| vasanthk1125 wrote:
| We currently don't have that on the website. I'm planning to
| add it soon though, probably next week.
| roland35 wrote:
| Goodreads does indeed suck in many ways, but I am in favor of a 5
| star system! I think oftentimes we need to commit to one rating
| or another and not waffle around with this "4.12425/5" type
| reviews :)
| NAHWheatCracker wrote:
| I think most n/x rating systems are extremely weak and the
| level of detail is irrelevant. Averaging leads to a soup where
| nearly everything that isn't objectively awful falls in 60-80%
| rating. There's no signal to determine if it's good or just
| mediocre based on the rating alone. Goodreads and IMDB have
| been utterly useless to me.
|
| Rotten Tomatoes' system has a lot of positives and I see a ton
| of signal in Rotten Tomatoes scores. It only works with a
| critical mass of people rating a given piece and I don't think
| anyone could get that critical mass for books aside from
| Goodreads.
|
| I had an idea of a rating system where people would have to
| create a ranked list of the movies/books. Their rating for a
| given piece would be based on where it is in their list,
| linearly. Then ratings would be relative to other content. I
| think this would be much harder to get off the ground than a
| Rotten Tomatoes system.
| arh68 wrote:
| Criticker does relative rankings, percentile-matched, in
| kinda the same way. For films (not books).
|
| So if I rate Feature Film I II & III as 30 50 70, and you
| rate them 70 80 90, we would basically "agree". It's a neat
| system that I wish other rating systems would use.
|
| [1] https://www.criticker.com/
| NAHWheatCracker wrote:
| Very interesting to rate movies and see what it predicts.
| Sometimes it's fairly spot on and other times it's way off.
| Very mathematical. Thanks for sharing.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I think most people looking for an alternative to Goodreads are
| using Storygraph.
| albinn wrote:
| Indeed what I've been using, since I learned that Goodreads was
| owned by Amazon
| okucu wrote:
| I found the UI of story graph unusable, like among the worst I
| had ever seen. I remember having to google how to see books
| I've already read. Using hardcover.app now, whose only issue is
| that the performance is really bad
| phist_mcgee wrote:
| Storygraph is brilliant, but it really needs some UX love for
| things like viewing your book piles (read, to-read, dnf) etc.
|
| It's also quite slow, but I suspect that's just part of it
| being a smaller site.
| chilipepperhott wrote:
| How does this compare to https://www.thestorygraph.com/ ?
| sethherr wrote:
| Came here to say this - the Story Graph is fantastic and highly
| recommended.
| jfengel wrote:
| They haven't yet made me any good recommendations. I'm still
| giving it data, if for no other reason than to track my
| reading. I know that book recommendation is hard. But I do
| think I got better suggestions from Goodreads.
| vasanthk1125 wrote:
| StoryGraph has made it pretty clear they don't want to be more
| social--you have to go into your settings and explicitly turn
| on friends and followers.
|
| They also de-emphasize reviews, hiding them under a button.
| There are no likes or comments on reviews, and they don't have
| shelves like Goodreads.
|
| But to me, a big part of Goodreads is the community, library
| organization, and reviews, so I want to emphasize those on
| Kaguya.
|
| Also, I just think our design is much better.
| latexr wrote:
| That was a pretty good endorsement of StoryGraph. I bet a
| number of people just read your description and thought "yes,
| that is exactly what I'm looking for". Of course, it also
| means you did a good job of promoting your own service, since
| it'll attract people who want the opposite.
| Svoka wrote:
| Honestly, Goodreads is bothering me since it is Amazon. Was
| looking for some simple service to track books I'm reading. This
| is nice!
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > 10-star rating system (More nuance than 5 stars)
|
| Does one really get anything meaningful out of saying this was a
| 6-star book vs a 7-star book?
|
| Personally I think 4 levels is sufficient. Either it's rather
| bad, not bad but not good, good but not great or it's great.
|
| Anything beyond that will have to be written in words.
| nerdponx wrote:
| No, and that's why Netflix switched to thumbs up/down instead
| of 5 stars.
| jfengel wrote:
| And they mostly ignore that. They have access to what you
| actually watch, rather than what you say you like. They know
| what you start, what you finish, and how quickly you jump on
| a new one.
|
| It doesn't matter how many times you down vote Mexican soap
| operas or singing talent shows. If you keep watching they're
| gonna keep suggesting them.
| watwut wrote:
| And result is stupid. It is pretty much impossible to
| discover something new on Netflix. It puts you into a quick
| box and no matter how much I try to find a comedy, I can't
| because it decided the same crime shows are my thing.
|
| Netflix recommendation system just does not work. It does
| not allow me to find movies I can like, it allows me to see
| the same thing I seen once before.
|
| I am not in the mood for serious documentary evey day of
| course, it takes more concentration. But when I am in mood
| for one, I should be able to find it.
| stevage wrote:
| Yeah and I hate this scheme. Facebook keeps showing me
| clips that I do not want to watch and yet fined myself
| drawn to watching like some compulsive behaviour. Urgh.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| It's debatable this was the motivation for Netflix. More
| stars ==> more nuanced ==> more qualitative reviews ==> much
| more effort and time to decide if you should consume. Netflix
| is long(er) form TicTok and wants to optimize for continued
| consumption without friction. I wouldn't be surprised if they
| drop ratings all together and only offer a personalized AI
| curator stream. They could do this just based on viewing time
| and engagement and avoid even the minor disruption of
| "up/down". Don't make the sheep think.
| vasanthk1125 wrote:
| They switched because it took more effort from users to rate
| on a 5 vs just saying good or bad. Because Netflix is a
| streaming service, casual users don't want to put in that
| much effort when they're chilling. Tracking is fundamentally
| different, where you go in with the expectation of organizing
| your library.
