[HN Gopher] Show HN: The missing link of a bookstore's tech stack
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Show HN: The missing link of a bookstore's tech stack
Hi HN! I built Bookhead because I used to work as a bookseller and
I wasn't happy with the software options when I decided to sell my
own collection online (with the hopes of one day growing so I can
open my own brick & mortar). So I decided to make my own
bookselling app...a classic hacker distraction. Bookhead has two
main parts: 1. an inventory management app that allows a bookseller
to list their books anywhere they want to sell books (like
Squarespace, Biblio, eBay, Shopify (coming soon!), etc) 2. an
e-commerce platform with a CMS for selling books and letting a
store control their online brand I have a very exciting roadmap
that I'm not ready to fully reveal, but it's all based on books.
I'm building a sorta Zapier-like platform for independent
booksellers. Everything is so fragmented and disconnected, which
makes it hard for booksellers to do their work. I'm hoping to
change that. I have a blog post that lays out my vision here:
https://bookhead.net/blog/fragmented/ The current iteration is
like "data engineering as a service for books." A book is a
powerful thing. I'm hoping to give a bookstore everything they need
to sell books online. Inventory, e-commerce, marketing, etc. It's a
crowded market but I've had fun making the bookselling app that I
believe should exist. If you know any booksellers, please let them
know about this! I'm onboarding my first customer right now and the
biggest bottleneck is the other bookselling software providers,
despite my intention to collaborate instead of compete. It's
frustrating to wait for two weeks for a point of sale provider to
setup an integration. It's almost like they don't care about their
customers. Some providers even require ethernet cables for their
software...still partying like it's 1999. Perfect for early-adopter
booksellers frustrated with current tech who understand the power
of automation. I'm currently looking for funding so I can focus on
this full-time. My biggest problem right now is time (aka money)
because I have to sell my time to make rent etc, and can't focus on
this project like I need to. I've gotten good validation from
booksellers and other technically savvy folks in the industry (I've
heard from two different companies that they've considered building
something like this), so I believe I have something valuable. I'm
not interested in funding from somebody who doesn't share my love
for books or doesn't support my mission: help people use technology
to promote literature. I believe that literature is one of
humanity's most prized creations, and we can use technology as a
tool to keep this gift alive. Please email me at sam@bookhead.net
if you know of booksellers who might want to be an early adopter,
or know of any funding opportunities that might be a good fit.
Author : greenie_beans
Score : 74 points
Date : 2025-07-23 16:04 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bookhead.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (bookhead.net)
| trevoragilbert wrote:
| This looks really nice! I'm not a bookseller so I can't speak to
| the value props, but it's clearly coming from a well-informed
| position based on your background.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| thank you!
| hotpotat wrote:
| Curious, if you're integrating with their POS why is it a
| subscription instead of taking a percentage of sales?
| greenie_beans wrote:
| good question! still figuring out pricing. that might be a
| better way to do it.
|
| edit: for now, i don't have time to do the accounting etc that
| sales percentage would require
| 101008 wrote:
| What are the main advantages over Bibliopolis and BookRouter (the
| most popular solution used across the world)? I am not asking in
| a bad way, I am really interested because as a book collector I
| checked this space in the past but it seemed too crowded (and
| with a real winner)
| greenie_beans wrote:
| great question! still figuring that one out. very glad you
| asked this. dunno if you are a bibliopolis spy but i will be
| transparent and open.
|
| it's a similar product (right now) and definitely a very
| crowded market. i only need a small sliver of the market to
| sustain the business, so i think there is room. there are a lot
| of other similar products too, like booktracker. some of the
| book point of sales have the inventory syncing built-in, at
| least for some platforms. bibliopolis is built on wordpress so
| that gives them technical limitations (at least from an
| outsider - i could be wrong about that). i'm not even sure if
| they can sync from a point of sales onto their platform because
| i've seen bookstores manually enter all of their inventory from
| ibid into bibliopolis (which now i gotta go fact find that
| because now that i write this out, this seems like the greatest
| value-add to your question). i'm not sure how coupled
| bookrouter is to wordpress. i don't think they support
| integrations with shopify or squarespace or square etc.
| bookhead is platform agnostic but "platform agnostic" is too
| developer-y to the average bookseller so the pitch is more:
| "this will work with your existing tools and connects
| everything together" which is a pitch we are always refining.
|
| i have a different overall vision than those products, and it's
| built with a more modern tech stack and design considerations.
| i have an ai prototype for appraising books that i've
| successfully used to appraise and list my own collection. and i
| plan to build in some automation tools that would be useful to
| a bigger brick & mortar, like "order me 5 more copies of 'as i
| lay dying' when inventory count gets down to 3" and other ways
| a savvy bookseller could hook into automation that could help
| them with their work. and for the non-technically savvy users,
| i'm hoping to have great customer service to help them with
| some automation. i think this might end up being a core part of
| the product but only time will time. i also have some marketing
| tool ideas that nobody has built, based on some past
| experiences working in library tech and my time doing marketing
| for a bookseller.
|
| also, most of the incumbents don't have the greatest
| reputations but stores have no choice to use them. there is no
| reason that a store needs to go through customer support to set
| up an integration (which is the norm), though support will
| always be there to help if a customer struggles with that.
| there is also no reason that your product should have a waiting
| list, but this is common, too. bookhead is designed to be self-
| served.
