

Show HN: A RottenTomatoes for Books - rahooligan
http://idreambooks.com

======
ghshephard
Love, love, LOVE the idea - It's one of those things that I would use every
week if it worked.

Critical feedback from a potential fan:

#1 - When looking at best sellers, one of the first things I saw was, "A Dance
With Dragons, 29 critic reviews | Published: August 28, 2012" - The
"Published" date is obviously for something different than the book
(Softcover? Trade Press?) - regardless, for book reviews what's most important
is not the publication of the format (I can get that at Amazon in 2 seconds) -
but the publication of the _content_

#2 - I wanted to see how Peter Hamilton's books were reviewed (very popular
author, so lots of reviews of his work out there), so I typed, "Peter
Hamilton" and got 17 hits, but not a single one for Peter Hamilton's books.
Typing the same thing in Amazon.com, despite how common the name is, got me a
page of hits comprising _only_ the Science Fiction author Peter Hamilton.

In general, it's better to focus on the 99% of what users are looking for than
the long tail. Not sure if you just don't have all of the reviews entered
here, but the content needs bulking up before you introduce this to the
general populace.

Love the idea - I'll check in from month to month to see how it comes along.

~~~
rahooligan
Thanks. Our db isn't that big yet. We are adding books & ratings every day
though!

------
ComputerGuru
Your search is... awkward.

I'm searching for "Count of Monte Cristo" (no quotes), and I get barely-
related results (starting from "The Pregnancy Countdown" to "Fifty Shades of
Grey" - _please_ tell me that "of" is a stop-word in your search algorithm!).

Sidebar: Is your review aggregation automated or curated?

EDIT

When a cover image is not available, the results are meaningless as you must
hover over each coverless result to see the title. I think the text should be
always visible for images with no cover:

<http://imgur.com/uwnBB>

~~~
knowtheory
I think that's probably a bug. When the page first loads the results, the
overlay w/ the title is visible. It's only once you've moused in and out that
the overlay disappears (at leas, that's the case in Chrome).

~~~
yalooze
While visually I really like the design, in terms of usability I'm not
entirely sold on it. Book covers can be hard to read (for both the title and
the author) and there can be many different cover designs which people may not
recognise. I would strongly suggest adding adding the title and author as
static text that you can see at all times.

One other point, I don't think the disparity between positive and negative
cloud icons is big enough. On Rotten Tomatoes it's crystal clear.

Love the site concept. Have been looking for a site like this for ages.
Looking forward to seeing it grow.

------
notJim
Small comment: you are using faux bolds on your headers (Bestsellers, Recent
in Fiction, Recent in non-Fiction in dark gray along the top.) This is hurting
readability, especially since the font is _already_ bold. Essentially, you are
applying a low-quality bold (generated by the browser or text rendering layer)
to the high-quality bold that was designed by the typographer. This isn't just
font wankery, it makes it hard to read the headings.

The easiest way to fix this is remove the bold declaration from your CSS. The
text will still be bold, because you are using a bold font.

The other way to fix it is to go into your @font-face declarations for droid
sans bold, and change the declared font-weight to be bold. This tells the
browser that the font is already bold, and not to make it more bold.

Here's a before and after in FF (latest) on OS X. Faux bold:
<http://cl.ly/image/3R0B0z1s0A3g>. Real bold:
<http://cl.ly/image/2A1N3w083h47>.

~~~
dredmorbius
I've given up and started modifying sites directly via the Stylish plugin, if
I must use them, or simply ditching them, if I needn't.

------
socksy
Firstly, I love the idea. Part of the reason I've stopped reading fiction is
because of the unknown quantity to whether it will waste my time — amazon
reviews can be hit and miss, and often missing.

<http://idreambooks.com/newbooks/19-Moonwalking-With-Einstein> reckons that
the NYTimes review is negative, but reading it
([http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/books/review/book-
review-m...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/books/review/book-review-
moonwalking-with-einstein-by-joshua-foer.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all)) it appears
to be positive? How do you work out which are positive and negative?

Also, could you make it possible to blacklist certain reviewers? Is that what
the thumbs up and down do, personalising your result? Say, if I went to the
review page of 50 shades, and downvoted all the positive reviews, will those
reviewers stop counting?

~~~
rahooligan
In the case of Moonwalking with Einstein over 70% of critics gave it a
positive.

If 7 out of 10 critic reviews are positive, the rating is 70%. We recommend a
book if it scores over 70%. More info here:
<http://idreambooks.com/toread_or_nottoread>

Thumbs up/down doesn't personalize yet...