| lostmsu wrote:
| Last time I saw a movie there there was "super thumbs up" in
| addition to normal one.
|
| For clarity I'd replace rating systems with "was it a good
| spend of my time?" yes/no question. Then just show
| percentages. Could not be clearer.
| hansvm wrote:
| I could see "proportion of 10s" vs "proportion of 5s" (the max
| score in either case) being meaningful.
| bmacho wrote:
| Rating is a mess. Still I think people are used to express
| their opinions on a 0-10 scale, and they will appreciate if
| they can just keep doing that.
| dexterdog wrote:
| 0 to 10 is a mess as well because some people give 10s very
| often and others only give a 10 for the very best things. And
| of course the bots all rate everything 1 or 10.
| krykp wrote:
| I was once playing around with a 3-point ranking system.
| Think thumbs-down, thumbs-up, and double-thumbs-up. The
| thumbs up and down would basically function as expected,
| while the latter would be weighted heavier for the
| recommendation algorithm. Basically a `recommend me more of
| this, this is high quality content` action.
|
| There is a general problem with a 5 or 10 star voting
| system, consider a [malicious] user who only gives a 1 or
| 10 star vote, thus ending up with more voice than one that
| votes in the range of 4-6 which would be what the majority
| of the content deserve. Therein lies another problem too,
| while the scale would imply 5.5 to be average [out of 1-10
| with no 0 option], most people tend to consider 7-7.5 to be
| average instead, there's a very natural bias on the scale.
|
| This idea isn't actually uncommon however, as platforms
| tend to work with a thumbs-up, thumbs-down, and a
| `favorite` action of sorts. Some platforms tend to respect
| favorites in recommendations and some don't. I have found
| that YouTube doesn't care all that much about my... let
| alone favorites, it doesn't even care about my votes.
| TikTok however did this well, I had downloaded it one day
| and at the end of the day my feed consisted of neat
| programming tricks and lessons on color theory. Which kind
| of revealed something my own prejudice too, as I had
| expected TikTok to show me the worst content and it was the
| platform that respected my choice the most. That said these
| things change a lot so it wouldn't surprise me if the same
| test shows the opposite results a year from now on.
| philistine wrote:
| What you're describing is fully observed in education.
| The scale of your evaluation has to have an odd total of
| numbers and a limited number of choices. 1-2-3, for
| example. That means that each digit sends a strong
| signal. 1-2-3-4 means the 3 is the non-controversial
| choice. Average, so to speak, and you don't want average
| in your evaluation. You need to adequately grade stuff
| here, and giving most things an average grade is a weak
| signal that prevents you from differentiating.
|
| When you grade by competency (not by knowledge), you also
| assign a written description for each grade. That helps a
| lot. I think those platforms are keenly aware of those
| facts I just described, and are trying to boil them down
| to simple actions for users, that impart large signal,
| and that respect the cultural norms of evaluation. That's
| why Letterboxd has a 5-star with half-stars rating
| system, but also has a like button.
| vasanthk1125 wrote:
| It just feels satisfying to me--organizing my library neatly by
| rating, based on how much I like each book. A four-level system
| just doesn't have the same impact. Personal preference, I
| guess.
| ijustlovemath wrote:
| If you added half stars and stuck to a 5-star system, there's
| less user surprise for functionally the same thing.
| vasanthk1125 wrote:
| I did go back and forth on this. I just like 10 stars
| better. IMDB, MAL, Mangadex all have 10 stars. So it's not
| really uncommon. But yeah, if a lot of people feel 5 is
| enough, we'll just return it back to the 5 star system.
| jbrr25 wrote:
| Anilist let's you switch your rating system. You can do 5
| stars, 10 points, 100 points or a simple 3 points
| reprrsented with emojis. I quite like the idea, although
| I think it makes it a little more complicated to
| calculate ratings for all people.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Just ranking everything in order is the ideal rating system.
| And it's easy to convert to whatever poorly-chosen system
| someone else wants you to use. It _does_ mean the scores for
| your first few ratings will fluctuate quite a bit, though!
| 7bit wrote:
| I would guess that with experience and age preferences
| change. What's the point of a 10 star rating system if you
| have a 10 star rated book that you wouldn't rate the same
| after being ten years older?
| darthrupert wrote:
| Should be Positive / Neutral / Negative and anything beyond
| that described in text.
|
| Reasoning: number ratings are subjective. My 4/5 is not the
| same as yours... or even the same as mine 2 years ago.
| latexr wrote:
| Agreed in general that 10 and even 5 is too much, and that 4 is
| a good compromise. Though personally I prefer thumbs up and
| thumbs down, plus a separate starring option. The first two
| signify "would I recommend this to anyone else" while the
| latter means "this has something interesting I'd like to
| revisit at a later date". Something losing its star rating is
| par for the course, but the recommendation status is less
| likely to change (though it can happen). And yes, it is
| possible to give something a thumbs down and favourite it, e.g.
| when you don't think something is particularly good or
| competent but it still had something which you recognise as
| meaningful to yourself specifically.
|
| I don't think this system is right for everyone, but I like it.
| Depending on the platform I may even use a rating system of 1,
| which represents the starring and everything else is just
| read/watched.
| stevage wrote:
| I informally often use a -1 to 2 scale. Bad, fine, good,
| great.
|
| The difference between 1 and 2 on a 5 point scale is not
| useful.
| croisillon wrote:
| for me there are 3 levels:
|
| - books i wish i hadn't lost time with
|
| - books i've read and were probably ok
|
| - books i would give/recommend
| gniv wrote:
| Having worked on a rating system, I think 10 levels are useful
| (or 5 levels with half-stars). You can create better
| averages/recs using 10 levels, since ratings of 0 or 10, which
| are often spammy, can be down-weighed.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| I can absolutely understand that it makes sense to have a
| much more fine-grained average, but personally I struggle to
| give meaningful ratings beyond the four I mentioned.
