
Show HN: Stack – Save and explore books and book lists - oliv__
https://stack.app
======
oliv__
Man I didn't expect to see this land on the front page...it was actually
falling off the "new" page with a single, lonely point the last I saw it.

So basically I made this to scratch my own itch: I wanted a simple/quick way
to save the books I enjoyed and read with the possibility to add a quick
review and also be able to create "stacks" \-- curated lists of books that
fall under a common theme/category. I feel like I've seen so many of these on
the web but in a unstructured format: lots of "summer reading" blog posts,
celebrity reading lists, etc... and thought that having a structured way of
creating lists would be a nice thing to have.

As many of you noticed, the site is not optimized for mobile, the tos suck and
overall it is still very much alpha but I really appreciate the interest and
hope to see some books saved and stacks created if you like the idea enough to
sign up!

Also, don't take it so seriously: I know a lot of Show HNs are now part of
elaborate launch campaigns but this is truly just a side project I've been
hacking at and wanted to share on a whim with the community.

Cheers

------
williamjackson
I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that I wasn't paying complete attention on
the sign up page, and I pasted my new password into the "Pick a username"
field because I expected it to be a password verification field.

Also, there is apparently no way to change my username (even though I sign in
with my email address, so I assume my username is not a primary key), or
change my password, or delete my profile.

~~~
jyriand
This same thing happened to me. Two fields for passwords is such a common
pattern that often we fill in the blanks automatically. And I think there is a
design smell in current signup page. Easiest fix would be to move the username
box above password.

~~~
oliv__
I found a user that seems to match but I'm not 100% sure it's you. Could you
shoot me an email at: hello@stack.app?

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utopian3
FYI: On an iPhone SE, and the mobile layout looks terrible and impossible to
read or scroll. The width on the grey boxes is too small. Also, I don’t know
why you’d label this “anti-goodreads”. I personally have only used goodreads a
few times, but I like it

~~~
jxcl
There was a discussion on HN a while ago about the things people didn't like
about Goodreads[0]. This might be a response to that discussion and an attempt
to capitalize on it.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20904549](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20904549)

------
dmix
Looks more like an Amazon wishlist alternative (which is a feature I've used
extensively for years). Having a direct integration with Amazon via a chrome
extension would be nice. Assuming there were some other features to make it
worth switching (ie, a far nicer UX/design).

I previously worked on a 'smart' Goodreads alternative that used NLP to data
mine social media, (and eventually) Amazon, the press, and your own email for
book names which provided unique recommendations and popularity analytics. But
it never really took off as a product. It was more of a demo of the AI tech
underneath.
[https://www.producthunt.com/posts/bookvibe](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/bookvibe)

My recommendation is to find some niches and focus on them content-wise.
There's plenty of thriving mini book communities (scifi, romance, pop-sci
Malcolm Gladwell stuff, etc).

~~~
oliv__
dmix, thanks for the feedback.

Not 100% sure what you meant by "Having a direct integration with Amazon via a
chrome extension would be nice": like a button that would let you save a book
to stack if you happen to be on that book's amazon page?

If that's what you meant, I feel like that sort of changes the purpose of the
site from exploring and discovery to shopping?

Also, tried to check out Bookvibe but it seemed to be down.

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zapstar
As a non-Goodreads user, can you help me understand what Goodreads does poorly
and what your website does correctly?

~~~
oliv__
Hey zapstar.

Personally I just wanted a simple site where I could record my reads and make
curated lists of books. Goodreads offers some version of both but in my
opinion the site has waaay too many features/buttons/sections and is too
complicated/too much.

I guess that's why I see it as an anti-goodreads

~~~
shkkmo
I'd love to be able to add user defined tags to a book I have added. A nice
simple feature that lets your users do all sorts of more complicated things if
they want. I would use it to track if I have specific books in audio, digital,
and/or paper format.

~~~
oliv__
That's a great idea! Do you see these as being strictly private and personal
or would you consider having public tags?

~~~
shkkmo
I would only need it as personal but wouldn't mind if it were public. Depends
how much complexity you want to add.

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codefreq
The concept is good but the website is not mobile friendly. I would love find
a book but apparently there is no search book functionality. Also it would be
nice to view details and comments about book when I click the cover thumbnail,
right now it takes me to amazon which somehow feels like promotional.

~~~
oliv__
codefreq,

The title of the book will take you to the book's page.

Maybe I should add a label on hover to indicate that the book cover goes to
Amazon, the idea was just to have quick access if you were interested in the
book.

And yes it's not mobile friendly yet. I figured the HN crowd mostly browsed on
desktop so it would be fine for now (maybe I was wrong)

------
adventured
I'd remove the timezone selection from the sign-up / join page.

Everything you add to that page that isn't strictly necessary for signing up,
is bad for getting people through the sign-up process. There is nothing
critically important about setting the user timezone, for a service like this,
such that it must be established on the sign-up page.

Place it in a settings section for the user account (if you haven't already)
and call it a day.

