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Ask HN: Review My Startup. Bookhu.com: The Gender Compatibility Engine for Books

5 points by pmjoyce 17y ago

http://www.bookhu.com The problem I'm trying to solve: I'm a casual reader of fiction. Once or twice a year I visit amazon and browse their bestsellers looking for inspiration. I don't keep up-to-date with fiction and find it quite time consuming to find something suitable. I thought it would be great to have a couple of filters based on the readership/intended market for a given book so I could at least make a quick shortlist. Last week I decided to see if I could make a start on something that might suit starting with the gender of the readers. Yesterday I launched Bookhu.com which lets you search for any book (via the Amazon API) and see the gender split of the people who review the book together with the average rating by gender. It's very early days (I only started on it last week) but any thoughts would be appreciated.

DanielStraight 17y ago
Two thoughts: 1. The site looks like a domain parking page. 2. Why can I not view books sorted by gender distribution? That seems like the entire point of the site, yet I can't do it.
- pmjoyce 17y ago
  1. Really? I have to hold my hand up on this one. It's a product of a $30 Wordpress theme and my below par design skills. That's useful feedback. 2. Yes that's the point of the site and something I'm actively working on. More accurately, it something I'm trying to make more efficient because right now it's just too expensive with the way I'm using the amazon api.
hackoder 17y ago
Good stuff. Agree with what has been said about it looking like a domain parking page. Thoughts: - The simple look is very useful. List of books, search, categories. Well done. - The feedback "tab"(?) at the side. Why not move it to the bottom right, or at the top as a menu item?
deleted 17y ago
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araneae 17y ago
I think it would be very cool if you could integrate it with goodreads.com etc. I want to know the gender split of my bookshelf ^-^
- pmjoyce 17y ago
  Yeah, that would be pretty interesting and could be the foundations of some sort of personalized reccommendation functionality.
  - defen 17y ago
    Start a dating service which matches you up with people purely based on what books you both read/enjoy. Dating seems to be a perennial YC favorite, maybe they would fund you.
    - pmjoyce 17y ago
      I wonder if there has been any research on the relationship between book preference and attractiveness.
rsheridan6 17y ago
Chicks dig Knuth: http://www.bookhu.com/analyse/?ASIN=0321637135&title=The+Art+of+Computer+Programming++Vol++4++Fascicles+0+4++5+Volume+Set+ http://www.bookhu.com/analyse/?ASIN=0321637135&title=The... It would be nice if it would show the breakdown when you search an author rather than making you click again for a breakdown for each book. Having worked with Amazon's shitty API, I'm guessing that their constraints forced you to do it like that. If I were working with them again I'd ignore their API and scrape HTML instead.
- pmjoyce 17y ago
  You're right, I'm having to work with restrictions imposed by the Amazon API. I think I could probably tighten up the process a little more though. I wonder how much use an author page might be - similar gender breakdown stats but for the author instead of individual books.
pclark 17y ago
You could probably get a ton of users by integrating with Librarything etc and offering widgets that show the gender gap of users libraries.

5 points by pmjoyce 17y ago

DanielStraight 17y ago

Two thoughts: 1. The site looks like a domain parking page. 2. Why can I not view books sorted by gender distribution? That seems like the entire point of the site, yet I can't do it.

pmjoyce 17y ago
1. Really? I have to hold my hand up on this one. It's a product of a $30 Wordpress theme and my below par design skills. That's useful feedback. 2. Yes that's the point of the site and something I'm actively working on. More accurately, it something I'm trying to make more efficient because right now it's just too expensive with the way I'm using the amazon api.

hackoder 17y ago

Good stuff. Agree with what has been said about it looking like a domain parking page. Thoughts: - The simple look is very useful. List of books, search, categories. Well done. - The feedback "tab"(?) at the side. Why not move it to the bottom right, or at the top as a menu item?

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

araneae 17y ago

I think it would be very cool if you could integrate it with goodreads.com etc. I want to know the gender split of my bookshelf ^-^

pmjoyce 17y ago
Yeah, that would be pretty interesting and could be the foundations of some sort of personalized reccommendation functionality.
- defen 17y ago
  Start a dating service which matches you up with people purely based on what books you both read/enjoy. Dating seems to be a perennial YC favorite, maybe they would fund you.
  - pmjoyce 17y ago
    I wonder if there has been any research on the relationship between book preference and attractiveness.

rsheridan6 17y ago

Chicks dig Knuth: http://www.bookhu.com/analyse/?ASIN=0321637135&title=The+Art+of+Computer+Programming++Vol++4++Fascicles+0+4++5+Volume+Set+ http://www.bookhu.com/analyse/?ASIN=0321637135&title=The... It would be nice if it would show the breakdown when you search an author rather than making you click again for a breakdown for each book. Having worked with Amazon's shitty API, I'm guessing that their constraints forced you to do it like that. If I were working with them again I'd ignore their API and scrape HTML instead.

pmjoyce 17y ago
You're right, I'm having to work with restrictions imposed by the Amazon API. I think I could probably tighten up the process a little more though. I wonder how much use an author page might be - similar gender breakdown stats but for the author instead of individual books.

pclark 17y ago

You could probably get a ton of users by integrating with Librarything etc and offering widgets that show the gender gap of users libraries.