~~~
socksy
Sorry, I think you misunderstood me, I am specifically referring to the New
York Times review of it, which is one of the 4 negative reviews of the book,
but if you read it is in actual fact positive. My mistake though, because I
accidentally linked the same page twice when I wanted to link this the second
time: [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/books/review/book-
review-m...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/books/review/book-review-
moonwalking-with-einstein-by-joshua-foer.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all)

~~~
rahooligan
We have a strict set of criteria when rating a review as positive or negative.
In general, if the review is even slightly negative we rate it as such...in
the case of Moonwalking, NYT expresses a few disappointments about the book.
This is to help surface only the very best of books in each genre.

~~~
redler
Any review of sufficient length and thoroughness is likely to include at least
some criticism, if for no other reason than the reviewer not wanting to look
like a cheerleader. The NYT often selects reviewers with relevant domain
knowledge, or who are themselves authors in a related genre. So opinions will
be expressed, hobbyhorses ridden, and nits picked, even in glowing reviews.

You should be careful to avoid setting up a business rule that could
overemphasize a few negative raisins in a positive pudding.

~~~
endersshadow
The idea of a binary positive vs negative is really troubling to me as far as
an algorithm goes. It should very much be on that sliding scale that
Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes uses--sentiment analysis shouldn't return just a
1 or a 0.

------
commieneko
I spent about 10 minutes doing searches and couldn't find anything I was
interested in. No Larry Niven, no James Michener, no William Gibson, no Max
Brand, no several other authors.

So I tried some current best seller type stuff. No Stephenie Meyer, no Suzanne
Collins, no Charlaine Harris. Finally found some Stieg Larsson.

The blue headlines and grey text are hard to read. The little cloud thingie
seems odd. Other than that, I like the site. I clicked on links, got the
review, from the original site. More content and I'd probably be a user.

~~~
ganley
Yeah... in the Travel genre, there are exactly two books. Nice idea, but not
enough content to be ready for release.

------
murz
Nice work. I like the idea and it looks like you've executed it really well.

I'm curious how you determine whether a given review is positive or negative,
did you use something like <http://nltk.org/> ?

------
patja
I like the concept. But the content is crap. I read a lot of fantasy and
scifi. When I went into the list of top rated books in that genre, so many of
them are pulp garbage that look like Twilight fan fiction and the like.

~~~
atourgates
And while perhaps this speaks more to my prejudices than anything else - I
have a hard time trusting a review aggregator where a bodice ripper has a
"100%" rating on the site's home page.

It took me a couple of minutes looking over the homepage to realize that it
was organized by genre. I'd recommend making those columns more visually
distinct, so you don't offend snobs like myself.

To address patja's concerns - it looks like you've got some young adult
fantasy/scifi mixed in with normal fantasy/scifi. Separate those out, and
you'll likely get a better response from fans of the genre.

Also - this looks quite exciting. It's amazing how few effective tools there
are out there for finding my next book. Thanks for making another!

------
siodine
The scorings are terrible. Rottentomatoes is fairly reliable for getting solid
recommendations as a cinephile, but this site is giving high marks for what is
clearly crap.

Maybe there just aren't enough book critics, or you're not aggregating them
all, or you aren't selecting for the top critics like rottentomatoes.

------
aw3c2
random honest critical 5 minute feedback:

The reviews are below the fold on my 1050px height. I wondered what was so
special about the site before randomly scrolling.

The justified text with the font for the description is hard to read and ugly.

Encoding issues in <http://idreambooks.com/newbooks/140-Drift> ? Lots of
issues on other entries too. Did you scrape other sites for this, not using a
legal and well-formed source...?

Thumb-up/-down icons are pretty much not disginguishable for me. Looked like
rotated stars on first glance.

The "overall rating" is not intuitive, I only noticed it when I checked what
else was on the page. Rottentomatoes is not better for either though, I always
have to think what they might mean before I get it (the symbols).

------
Meldryn
You need to put in some form of CTA for purchase of said books.

I kept looking for the Amazon link to check the pricing and other relevant
metadata.

~~~
masonhensley
I kept looking for the same but the closest action was to add to a reading
list.

OP, also check out Amazon's affiliate program.

------
flippyhead
I actually love this, found myself unconsciously clicking through on a few
books to learn more. Sometimes all I want is a simple browsing experience to
spark my interest and take me down one path or another and I feel like this
provides it. Keep on keep'n on!

------
rnernento
Fantastic, just sent the link to like 5 people. There is definitely a need for
this.

That being said I don't love the cloud icons. Also the layout of the social
media icons when viewing a book is ugly.

I predict tremendous success.

------
rlt3
I think what makes RottenTomatoes' rating system pretty good is their clear
indication of 'good' and 'bad': A fresh tomato and a rotten tomato.