~~~
oliv__
Good idea!

------
brenden2
Some feedback:

\- I think the shadows around the boxes are a bit too much. I'd pull those in
a bit.

\- I'm skeptical of the links going to Amazon. Are they affiliate links? What
about other bookstores?

\- I like the "stacks" idea, which I assume is a curated list of books to
read.

\- It would be nice if there was a discovery mechanism where I can enter books
I like, and it'll give me other options that I might like.

Congrats on the launch!

~~~
civilian
Yeah. And isn't GoodReads linking to Amazon what makes GoodReads Goodreads? I
was expecting Stack not to include any links like that.

I guess I just don't know what "anti-goodreads" means.

------
kfk
Hey this is great. It might not be super polished but the book titles I have
found so far are amazing. It might just be we like the same things but I am
totally on board if this stays small and we have a bunch of great
contributions to stacks. If it grows big I hope you find a way to keep the
good quality of stacks.

~~~
oliv__
Thanks! Glad to hear you found some interesting picks! Maybe the stacks could
have some kind of upvote mechanism or even just have some "Editor's picks" in
the future.

------
bwb
This is so great, nice job!!!! I've been looking for something like this :).
Going to play with it this weekend as I much prefer people's recommendations
compared to GoodReads which never seems accurate or useful.

~~~
oliv__
Thank you! I really appreciate the compliment! Let me know if you have any
feedback once you use it: hello@stack.app

~~~
bwb
Will do! I love reading but somewhat despise Goodreads as it is so hard to
search for books with above x stars from people who also liked x and y or so
on. Hoping this can produce great lists I can find from people who liked x
books eventually. I'll try to make some lists to add to it this weekend :)

------
gravitas
Opinion: what we need is a better Android mobile app for LibraryThing[1], the
already-exists alt-Goodreads. If you're an avid reader, there's a lot to be
said for a service such as Goodreads or LibraryThing which handles the ISBN
and Edition work to maintain your library along with the copious other
features related to book management and their plentiful connections to
external sources of information to pull in the data you want/need
automagically.

[1] [https://www.librarything.com/](https://www.librarything.com/)

------
lbotos
Also, only related in name, it made me think of stack magazines, which is
actually pretty cool:

[https://www.stackmagazines.com/](https://www.stackmagazines.com/)

Get one independent magazine to your door every month for ~$9.

I've gotten 3 so far, and its' been cool to kind of feel what different
magazines value, and see such a variety.

------
justhw
This is great. There is definitely a need for a site that just lets you create
a "stack" of books for x topic. Good reads is bloated for this. I'm tackling
the same problem with my app. Good luck.

[1] [https://bookshulf.com/toplists](https://bookshulf.com/toplists)

~~~
oliv__
Thanks. I agree :) I like Bookshulf's design

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honkycat
What I want from a Goodreads alternative:

Curated lists of books from people I respect.

Lists of books that are not all dominated by Harry Potter and other trash.

The ability to follow people and keep track of the books they recommend.

A faster website that doesn't constantly error and crash

Better data with fewer duplicated books.

Easy to use API

~~~
ryantgtg
Are these all the areas where you think goodreads needs work?

If so, can't you keep track of the books people recommend by simply looking at
their ratings?

I would like to see:

\- Ability to have reviews be "friends-only". My reviews are generally just
notes to myself, and I spend about 30 seconds writing them. I don't like that
they end up in the general pool of reviews.

\- Faster website! It's crazy how slow the website is. I usually view the
desktop version on mobile. I suspect it's intentionally nerfed in order to
drive people to the app.

Overall, goodreads is valuable to me because it helps me: see all the books
that authors have written; find new books to read via seeing what my friends
read; keep a list of books that I'm going to read in the future; see a list of
books I've read; and learn when an author I've read has something new. Stack
seems to just be a place to keep track of what I've read (but I haven't
created an account, so I may be missing features).

~~~
honkycat
Eh most people don't have a Goodreads.

Like, a "Goodreads" official list of Elon musk / Steve jobs / Obama
recommended books so I don't have to sort through the chaff.

Or a "Goodreads presents: John Carmaks favorite computer programming books."

Basically an employee or moderator builds the list, or they explicitly work
with someone like John Carmack to make a "Goodreads official" list

~~~
chanux
Not an endorsement but:
[https://www.theceolibrary.com/](https://www.theceolibrary.com/)

------
beetheking
Amazing stuff! Needs some work on mobile, though.

If an API is ever available, I'd gladly plug into it and build an Android app.

I'm a sucker for apps when it comes to something I use every day.

~~~
oliv__
Thank you! I agree, mobile design will be the next thing up for sure.

That would be sweet! Shoot me an email: hello@stack.app and we can talk about
an API!

------
bananaowl
From the TOS:

2\. Description of Services We make various services available on this site
including, but not limited to providing employment ads, and other like
services.

------
vzaliva
Before spending my time and exposing my private information by registering I
wish to know how this site is better than Goodreads.

One data point:

Goodreads TOC: 92 lines

Stack TOC: 174 lines.

