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Show HN: I built a modern Goodreads alternative

• vasanthk1125 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    What happened with cockroach? :)
    • osm3000 2y ago
      I am curious too
    • _huayra_ 2y ago
      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 https://www.cockroachlabs.com/docs/stable/licensing-faqs [1] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/whither-cockroachdb https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/whither-coc...
  • BozeWolf 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      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 2y ago
        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 2y ago
      Well, they use Supabase for auth. Perhaps there's other integration there.
  • julienmarie 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      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.
  • saltcod 2y ago
    Why Elixir & Phoenix and Next.js?
• noveltyaccount 2y ago
  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-bombing-cait-corrain https://www.npr.org/2023/12/17/1219599404/goodreads-review-b...
  • ForTheKidz 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      Yeah, reviews are inherently social. I’m waiting for someone to build a review platform on top of ATProto (bluesky).
    • Hrun0 2y ago
      > 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 2y ago
        Ah, interesting, apologies for the accidental goodreads slander. I moved on to storygraph a while ago and haven't looked back.
    • Freak_NL 2y ago
      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.
• sega_sai 2y ago
  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.
  • Xelbair 2y ago
    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.
  • frankfrank13 2y ago
    Agreed I really don't mind the interface, if anything, I hate the new stuff they've aded
  • jordanb 2y ago
    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 2y ago
    I view it as a positive. It's easy to find things and obvious which parts are interactive.
  • Freak_NL 2y ago
    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.
• pier25 2y ago
  How do you add a book to the database? The book I'm currently reading does not appear when searching.
  • vasanthk1125 2y ago
    We currently don't have that on the website. I'm planning to add it soon though, probably next week.
• roland35 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      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/ https://www.criticker.com/
      • NAHWheatCracker 2y ago
        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 2y ago
  I think most people looking for an alternative to Goodreads are using Storygraph.
  • albinn 2y ago
    Indeed what I've been using, since I learned that Goodreads was owned by Amazon
  • okucu 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      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 2y ago
  How does this compare to https://www.thestorygraph.com/ https://www.thestorygraph.com/ ?
  • sethherr 2y ago
    Came here to say this - the Story Graph is fantastic and highly recommended.
    • jfengel 2y ago
      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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      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.
    • crossroadsguy 2y ago
      I just had an account there. It might still be active. The way you have explained StoryGraph, it seems I must spend some more time checking it out. Seems really what I might be looking for.
• Svoka 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  > 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 2y ago
    No, and that's why Netflix switched to thumbs up/down instead of 5 stars.
    • jfengel 2y ago
      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 2y ago
        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 2y ago
        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 2y ago
      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.
• costcofries 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabarons) isn't in the library? I guess comic books aren't in the data source.
  • vasanthk1125 2y ago
    Yeah, we don't have comics and graphic novels currently. I wanted to keep it simple for launch.
    • NAHWheatCracker 2y ago
      Makes sense. Is there a reason Pandemic (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/710698.Pandemic https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/710698.Pandemic) and The Rift (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/271167.The_Rift https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/271167.The_Rift) aren't in Kaguya?
      • vasanthk1125 2y ago
        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/pandemic-6 https://kaguya.io/books/the-rift-1 https://kaguya.io/books/the-rift-1
        • NAHWheatCracker 2y ago
          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 2y ago
  I like the interface its easier to use compared to goodreads.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• bloomingkales 2y ago
  Your site is down. What is the starter kit for sharing your website here with it exploding?
• equinoxnemesis 2y ago
  I'm curious about the origin of the name. Kaguya-hime no monogatari? Kaguya-sama?
  • vasanthk1125 2y ago
    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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    Hi, yes! You can import it anytime from Account Settings → Import Books.
• zkiihne 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
  Your competition is not Goodreads, but https://joinbookwyrm.com/ https://joinbookwyrm.com/
  • lkbm 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      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 2y ago
        Do users create and moderate the group themselves? It seems like a subreddit, but for book related topics?
        • n4r9 2y ago
          Yep, each group has one or more moderators. Like Reddit I guess but no up/downvotes. There's some automated moderation as well - it doesn't let you post links (which is mad) and I read that at one point there was a censoring of mentions of Storygraph.
• sentimentscan 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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.
    • sentimentscan 2y ago
      I mean, not really you don't need user data; I was doing something related with LLM (simply asking it) and planning to use vector databases for various tasks, like semantic search, similarity matching, clustering, and topic modeling. Later pivoted to doing something for podcasts (analysing transcripts).
• xanderlewis 2y ago
  > UI still looks like it's from 2005. Are you sure this is a problem?
• lkbm 2y ago
  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.)
• myko 2y ago
  I adore this. Thanks for sharing!
• acrophiliac 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    You can view the website without registering though? Just click the link and browse without registering.
    • acrophiliac 2y ago
      Thanks! Got it.
• FabianBeiner 2y ago
  I'd also like to recommend https://literal.club/ https://literal.club/ as a Goodreads alternative.
• matthewfcarlson 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  How would you say this compares against StoryGraph (another GoodReads alt I’ve been using recently)?
• IAmNotACellist 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    Thanks!