|
| That said perhaps multiple binary dimensions would be better.
| Good story yes/no, interesting/unique premise yes/no, overall
| good acting yes/no, good cinematography yes/no etc etc.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| I was interrupted, so when I picked up my brain continued
| with movie recommendation mode, I watch more movies than
| read books, but the binary multi-dimensional rating could
| of course be applied to books as well.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I once had an interesting conversation with my mother in law
| who was telling us about how much thought and effort she puts
| into scoring shows on IMDB. She was shocked to learn that I
| want my opinion to have more impact, so If I like a show I
| give 10 and if I didn't it gets 1.
| gniv wrote:
| Yes, but sadly a 10 is often used by fans of a lead actor
| to pump the ratings, and a 0/1 is used by the moral police
| as a protest vote.
| kmfrk wrote:
| Goodfilms (goodfil.ms), rest in peace, had a great two-rating
| system with Quality and Rewatchability, because the latter
| turned out to be a really useful metric.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3082241
|
| One of the main frustrations I have with Goodreads is how
| limited the API is nowadays, and how there appear to be no
| measures against brigading and other campaigns. One of the core
| issues with ratings services.
|
| Personally I'm hoping Open Library by the Internet Archive
| grows more in popularity, given how most websites come and go:
|
| https://openlibrary.org
| vasanthk1125 wrote:
| I'm curious--what would you like to do with the API?
| kmfrk wrote:
| Ironically, mainly to check for irregular voting patterns
| like brigading.
|
| Not dissimilar to what Steam implemented, which is
| basically Bollinger bands for ratings.
| SamBam wrote:
| How does one use an average Rewatchability score to determine
| whether one should watch a movie?
|
| If I'm trying to pick a movie, I don't care what its score
| for _rewatching_ is, I care about what its score is for
| watching it the first time.
|
| And once I've watched a movie, I don't care about whether
| _other_ people say I should watch it again, I care about
| whether _I_ want to watch it again.
|
| A movie is different from buying a board game. If I'm
| shelling out $50 for a game, I'll want to know if it's still
| fun the twentieth time I play. But that isn't a consideration
| when picking a new movie to watch, the experience may be
| worth it even if I never watch it again. And ditto with
| books. I'm probably not going to read that 800-page book
| again, but that shouldn't stop me reading it once.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| To present an opposite viewpoint, I try to only engage with
| media I suspect future me will be able to revisit and pull
| enjoyment out of at least once. I rarely actually do so,
| but I've found it to be a remarkably effective quality
| filter.
|
| It's also a genre independent quality metric. That's not to
| be underplayed. Some examples of films that successfully
| passed it for me: _Casablanca_ ; _Portrait of a Lady on
| Fire_ ; _Hereditary_ ; _Under the Skin_ ; _My Neighbor
| Totoro_ ; _The Fifth Element_. I 'm pretty sure most people
| would agree at least half of these movies are good.
|
| It turns out most of the things I consider worth revisiting
| at least once are also things other people would consider
| that way. So for me a Rewatchability rating is a positive
| signal.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Have you ever watched a film like Come and See,
| Schindlers list, Grave of the fireflies, etc...?
|
| These movies are some of the most impactful that I have
| ever seen, but by no means would I rate them highly
| rewatchable. They are gut wrenching, and some people can
| only stand to watch them once, few want to rewatch them,
| but they are also incredible.
|
| I also gain a lot from a rewatchable piece of content,
| but you might be shorting yourself by always watching
| things designed to tickle the dopamine receptors.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| I've seen the latter two, but they are most certainly
| very rewatchable. I saw _Schindler 's List_ again with my
| wife about a year ago and enjoyed it just as thoroughly
| as the first time.
|
| >I also gain a lot from a rewatchable piece of content,
| but you might be shorting yourself by always watching
| things designed to tickle the dopamine receptors.
|
| Now this I just do not understand. Things designed to be
| good on primarily the first watch, and allowed to degrade
| on future experiences, seem much worse for this.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Ahh.
|
| I think we are coming from different feelings about
| rewatchability.
|
| If you asked me to rate movies as to their artistic
| merit, their excellence as films, I would say that those
| all fall into "instant classic" territory. However, I
| would not want to rewatch them in the same way that I
| might want to rewatch a Coen brothers film, for example.
| baby wrote:
| I feel like a movie can be a good time, but I wouldn't
| rewatch it.
|
| For example, I just watched the Gorge. I enjoyed it, but I
| wouldn't rewatch it. I don't think it necessarily deserves
| a bad grade though.
|
| Now, some great movies I wouldn't rewatch. La vita e bella
| and grave of the firefly are beautiful, I just cannot
| rewatch them.
| lgl wrote:
| Sure, but can we really deny that the 5 star rating is pretty
| decent and simple, having an exact middle point and then two
| levels for each side.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Well yeah, but I feel the neutral midpoint is problematic
| because I feel it's too easy to pick it. Removing the
| midpoint forces one to decide which side it leans towards.
|
| If one really feels the need for the "meh" category, I'd say
| go for a 3-level system: bad, meh, great.
| 7bit wrote:
| Black Panther has a rating of 96% at Rotten Tomatoes. So
| whatever the scale is, nothing is really meaningful. I've been
| in the cinema with about 60 other people and a friend.
| statistically one of us should have enjoyed it but we both
| found the movie shit. So no, 10 stars is not more meaningful as
| 5 stars. 2-4 should be enough to still be wrong about taste
| once in a while.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| 96% means that 96% of critics liked the movie enough to
| recommend it.