|
| one thing i've found weird: being able to sell "new" and "used"
| books has been a differentiator for some incumbents, which is
| strange and suggests to me that these apps have a bad data
| model. so i'm hoping to change that. it's awkward to
| communicate this in marketing.
|
| aesthetics and design matter to some people, too. most
| bookselling software is ugly and hard to use. think about drip
| or basecamp -- those products were in crowded markets but they
| were still successful because they took their own approach and
| it fit some people but not everybody.
|
| but of course, the market will have to decide.
| omarspira wrote:
| Just some feedback: Most people are going to ask about the
| difference between you and the incumbents. Mentioning spies
| in this regard - especially at this stage - even as a passing
| joke imo comes off as a little odd. You're pretty early in
| this process, and it sounds like the kind of incumbent
| dynamic where you should be relishing (along with
| improving/iterating on) the answer to the incumbent question
| rather than thinking of it in any way as a burden.
|
| Fwiw your landing page seemed to do a good job in this
| regard.
|
| Best of luck!
| greenie_beans wrote:
| thanks for your feedback!
| jackconsidine wrote:
| eCommerce for booksellers is an interesting problem. Many
| bookstores use IndieCommerce / Bookweb which has an
| unconventional status (a trade site? non-profit?). Where the
| frontend is lacking, it seems to make retail operations easy.
| Pretty sure that the ordering from distributors all the way
| through the inventory and POS sort of work out of the box. We've
| had a time adding a same-day delivery carrier integration to IC
| because they don't have a lot of development resources.
|
| I know some stores that use Shopify or Adobe Commerce. When it
| comes to books, there are a LOT of SKUs (think IC has 2-3 million
| on it's built-in catalog). 5 years ago, that was a big challenge
| for folks wanting to sell on Shopify (which is IMO the best
| eCommerce platform)
| greenie_beans wrote:
| bookhead started as my response to struggling with an
| indiecommerce site but now the product vision is different with
| some similarities. i have some ideas to collaborate with them
| if they are willing. it's a valuable product for some stores,
| but i agree that shopify is the best and i'm hoping to provide
| tools for stores to use shopify if they also feel that way.
|
| > When it comes to books, there are a LOT of SKUs (think IC has
| 2-3 million on it's built-in catalog). 5 years ago, that was a
| big challenge for folks wanting to sell on Shopify (which is
| IMO the best eCommerce platform)
|
| i have a blog post planned about this. i think the modern indie
| bookstore tech stack should be bookshop.org doing it's thing +
| a website with your local inventory. let bookshop sell all the
| inventory you don't have on hand but can easily get from
| ingram, and then your unique inventory will rise above in SEO.
| it doesn't make sense to me for 600+ IC stores to all have the
| exact same inventory, competing in SEO with the exact same
| metadata. but what does your local bookstore have? unique
| titles that only they carry.
|
| > Bookweb
|
| tells me you've been around for a while... if you are a
| bookseller, come find my table at winter institute 2026!
| SethMLarson wrote:
| I use bookshop.org and have had a great experience. Not sure I'll
| try anything else.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| do you have a brick & mortar store? if so, what do you use for
| managing your inventory? if not, then you might not be the
| right fit. nonetheless, great feedback if this distinction
| isn't clear.
|
| also, bookshop is wonderful! we love them. from my other
| comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44662335
|
| > i think the modern indie bookstore tech stack should be
| bookshop.org doing it's thing + a website with your local
| inventory. let bookshop sell all the inventory you don't have
| on hand but can easily get from ingram, and then your unique
| inventory will rise above in SEO.
| jacktheturtle wrote:
| looks great. what's your tech stack and background?
| joemi wrote:
| Interesting project! I'm in charge of all things technical at the
| book store I work at, so this piqued my interest. We've solved
| for ourselves many of the problems that Bookhead solves since
| we've been open for a few decades, so this doesn't seem like
| something we'd want to switch to, but I'm still bookmarking it
| and keeping my eye on it. Also I hope you don't mind me offering
| some suggestions/observations...
|
| - If you're _not_ using AWS, I'd explicitly mention that
| somewhere. I know there are a lot of indie bookstores who care
| about avoiding Amazon and any Amazon services. If you _are_ using
| AWS, well, you might find that you get more business from indie
| booksellers by not using it.
|
| - I'd add an explicit list of supported POS systems in the
| Overview of the docs. This was one of the very first things I
| wanted to check. (My store's POS isn't supported, btw.)
|
| - I'd add an explicit list of supported channels in Overview of
| the docs, as well. This was also one of the very first things I
| wanted to check.
|
| - I'd focus on adding Square as a supported POS. From what I see
| in the ABA forums, this kind of thing might appeal to the
| bookstores using Square as a POS. Especially if you can load the
| book data you have into their POS, possibly based on SKU? Maybe
| that actually would warrant a separate product you could offer
| (or that someone else could make).
| cpymchn wrote:
| Interesting project Sam. Thanks for sharing. Can you share how
| your catalogue management works and w/ cover images? Are you
| ingesting ONIX from publishers? Or is catalog creation downstream
| of the bookstore owner ordering the book?
| rognjen wrote:
| I wish you the best of luck which is why I'll tell you that in my
| experience
|
| > I have a very exciting roadmap that I'm not ready to fully
| reveal
|
| actually means:
|
| > I've made up a list of cool / fun to build features with no
| user input whatsoever
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