5 ms·

This seems like a fun side project idea honestly - can I ask what’s most broken and which great features are missing? I took a quick look and there is a offici

by vertoc 7y ago

This seems like a fun side project idea honestly - can I ask what’s most broken and which great features are missing? I took a quick look and there is a official Goodreads API that you can use to pull titles from people’s accounts (once they authorize your app). Yes, Amazon could shut it down but eh, might be worth the risk

mmanfrin 7y ago
My bouts of wanting to build a competitor usually arise when I'm trying to find something I'd assume would be a feature and isn't, and I'm having a hard time remembering everything, but: 1) I desperately want a feature that'll show me the books most-reviewed among my friends, or highest reviewed with >X # of reviews. You can see what individual friends have reviewed, but there is nothing I've found to aggregate. 2) More reading stats (right now it shows number of books, and total pages at the end of the year). I wanna see breakdowns of categories, authors, fiction/nonfiction. 3) I had an idea for per-book or per-series wikis that have spoiler-bracketed info. E.g., [spoiler b2p300 "King Soandso is murdered by Assassin Soandso"] would show in a book wiki if you are past book 2, page 300. I read a bit of fantasy and have a tendency to want to google 'who is x', but that is fraught with spoilers. This is a feature that could exist as its own site, but I think it'd be a good companion to a goodreads-esque site. 4) Book Discovery seems super weak on Goodreads and I feel I could build something significantly more useful.
input_sh 7y ago
> This seems like a fun side project idea honestly - can I ask what’s most broken and which great features are missing? It's basically just the momentum it has, alongside with crowdfunded book directory (you don't have to enter the metadata manually in like 99.999% of the cases). I'm not gonna say "don't bother", but I've personally used three Goodreads alternatives over the years and nobody mentioned a single one of them yet. I've settled on BookDigits[0], which is what Goodreads should be if you ask me. > Yes, Amazon could shut it down but eh, might be worth the risk Technically API isn't the only way users could extract their data from Goodreads. There's also export/import tool that exports data in CSV, and there's also RSS feed that you could ask for. If there's one good thing I can say about Goodreads, it's that it's not a walled garden. [0] https://bookdigits.com/ https://bookdigits.com/
- vertoc 7y ago
  All your points are true - but I think using the API to essentially just create a “better front end” for Goodreads would be the the new idea here because of that momentum. You wouldn’t need to add your books or friends on this new app, you would just login with Goodreads and it would all be there. It could also two way sync so even if your friends want to keep using goodreads, any ratings you put on this new app would still show up on your goodreads profile. The reason “better frontend” is in quotes is because it wouldn’t stop at just making the UI/UX better, but also do better search using Algolia, a better book recommendation engine, etc. but there’s no reason it couldn’t just use the goodreads api as essentially the backend for user profiles and ratings
  - lostlogin 7y ago
    Obooquity and Calibre can both be made to do some of this via LazyLibrarian. It’s giving you a nice local library rather than recommendations, but it’s pulling the wanted/read info from Goodreads into LazyLibrarian. It is a good tool for curating a library but is also pretty clearly aimed at pirating ebooks.
akudha 7y ago
It is worth a try, but where does one get all the book cover images, ISBN etc in bulk? I remember someone making open source version of IMDB (can't remember the link now), I think I saw it on Patreon. Would be nice to make something similar for books. One feature I'd love as a user (specifically for non-fiction books) - given a book, show me all books referenced in that book (in the chapter, footnotes etc). I've found quite a few gems, simply by scanning the referenced books list in the books that I like. After all, the author is an expert on the subject, and it is safe to assume he/she would have read tons of books than me on the subject.
- jpindar 7y ago
  Calibre can download metadata and covers from a number of sources, mine lists: Amazon, Big Book Search, Edelweiss, Google, Google Images, OZON.ru, Open Library, and Overdrive. Of course I'm only searching for one book at a time.
  - akudha 7y ago
    but can you use these covers though, especially if you have ads on your site etc? aren't those images Amazon's property?
    - cowsandmilk 7y ago
      No, they generally are the property of the publishers....
- PKop 7y ago
  Perhaps this: https://www.themoviedb.org/?language=en-US https://www.themoviedb.org/?language=en-US