|
| It also means that 4% of critics did not recommend the movie.
| In a theater of 60 people, you and your friend would fit into
| that 4%. So there's nothing wrong with RottenTomatoes.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Does one really get anything meaningful out of saying this
| was a 6-star book vs a 7-star book?
|
| I rate for myself, and not others. And for over 20 years I've
| used a 10 point system.
|
| 10 = Easily amongst my favorite
|
| 9 = Awesome, but not in all time favorites
|
| 8 = Really liked it, and would recommend
|
| 7 = Liked it, was worth my time, but not so much that I would
| happily recommend to others
|
| 6 = Liked it, but wasn't worth my time
|
| 5 = Neutral
|
| And below 5 I don't distinguish. I randomly pick to indicate I
| didn't like it.
| fcarraldo wrote:
| It kind of seems like you use a five-point system, then?
| BeetleB wrote:
| The difference being that I don't want someone to think
| that because I rated something 2 out of 5 that I didn't
| like it because it's less than 2.5. And for most people, a
| 3/5 doesn't mean "yes, I heartily recommend". But they can
| believe it for 8/10
|
| (Actually, 7 points as someone else pointed out - by my
| point stands even with a 7 point system).
| cAtte_ wrote:
| you use a 7 point system
| mvkel wrote:
| The 4-star system is indeed wonderful. A rating that is truly
| "neutral" doesn't exist in a world of human subjectivity
| phaedrus441 wrote:
| I completely agree. I've never read a 1-star (to me) book
| because that implies it's unreadable, and anything good enough
| to keep my attention room is generally 4-stars and rarely
| 5-stars. I bet if I look at my Goodreads it's 60% 4s, 30% 3s,
| and 10% 5s
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I don't rate books on Goodreads, but I do look at the average
| rating when deciding to read a book. I won't start anything
| less than about 3.7 or 3.8.
| qznc wrote:
| Rating books on an absolute scale makes little sense to me.
|
| The actual questions is: _Whom_ can you recommend this book?
| Even mediocre books can be very useful for the right people.
| barotalomey wrote:
| If there's no voting data, it doesn't matter what scale is
| used.
| stock_toaster wrote:
| I typically like 7 point scales (like this[1] post from jgc
| outlines), but your classification also seems pretty good.
|
| [1]: https://blog.jgc.org/2007/12/seven-point-scale.html
| costcofries wrote:
| I would love a simple feature where I can get suggestions based
| on what's on my shelf. I'd even love to explore other shelves and
| see how people stack their books.
| NAHWheatCracker wrote:
| I like it. Very clean UI. I don't think "UI still looks like it's
| from 2005." is a bad thing (nor do I know if that's true).
|
| I'm working on importing my library from a simple checklist app I
| made years ago. I posted one review.
|
| Any idea why The Metabarons
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabarons) isn't in the library?
| I guess comic books aren't in the data source.
| vasanthk1125 wrote:
| Yeah, we don't have comics and graphic novels currently. I
| wanted to keep it simple for launch.
| NAHWheatCracker wrote:
| Makes sense.
|
| Is there a reason Pandemic
| (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/710698.Pandemic) and The
| Rift (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/271167.The_Rift)
| aren't in Kaguya?
| vasanthk1125 wrote:
| They're there. Looks like our search needs some
| improvement. We'll add a dedicated search results page too.
|
| https://kaguya.io/books/pandemic-6
| https://kaguya.io/books/the-rift-1
| NAHWheatCracker wrote:
| Hah, I was just going to go back to these after I had
| issues with the Shadowmarch series by Tad Williams and
| The Wizard Knight series by Gene Wolfe. I had figured out
| that the books are on the authors' page even though the
| search wasn't serving them up.
|
| Thanks!
| darkoob12 wrote:
| I like the interface its easier to use compared to goodreads.
| bloomingkales wrote:
| Your site is down. What is the starter kit for sharing your
| website here with it exploding?
| equinoxnemesis wrote:
| I'm curious about the origin of the name. Kaguya-hime no
| monogatari? Kaguya-sama?
| vasanthk1125 wrote:
| Mostly the former. I wanted our website to celebrate
| storytelling, and naming it after one of the oldest Japanese
| stories felt fitting. Plus, I did love Kaguya from the anime--
| so that's a bonus. :)
| ta45636rfgj wrote:
| Off topic perhaps, but what annoys me about Goodreads is that the
| rating system just doesn't work. Everything seems to be 4-5
| stars.
|
| You're relying on a whole mix of people, from tweens to teens to
| old goats, who may, or likely don't, have similar tastes.
|
| A pointless exercise imo. Similar to going to reddit for reviews.
| It's not what you really want.
| cdrini wrote:
| Hmm interesting; I wonder what a sort of weighted rating might
| look like, where the more similar another user is to you, the
| more weight their rating/review gets. That way everyone sees a
| custom rating, that's more akin to "what you're likely to rate
| this after reading it".
| moultano wrote:
| Is there a way to import your Goodreads library after profile
| creation? I skipped it because I couldn't get it to download on
| mobile, but will probably only use the site if I can import it
| later when I'm at my desk.
| pshdotggz wrote:
| Hi, yes! You can import it anytime from Account Settings -
| Import Books.
| zkiihne wrote:
| I would be much more interested in a Goodreads alternative that
| focuses on articles/substacks/newsletters etc.
|
| There isn't a good way of sorting through all the stuff out there
| and I feel like I am missing a bunch of content worth reading as
| a result.
|
| Out of curiosity how did you initially populate your site?
| dwedge wrote:
| That's a really good idea. The only trouble would be keeping
| the astroturfers away, it's much easier for articles - a
| company I used to work for would send out company-wide requests
| to upvote their articles on HN.