• andypiper 2y ago
  Does it support ActivityPub? Bookwyrm does. That seems to me to be a basic requirement for a social network at this point.
  • vid 2y ago
    I've been looking into neodb, have you compared them? https://neodb.net/ https://neodb.net/
• mannyv 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  Is there any way to add/request/suggest books that aren't currently in the index?
  • vasanthk1125 2y ago
    Not yet, but we’re rolling out a way to add missing books later this week!
• mhh__ 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  > 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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    Indeed. Except for the UI, it has most of the features OP wanted since at least 2011.
• skeeter2020 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
  No "Source code"
• mmanfrin 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    “Women don’t read sci-fi”?
    • philistine 2y ago
      Sci-fi and Fantasy *together* account for 15% of the sales, and the majority of buyers are female.
  • mattbaker 2y ago
    You might need to meet more women
• loeg 2y ago
  > 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?
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• boznz 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  What was the name of the site again?? Other than that, ehh small detail, it seems pretty ok.
• semiinfinitely 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  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 José 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 Énard seems to be completely impossible to find via searching, despite existing on the website (https://kaguya.io/books/zone 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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
  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://www.goodreads.com - https://thestorygraph.com https://thestorygraph.com - https://fable.co https://fable.co - https://hardcover.app https://hardcover.app - https://joinbookwyrm.com 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 https://openlibrary.org. There is https://isbndb.com https://isbndb.com, but it is paid.
  • moritzruth 2y ago
    In case you don't know, there is also BookBrainz: https://bookbrainz.org/ https://bookbrainz.org/
  • ssz 2y ago
    My personal project, https://rate.house https://rate.house, is kinda like goodreads but for all types of media.
  • the_biot 2y ago
    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/ https://annas-archive.org/blog/ This may well be a great opportunity to seed a Goodreads alternative.
  • vasanthk1125 2y ago
    I’ve always hoped that once we reach Goodreads scale, we’d be able to release database dumps like VNDB (https://vndb.org/d14 https://vndb.org/d14) and Lichess (https://database.lichess.org/ 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 2y ago
    If you want the best UX for tracking and easiest/fastest Goodreads importer try https://margins.app https://margins.app (disclosure: I'm the designer)
• fidrelity 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  Anything is better than Amazon
• TheAtomic 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
  How did you get a DB of all books?
• ForHackernews 2y ago
  https://www.thestorygraph.com/ https://www.thestorygraph.com/ is another alternative to Goodreads - it's a one-person software project.
• Baggie 2y ago
  I really like it, it'd be nice if it had a letterboxd type feature to see what your friends are reading, that'd be pretty sweet
• crossroadsguy 2y ago
  My personal quick nitpick of a feedback would be - maybe users do not want a "modern" alternative to Goodreads per se? I know, I am not saying people are looking for a website from the 90s but one might want to keep in mind that this is a community that still reads books (and a lot of them actual paper books). This looks like standard website interface that get inherited from one of those nuvo web frameworks looks. The "feel" from the home page is very bland. Like a standard landing page of some sort. - And sadly I do not want to create an account to explore the features and then hope that there is an easy delete a/c option. In fact even if I'd know I could delet the a/c I would be not inclined to create an a/c - No, please don't do the 10 point rating. That's all over. 4 is the best with half stars. Hell, even 2 or 3 would not be bad. I'd have said 5 with half stars but that's essentially 10. 0, 0.5,…, 3.5, 4 is really the best imho. Even after Mr Ebert is gone and a lot of the later reviewes on his site are just, let's say not what he was even remotely, I still like rogerebert's 4 star rating system. - Since I have not tried it, I hope you have an easy way to import everything from Goodreads.
• untangle 2y ago
  Nice. I would love to import the metadata from my Calibre Library. Calibre is great, but it is ancient and its evolution is glacial.
• kqr 2y ago
  What are your plans for the longevity of this? How are you ensuring there are enough funds and time to go around for maintenance? What are your contingency plans for when you realise there is indeed not enough funds and time to maintain it? These are questions I'd like answered before I commit! I love the initiative but my experience tells me these things tend to die out after 2–5 years, and I'd hate to lose my reading history then.
• stared 2y ago
  For me, a killer feature would be easy JSON or Markdown export/sync, so I can use it in Obsidian. Also - I am a bit afraid that it either falls into obscurity or gets sold to Amazon. Any ideas why it wouldn't happen? In particular - if it is not open source, then there needs to be some monetization mechanics - which one do you favour?
  • vasanthk1125 2y ago
    We'll have subscriptions for extra features like Letterboxd does. All basic features though is free forever.
• p3rls 2y ago
  Godspeed, running a consumer app in these niches is the hardest thing you can do and many people here just run their mouths without building anything that gets used by actual people.
• ardaiel 2y ago
  I love the UI personally; I don't see a way to friend or follow other users, although I know that may be coming soon. My biggest missing feature: I can't see what series a book is in. For instance, if I look up the Three Body Problem, I can see the author, the rating, reviews, pub date, etc; but nowhere does it tell me this is Book 1 of the Remembrance of Earth's Past series. That's pretty big for me; I commonly use these sites to click on the series, and see a full listing of all books in that series, so I know what to read next.