~~~
TeMPOraL
The TOC is totally weird and looks like it's been copied from a different site
that offers, among other things, "employment ads, and other like services",
"E-mail, Messaging, Blogging, and Chat Services". On the bright side, at least
it doesn't have a forced arbitration clause.

~~~
oliv__
It is. I have to admit Terms of Service / Privacy pages just seem annoying to
have in the first place so I just hacked some previous terms I had together.
Maybe I shouldn't have included them at all instead of having some half baked
terms.

I actually don't even know what they say, but I definitely didn't make this to
sell the emails or spam people. Sorry if this put you off

~~~
TeMPOraL
Well, a lot of people do read - or at least skim - TOCs. For a typical
service, the front page tells us all the author wants us to believe, but the
TOC hints at all the shenanigans they're willing to pull.

If you're not planning to do any shenanigans, it might be worth it to make the
TOS reflect that.

------
osep
If you are looking for book collection apps, I started using Libbo not long
ago, pretty smooth!

[0] [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/libbo-your-books-
organized/id1...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/libbo-your-books-
organized/id1358016169)

------
werber
I'm not sure if this a part of the mobile issues others have addressed but the
review preview for the first book I clicked on (give the anarchist a
cigarette) there wasn't enough copy for me to have a full understanding of
what it was. Good luck on your next iteration!

------
turbostyler
Looks like the CSS needs a bit of cleanup ;) Impressive portfolio, though. I
like your stuff.

~~~
oliv__
Shhh.. you haven't seen anything :p

------
Porthos9K
Upvoted for effort, but if all I want to do is show off a subset of the books
I've read and offer a bit of commentary on selected titles, I could do that on
a web page. Why would I want to bother providing personal data to yet another
web app?

~~~
hinkley
I have an app I want to write. It would need crowd-sourced data as well, and
there seem to be only a couple of ways to make it worth someone's while to
enter that data.

One is soapboxing. Medium, for an instance. I don't have good feelings about
that. The other is recommendations, but I'm not sure if that works either.

Consider the bell curve of average users, where the curve is how widely read
(in this case, literally, but also figuratively) the individuals are.

If I'm out on the right end of that curve then my value to the site is high,
but the value of the site is rather low to me. If diversity isn't very high,
then everyone is mostly entering reviews for material I'm already familiar
with. I'm bored. I get nothing except maybe a soapbox.

Perhaps sites like this should consider these prolific people to be their
'whales' and treat them the way other companies treat whales; by going out of
their way to do something for them. Could be, and I'm just spitballing here,
that a properly run site should be paying a few professionals to add material
and make sure there's something substantive for these high value users. Hand-
built recommendations, if nothing else presents itself as a solution.

~~~
Porthos9K
I can soapbox on my own website. You might argue that the purpose of a soapbox
site like Medium is to get read, but getting read doesn't matter as much to me
as it once did. I've had people read my crap, and it wasn't the life-altering
experience I thought it would be because nobody cared. What matters to me now
is having written.

Recommendations are likewise of little worth to me; nobody knows my
preferences as well as I do, and any attempt to accurately model my
preferences will fail because I gain more by withholding accurate information
than I do by providing it.

The truth is that I'm not really anybody's target audience.

------
softwarelimits
Which api backend shold one use for the books data? The obvious choice is
Amazon, but maybe there are different, better data sources available? Any
insights into better book apis?

~~~
oliv__
Google books is good

------
DEADBEEFC0FFEE
This reminds me of Library Thing. Not sure if that service is still up though.

------
hyperpape
I wonder whether the messaging (at least the HN headline) is ideal.

I clicked through, but I don't know what makes it an anti-Goodreads. Perhaps
the pitch really is just for people who have a strong negative opinion about
Goodreads? For me, I don't care about Goodreads at all.

~~~
bscphil
I suspect this was posted here because of some recent threads that were very
critical of Goodreads. You might search back through recent HN history to find
some of the things people dislike about it.

~~~
hyperpape
Thanks, I’d missed that thread. So I guess that’s not the pitch, just an angle
to appeal to HN.

------
manigandham
"Anti-Goodreads" isn't a good thing. That site is fantastic and has lots of
functionality. This project looks like the typical misdirected form-over-
function appeal.

Just because it looks nicer doesn't make it better. And in this case it's
broken on mobile.

~~~
kerkeslager
Could you describe what functionality of GoodReads you use? I've come across
the site before, but all I've ever found useful there was that it has a good
compendium of quotes, which I use to get my quotations right. I'd be
interested to know if it's a more useful tool than I've realized.

~~~
manigandham
Proper search. Reading lists for progress and archives. Friends to follow.
Book clubs/groups. Reviews and forums to discuss books. Recommendations and
charts to find new books.

~~~
kerkeslager
Thanks for responding. I have meat-space solutions to all these problems, so
it's not for me, but that doesn't mean it's not for someone else. Enjoy!