|
| But if someone could make this work in a way that it's like a
| "if you liked this you might like" version of HN/lobste.rs it
| could be really useful.
| rglullis wrote:
| Your competition is not Goodreads, but https://joinbookwyrm.com/
| lkbm wrote:
| I've joined Storygraph, LibraryThing, and I think a few others.
| Never heard of Bookwyrm before.
|
| I still use Goodreads almost exclusively.
|
| Goodreads is still the competition. If you mean competition
| specifically between _alternative_ to Goodreads, I think
| LibraryThing is the most popular by a fair bit. After a quick
| look around Bookwyrm, it definitely doesn 't look like the one
| I'd choose. I'm mostly seeing "some rando's list of books they
| read in 2025" and "some rando commented on some random book".
|
| Maybe once it finishes importing my Goodreads list it'll be
| more useful, but it's taking a while (kaguya was very quick),
| and my initial impression is that I'm not impressed.
| rglullis wrote:
| Bookwyrm is built on ActivityPub, you won't have any single
| server, but a constellation of them
|
| However, its strongest point on it's favor is that anyone
| creating content on AP automatically has a potential reach of
| a few million users.
| tsunego wrote:
| No offense, but you're completely missing why Goodreads is still
| relevant.
|
| People aren't sticking around for shiny features or slick UI--
| they stay because Goodreads has a critical mass of _users and
| reviews_.
|
| The value isn't in half-stars or fancy shelves; it's in the
| network effects. Unless you have a way to bring over millions of
| active reviewers (and their reviews), you're just building
| another pretty ghost town.
| dwedge wrote:
| It looks nice but like any social network the value is in the
| user base. I saw one book on your site (the order of time), and
| searched for it on Goodreads to see more reviews.
| vasanthk1125 wrote:
| I agree. I hope we keep growing and one day reach that level.
| People also bring in their reviews when they import from
| goodreads. So it's not gonna take that long.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I do like the look, though GoodReads' UI doesn't bother me.
|
| What will make a site like this useful though is:
|
| 1) How many people use it -- for this usage needs to be as
| frictionless as possible. You might want to consider at least
| being able to view it (though perhaps not post reviews, to avoid
| spam), without signing up for an account.
|
| 2) The quality of the reviews. If they're Amazon product level
| garbage, they become useless. One thing that might help is being
| able to filter by range of reviews -- i.e., see 2-4 star reviews
| only; or filter by books with an average rating computed
| _without_ taking 1 and 5 star reviews into account.
|
| 3) Not sure about 10-star rating system. I think that's harder
| for users to keep in their head. I'd suggest 5-star but allow 1/2
| star ratings.
| Malazath wrote:
| Small bit I noticed: when signing up you can import from
| goodreads or story graph.
|
| Its probably my device specifically, but the way the screen
| rendered, it wasn't immediately obvious I could scroll to see a
| skip button
| n4r9 wrote:
| The best part of Goodreads for me is the communities. You can
| join a group with monthly book reads, and participate in their
| forums. Do you have any plans to do something similar?
| vasanthk1125 wrote:
| Sure we do. I'm planning to have reddit-like forums for each
| book over 500 ratings at the bottom of the page like IMDB used
| to do. Also, I'm considering forums for genres like romance,
| fantasy.
| n4r9 wrote:
| Forums per book is a good start, but I find that the groups
| are a bigger draw in Goodreads. They have a more personal
| touch and allow you to discuss broader topics and get
| recommendations from accounts you know and trust. For example
| I'm in a group called "Evolution of science fiction" and have
| learnt a lot from joining in their monthly novel / short
| story reads.
| vasanthk1125 wrote:
| Do users create and moderate the group themselves? It seems
| like a subreddit, but for book related topics?
| sentimentscan wrote:
| I dream of a good recommendation system because Goodreads is
| completely terrible. I just want to know two things: which books
| are similar and which books I would like, beyond typical
| recommendations. Something akin to what platforms like VOD,
| YouTube, and Netflix offer. For me, this is the most important
| killer feature.
| vasanthk1125 wrote:
| We'll definitely have this at some point. A good recommendation
| system needs a solid base of user data, so it's only possible
| once we have a larger user base. I really wanted to have this
| for the launch since it seemed so important for a book tracking
| platform but we didn't have the data to train models to make
| recommendations.
| xanderlewis wrote:
| > UI still looks like it's from 2005.
|
| Are you sure this is a problem?
| lkbm wrote:
| DNF seems useful to me. The other deficiencies you mention don't
| matter much to me, though the Goodreads UI is bad. (Don't care if
| it looks old, but right-clicking on things often doesn't work
| because they're stupid JS link, and it's way too focused on being
| a social feed.)
|
| As far as features, the things I value about Goodreads / would
| like from replacements:
|
| * I can see what my friends have read and rated books. (I
| specifically care about a tiny handful of friends who I know have
| similar tastes to my own.)
|
| Obviously, this will be very hard for you to replicate.
|
| Note that I _do not care_ about the social feed. It doesn 't
| matter that my friend is currently reading xyz. All that matters
| is that when I look at book X, I can see that [friend with very
| similar taste] read it (don't care when!) and whether they rated
| it highly or poorly.
|
| * Goodreads recommendations are bad.
|
| Related to the above point. Goodread's "Reads also enjoy" wavers
| from "moderately useful" to "fundamentally broken". Lists are
| okay, but broad lists are dominated by super-popular books that
| came out post-Goodreads, and there aren't enough specific lists
| (or not specific in a useful way; so many pointless lists for
| "books with an X on the cover".)
|
| After importing my Goodreads books to Kaguya, and checking the
| recs on my latest read, you have roughly the same issue that
| Goodreads has with obscure books: the "similar books" are...other
| recent books I recently read. (On Goodreads I'll see this when my
| brother and I read an obscure scifi novel and something 100%
| unrelated. He and I will dominate the data set for that book.)