by vertoc 7y ago

mmanfrin 7y ago

My bouts of wanting to build a competitor usually arise when I'm trying to find something I'd assume would be a feature and isn't, and I'm having a hard time remembering everything, but: 1) I desperately want a feature that'll show me the books most-reviewed among my friends, or highest reviewed with >X # of reviews. You can see what individual friends have reviewed, but there is nothing I've found to aggregate. 2) More reading stats (right now it shows number of books, and total pages at the end of the year). I wanna see breakdowns of categories, authors, fiction/nonfiction. 3) I had an idea for per-book or per-series wikis that have spoiler-bracketed info. E.g., [spoiler b2p300 "King Soandso is murdered by Assassin Soandso"] would show in a book wiki if you are past book 2, page 300. I read a bit of fantasy and have a tendency to want to google 'who is x', but that is fraught with spoilers. This is a feature that could exist as its own site, but I think it'd be a good companion to a goodreads-esque site. 4) Book Discovery seems super weak on Goodreads and I feel I could build something significantly more useful.

input_sh 7y ago

> This seems like a fun side project idea honestly - can I ask what’s most broken and which great features are missing? It's basically just the momentum it has, alongside with crowdfunded book directory (you don't have to enter the metadata manually in like 99.999% of the cases). I'm not gonna say "don't bother", but I've personally used three Goodreads alternatives over the years and nobody mentioned a single one of them yet. I've settled on BookDigits[0], which is what Goodreads should be if you ask me. > Yes, Amazon could shut it down but eh, might be worth the risk Technically API isn't the only way users could extract their data from Goodreads. There's also export/import tool that exports data in CSV, and there's also RSS feed that you could ask for. If there's one good thing I can say about Goodreads, it's that it's not a walled garden. [0] https://bookdigits.com/ https://bookdigits.com/

vertoc 7y ago
All your points are true - but I think using the API to essentially just create a “better front end” for Goodreads would be the the new idea here because of that momentum. You wouldn’t need to add your books or friends on this new app, you would just login with Goodreads and it would all be there. It could also two way sync so even if your friends want to keep using goodreads, any ratings you put on this new app would still show up on your goodreads profile. The reason “better frontend” is in quotes is because it wouldn’t stop at just making the UI/UX better, but also do better search using Algolia, a better book recommendation engine, etc. but there’s no reason it couldn’t just use the goodreads api as essentially the backend for user profiles and ratings
- lostlogin 7y ago
  Obooquity and Calibre can both be made to do some of this via LazyLibrarian. It’s giving you a nice local library rather than recommendations, but it’s pulling the wanted/read info from Goodreads into LazyLibrarian. It is a good tool for curating a library but is also pretty clearly aimed at pirating ebooks.

akudha 7y ago

It is worth a try, but where does one get all the book cover images, ISBN etc in bulk? I remember someone making open source version of IMDB (can't remember the link now), I think I saw it on Patreon. Would be nice to make something similar for books. One feature I'd love as a user (specifically for non-fiction books) - given a book, show me all books referenced in that book (in the chapter, footnotes etc). I've found quite a few gems, simply by scanning the referenced books list in the books that I like. After all, the author is an expert on the subject, and it is safe to assume he/she would have read tons of books than me on the subject.

jpindar 7y ago
Calibre can download metadata and covers from a number of sources, mine lists: Amazon, Big Book Search, Edelweiss, Google, Google Images, OZON.ru, Open Library, and Overdrive. Of course I'm only searching for one book at a time.
- akudha 7y ago
  but can you use these covers though, especially if you have ads on your site etc? aren't those images Amazon's property?
  - cowsandmilk 7y ago
    No, they generally are the property of the publishers....
PKop 7y ago
Perhaps this: https://www.themoviedb.org/?language=en-US https://www.themoviedb.org/?language=en-US