|
| I recently discover that LibraryThing's similar books system is
| actually much better than anything on Goodreads for finding
| similar books. That's the thing to beat. I suspect they're able
| to do better because they've built up a large dataset from deep
| tagging similar to what you're planning. A tagging system isn't
| enough; you'll have to tag things! That requires a lot of users,
| copying an existing data set, or some clever LLM use. (Maybe not
| so clever; it's probably been trained on a lot of these books.)
|
| * Libby integration
|
| I have a Chrome extension (Available Reads) that will hit the
| Libby API for each book on a page. This lets me quickly see which
| books on my To Read list are currently available as ebooks or
| audiobooks at my local library. It's useful enough that I open up
| Chrome (not my primary browser) just to use that extension from
| time to time.
|
| * Filters and sorting on genre
|
| I have a big "want to read" list. When I want to pick my next
| book to read, I usually am thinking "I want to read scifi" or "I
| want to read about history" or whatever. In Goodreads, my Want To
| Read list doesn't even let me filter or sort fiction from non-
| fiction.
|
| What would be cool would be if I could filter "1980s scifi that I
| haven't read that my brother has read and rated at least four
| stars". Or "middle-grades scifi that I read 10+ years ago and
| rated 4+ stars" for when I want a nostalgic read.
|
| The "more stats" I think could be interesting, albeit not
| particularly useful. I do like the "date read / date published"
| graph on Goodreads stats. (The "date published" axes gets
| squashed to uselessness if you read "The Odyssey", though.)
| vasanthk1125 wrote:
| Thanks for the detailed comment!
|
| 1. Friends reviews on book is actually not that hard at all. We
| will implement it right after we get the friends and follow
| system working.
|
| 2. This one will take a decent number of users and ratings. We
| need a lot of data before we can make recommendations using ML.
|
| 3. Noted.
|
| 4. We will add that in the next few weeks. Filtering TBR seems
| to be a common request.
| myko wrote:
| I adore this. Thanks for sharing!
| acrophiliac wrote:
| Am I asking too much to request a way to preview the site without
| establishing an account? A short demo video? Even just
| screenshots?
| vasanthk1125 wrote:
| You can view the website without registering though? Just click
| the link and browse without registering.
| FabianBeiner wrote:
| I'd also like to recommend https://literal.club/ as a Goodreads
| alternative.
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| I'd like us to converge on one book tracker. I've been using
| hardcover and quite like it but I keep going back to goodreads as
| that's where friends are.
| basisword wrote:
| How would you say this compares against StoryGraph (another
| GoodReads alt I've been using recently)?
| IAmNotACellist wrote:
| I don't understand why we don't have a "Discuss Anything"
| universal app, operable on literally every tokenizable piece of
| human content, searchable by similarity in embedding space, and
| discoverable using titles, concepts, or vague impressions. Let
| people create threads and discuss everything, forever, with
| versioned references to the original content (like a website), as
| long as it's legal.
|
| A browser extension called Dissenter briefly allowed this, got
| too popular too fast, had a data leak, and then they rolled it
| into a spyware browser. It also only had popularity among one
| extreme of politics.
| tim-kt wrote:
| I once built a prototype to a "Goodreads but for classical
| music", e. g. playing Chopin on a piano. I have thought about
| doing something like what you are talking about. My concerns
| are:
|
| 1. Moderation: you need to moderate content that people create
| and moderation is hard. If you don't, the service will be
| abused.
|
| 2. Order: Goodreads has "Librarians" to create some order in
| the chaos. I think that a meaningful search through "every
| tokenizable piece of human content" is very non-trivial and
| would require much work.
|
| 3. Monetization: ads are possible. Are they sustainable? I
| don't know enough of profitability to say something about that.
| The more specific the type of content is, the more options you
| have for monetization. For classical music scores my ideas were
| to make deals with sheet selling companies and make ads for
| (classical) concerts.
|
| 4. Market share: isn't Reddit pretty much a superset of this,
| minus a built-in rating system?
| KerryJones wrote:
| I read ~4 books a month via Audible, and tend not to find the
| time to add to Goodreads (maybe there's an auto connection I'm
| missing). I love the idea of systems like this (your design is
| beautiful) but there's no way I'm going to try to reimport all my
| ratings for 300+ books.
|
| Is there anyway to sync with Audible? Even if it's a hacky chrome
| extension reading off the audible website?
| dotdi wrote:
| I came here to ask "how is this better than StoryGraph", but
| before I could hit send, it occurred to me:
|
| This doesn't need to be better than StoryGraph. This just needs
| to be different, cater to different persons, needs. Maybe not
| even that. It can just be there next to StoryGraph.
|
| My gripe with GoodReads is not that it didn't evolve, or that the
| UI is dated. My gripe is that it's owned by Amazon. So to the new
| kid on the block: Godspeed.
| vasanthk1125 wrote:
| Thanks!
| andypiper wrote:
| Does it support ActivityPub? Bookwyrm does. That seems to me to
| be a basic requirement for a social network at this point.
| vid wrote:
| I've been looking into neodb, have you compared them?
| https://neodb.net/
| mannyv wrote:
| Most rating systems suck because the rating is relative to the
| reviewer but the interpretation is relative to the reader. And of
| course the rating relative to the reviewer at that time.
|
| After decades of reading, there are probably only four fiction
| ratings for me:
|
| Recommend - to a specific reader or genre
|
| I read it multiple times over years
|
| It's OK, but at this point it's bookshelf filler
|
| I sold it.
|
| There's usually a good thing in every book. I mean, the first 8
| Stephanie plum books were fun...but it gets old. The hobbit/LOTR?
| I'd never recommend those today. I loved thr Thomas Covenant
| stuff back in the day, but today? No. But The Black Company and
| Garret PI series are the gifts that keep on giving.
|
| Capturing that in a one dimensional measure is impossible...but
| it's been Good Enough for years. But you can try to make it
| better.
| emaro wrote:
| I like the design of the landing page and the book pages a lot!
| Well done.
|
| I didn't use Goodreads, but I'm considering Bookwyrm now, because
| it supports ActivityPub, which is awesome, because I want to
| avoid vendor/network lock-in if possible.
| ethagnawl wrote:
| Is there any way to add/request/suggest books that aren't
| currently in the index?
| vasanthk1125 wrote:
| Not yet, but we're rolling out a way to add missing books later
| this week!
| mhh__ wrote:
| The only rating system you actually need is binary (or "the
| binary")
|
| Is it good or bad? Would you eat it again or not? Are they hot?
| Would you? etc
|
| Every thing else can be expressed with words on the side.
| kreco wrote:
| > Would love feedback. What do you think? 1) It looks very nice.
|
| 2) However, the UI density is not good for me.
|
| I have a 23" monitor and I can only see 2,5 items of the
| "Trending Review This Week". I should be able to read 5 of them
| (even though there are only 3 items displayed).
|
| The "landing screen" is also too big, I should be able to see
| some content that make me want to have a look and sign-in, not
| just sign-in to have a look.
|
| 3) As a personal opinion I prefer Bad/Neutral/Good rating system
| + review for the nuance.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I just use Librarything. The web site has more features than any
| other tool out there, and the community and admins are better.
| Plus, it's completely free. I've been using it since 2007, and
| can't say I've ever had a bad experience.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Indeed. Except for the UI, it has most of the features OP
| wanted since at least 2011.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I'm very old for the audience here, but really miss another
| Amazon acquisition and destruction: CD Now. I use ratings as a
| discoverability mechanism, and don't need some absolute rating
| based on unknown foundations as much as linking new content to
| known content. I find myself re-reading authors every few years
| because I struggle to find new authors and works that might
| appeal to my appetite.
| philistine wrote:
| There was a a time Jeff Bezos believed he needed to own
| platforms where people reviewed things, since it would make the
| Amazon Store better. Then Jeff discovered he could just charge
| the sellers on his platform for placement. Money talks.
|
| Ever since then, Amazon has cared very little about all the
| things it bought related to the old strategy.
| iqandjoke wrote:
| No "Source code"
| mmanfrin wrote:
| The arc of every book-reading software engineer is to attempt a
| goodreads alternative.
|
| They're always nice, and always have an achilles heel: the moat
| of kindle integration. Goodreads is unassailable.
| philistine wrote:
| The landing page is mostly filled with sci-fi. I know it's what's
| popular on the site and what's reviewed recently but it's sending
| the wrong message that the site is exclusively for sci-fi. Most
| readers don't read sci-fi, and readers who read sci-fi tend to
| mostly read sci-fi, so the average reader would think the site is
| not for them.
|
| In harsher words: women don't read sci-fi, and are your target
| audience. Make sure your landing page surfaces things other than
| sci-fi and fantasy, or you'll never grow past that niche.
| rendleflag wrote:
| "Women don't read sci-fi"?
| philistine wrote:
| Sci-fi and Fantasy *together* account for 15% of the sales,
| and the majority of buyers are female.
| mattbaker wrote:
| You might need to meet more women
| loeg wrote:
| > UI still looks like it's from 2005
|
| I don't mind this at all, but I do mind the extremely slow
| servers backing the site. It's overloaded, either through
| inadequate hardware or poor software or both.
|
| > 10-star rating system (More nuance than 5 stars)
|
| 10 star rating is an anti-feature. I just don't have that level
| of granularity in how I feel about books. The only real feature
| you need is data migration / portability -- if I can't get my
| extensive records out of Goodreads, there's no point.
|
| > Import your library from Goodreads/StoryGraph
|
| So that's good. Does it include ratings? Can you continue to sync
| over time or is it a one-shot?
| boznz wrote:
| I generally ignore 1 and 5 stars on Amazon or anything without a
| comment or username.
|
| Interesting to see the deep tagging system as the categorizations
| for books are tricky (as an author I know this from a few failed
| attempts to pigeon hole my first book in kindle) so say If an
| amazing romance book was accidentally categorized as an adventure
| or Sci-Fi as it had a bit of action or future tech in it, it
| would likely get 1 star from the romance genre readers, and vice
| versa if it was categorized as Sci-Fi or adventure. It is why you
| rarely get well rated cross-overs. A better category manager
| would be good for readers.
| tcshit wrote:
| What was the name of the site again?? Other than that, ehh small
| detail, it seems pretty ok.
| semiinfinitely wrote:
| If possible a "Reading challenges" feature would be really great,
| my girlfriend loves that!
|
| It would also be nice to be able to record when you read the book
| so that you can go back and see like a history of the books
| you've read chronologically!
| scouw wrote:
| Seems pretty good! However, like all of these websites, it's only
| so useful without a large userbase to get ratings and reviews
| from.
|
| Some feedback:
|
| - Visually pleasing!
|
| - It seemed to have failed to import some books from StoryGraph
| for me (e.g., "The Hive" by Camilo Jose Cela and "The Epic of
| Gilgamesh"), and as far as I could tell it did not notify me
| anywhere. I had no idea until I noticed that they were missing
| from my "Read" library.
|
| - The book "Zone" by Mathias Enard seems to be completely
| impossible to find via searching, despite existing on the website
| (https://kaguya.io/books/zone).
|
| - Adding a feature that allows clicking on 'Read Books' or 'Want
| to Read' on a user's profile to directly view their complete
| library in that category would be nice.
|
| - Only five "Similar Books" seems rather low, would love to have
| a "See more >" option there!
|
| - A "Neighbours" feature similar to what Last.fm has for finding
| other users would be great.
|
| - This is a minor nitpick, but the grey box that represents a
| missing book under "Favourite Books" on a profile is taller than
| the actual covers.
| AnonC wrote:
| I'm certainly not the target for this. The following is going to
| sound harsh, but bear with me. Two things I really dislike about
| this, from what I look for generally from websites and services:
|
| 1. It doesn't have any information about pricing or the business
| model. "Get started for free" -- does it mean there are paid
| plans after I sign up? Does it mean it's on best effort and might
| disappear suddenly if the person running it doesn't have time?
|
| 2. I scrolled down all the way looking for a pricing link, and
| thought that the Help and Support link in the footer may help.
| But it goes to a Discord link.
|
| I'm not signing up to find what "free" means and I'm definitely
| not going to sign up for Discord to get help or ask basic
| questions. If you cannot put up web pages for support, there at
| least ought to be an email address. Everybody (well, most people)
| has an email address. The percentage of people having an email
| address and willing to jump through another hoop (Discord) is
| going to be quite low.
| vasanthk1125 wrote:
| 1. No, it just means completely free. And the website's not
| going anywhere unless I die or something. I'll look into making
| this clearer.
|
| 2. Noted. We'll put up a proper email address. I just figured
| Discord would be faster.
| jwe wrote:
| I had to check if Help & Support is indeed linked to Discord
| and sadly it is. For me this is an instant turnoff. If there is
| no documentation but rather I am expeced to scout chat logs, I
| won't even start to use it. (I realize that this is a bit of a
| meme but it is true for me)
| Meleagris wrote:
| I was looking into this space the other day, and the number of
| options has been growing. By my record there is:
|
| - https://www.goodreads.com
|
| - https://thestorygraph.com
|
| - https://fable.co
|
| - https://hardcover.app
|
| - https://joinbookwyrm.com
|
| I was actually trying to determine the best free source of
| metadata for books. I was hoping for something like MusicBrainz.
|
| The best I could find seemed to be https://openlibrary.org. There
| is https://isbndb.com, but it is paid.
| moritzruth wrote:
| In case you don't know, there is also BookBrainz:
| https://bookbrainz.org/
| ssz wrote:
| My personal project, https://rate.house, is kinda like
| goodreads but for all types of media.
| the_biot wrote:
| This has long been considered one of Goodreads' big advantages:
| its massive publication database, ISBN and all. But recently
| Anna's Archive has been making quite a bit of noise about their
| considerable ISBN database:
|
| https://annas-archive.org/blog/
|
| This may well be a great opportunity to seed a Goodreads
| alternative.
| vasanthk1125 wrote:
| I've always hoped that once we reach Goodreads scale, we'd be
| able to release database dumps like VNDB (https://vndb.org/d14)
| and Lichess (https://database.lichess.org/)
|
| Since the metadata is contributed by volunteers in the first
| place, it only seems fair for it to be freely available rather
| than locked down.
| npunt wrote:
| If you want the best UX for tracking and easiest/fastest
| Goodreads importer try https://margins.app (disclosure: I'm the
| designer)
| fidrelity wrote:
| I'm definitely the target audience for this: I hate Goodreads and
| I still use it on a weekly basis.
|
| A couple questions:
|
| - where do you get your book data from? To my knowledge Amazon
| has a de facto monopoly on this and there's nothing more
| frustrating than missing latest or niche books, its covers, etc.
| or having wrong data/duplicates.
|
| - do you plan on offering a migration path? I've got years worth
| of data on Goodreads.
| gokaygurcan wrote:
| I guess at this point if you want to do something new/modern, go
| for 4- or 8-star rating rather than 5- or 10-star rating. It'll
| force people to choose something other than middle. I hate to
| find 3/5 book which really deserves 2/5 but people didn't want to
| leave somewhat negative feedback.
|
| Maybe out of context, but the real value of Goodreads is the
| sheer number of content (books, reviews, lists, users, etc). If
| something _works_ there's not always a reason to break it and/or
| update it just for the sake of updating. Look at hardcore
| Salesforce tools, they look like they're from 90s, but they work
| perfectly fine. If that's your only motivation, it's impossible
| to win me over as a user.
|
| Side-note: create a new book list and call it DNF, add the books
| that you didn't finish to that list and get it done with.
| TheAtomic wrote:
| Anything is better than Amazon
| TheAtomic wrote:
| I wish ratings were a slider from Skip It - Good - Great - Life
| Changing or whatever. Sliders are great for stuff like this. Odd
| comment I know but sliders are instantly understandable,
| accessible and doable. So, great UI.
| a123b456c wrote:
| I'm an avid reader and platforms expert who would love a reason
| to migrate away from goodreads. My first three impressions: 1. I
| want to know your business model and ownership structure. Moving
| is costly, give me a reason to try you as opposed to others. That
| reason should include a long-term incentive, above and beyond new
| features or better design. 2. I searched the android app store
| but the only thing I found was anime character-related content.
| You probably have the wrong name. 3. I like your features ideas!
| But I don't have enough information right now to motivate me to
| import my goodreads history, much of which is deeply personal.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| How does this differ from say StoryGraph?
|
| I want to move on from GoodReads, but one thing that it does have
| is polished recommendations. I did my best to "import" a lot of
| my reading history into TSG and then asked for recommendations
| and it gave me a bunch of -extremely- similar choices, very
| homogenous, and narrow.
| MoSattler wrote:
| How did you get a DB of _all_ books?
| ForHackernews wrote:
| https://www.thestorygraph.com/ is another alternative to
| Goodreads - it's a one-person software project.
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