The clouds on this website aren't bad, but I didn't even realize they were
there for a few minutes while I looked over the book covers. They blended into
the background and didn't instantly provide a positive or negative
connotation.

Since the site's name is 'I Dream Books', perhaps a nice fluffy pillow
represents a good book. Or a dream bubble with a happy face. Perhaps the badly
reviewed books get a dream bubble that's bursting, or has a nightmare inside.

------
ajb
With book search, you need to put exact titles before more popular matches.
Amazon used to get this wrong, they don't any more. A telling example is "We"
by Zamyatin - a classic, but there are many more recent big sellers with that
word in the title, so if exact match is not prioritised, you plain can't find
it if you can't remember the guys name. I can't tell if you've got this right
- maybe your database isn't big enough for it to matter yet.

------
d0m
Beautiful and useful website that I look forward to come back to. I, however,
thought that the "RottenTomatoes for Books" was Amazon. In what is this site
different?

~~~
rahooligan
Amazon is user reviews only. We like RottenTomatoes aggregate from
professional critics like NYTimes & select bloggers to create a book
recommendation of higher quality.

------
jmduke
The column layout is confusing because there's no real separation between the
columns. My natural instinct is to read from left to right.

Love the aesthetics.

~~~
rahooligan
most def...we need to differentiate them better.

------
runaway
One difference I notice is that RottenTomatoes uses color more effectively.
Looking at their homepage I see the red and green tomato icons and instantly
see which movies are highly/poorly rated. The blue and gray clouds here don't
contrast as much and it took me a second to even realize what was supposed to
indicate good or bad. Great idea, though and a good start. Best of luck.

------
shad0wfax
Really nice! I love the concept.

Can you make the slider (move me) and the category names (bestsellers, recent-
in-fiction etc..) a fixed/floating bar on the page? As I scroll below / load
more to view more books, I sometimes forget what category I am looking at and
if I need to switch to another one.

------
lpolovets
Nice UI!

Two minor comments:

1) Sometimes the same book shows up in different columns (e.g. Bestsellers and
Recent Fiction). This feels redundant (and possibly unintentional?)

2) There's a Sign Up link. What does signing up do? Is it to write reviews?
Subscribe to new books? Something else?

~~~
rahooligan
The redundancy is unintentional...need to fix. If you sign up, you get to add
books to your 'Reading List' (link under book show page image), enter
giveaways and receive a newsletter with top rated books. We plan on adding
more features...

~~~
lpolovets
Also, Amazon links would be great. You got me interested in a few books, and
I'm ready to buy them. The site should definitely get an affiliate fee for
that.

------
jackalope
You know what I like about books? They're printed using black ink on white
pages. I have to believe that other readers prefer this high contrast approach
or we'd see more variations after centuries of printing. Do your visitors a
favor and use black text for your main content. The light grey on white
surrounded by light grey makes me reach for my glasses, then I realize I'm
already wearing them.

Other than that, I really like the site and added it to my bookmarks. I would
like to see the number of reviews without having to hover over the cover,
though. It helps put the score in perspective.

~~~
tikhonj
Books are constrained as much by medium as readability. If you want the book
printed cheaply, you're relegated to black text on an off-white background.
Also, there's a big difference between text on a back-lit display and text on
a page.

I think dark gray text is a good choice for text on computers.

~~~
sliverstorm
What the dark grey (it isn't really super dark) text actually achieves here is
to allow your attention to be drawn to the pictures of book covers.

This, of course, makes the site prettier, because book covers are colorful.

Personally though, I'd rather just have a list of [book name - author(s)]

------
tyleregeto
I love it. I looked into doing this a while back with one portion of the
business model being Amazon affiliate sales; you should be doing that. Not
only is it good for you ($$$) as a user I want it too. Nice job!

------
afterburner
Looks nice. Is it possible to have separate categories for Science Fiction and
Fantasy?

EDIT: Also, you should put the author's name wherever the title is displayed.
(eg. in the subgenre pages)

~~~
rahooligan
Didn't think you could get more granular than SFF. We tried to group genres
together for simplicity. But some users don't seem to be liking that. All
genres/categories are currently listed in the dropdown in the header.

~~~
aasarava
The dropdown doesn't have Fiction, which was surprising since that's what I
went looking for first. Also, when I figured out that I could click on the
"Recent Fiction" heading on the homepage, I was disappointed to see that there
was no way to filter down to Literary Fiction, the way most publishers do.
Otherwise, all the top items are mass market fiction, which is a very
different genre.

------
jshowa
I never understood review sites like Rotten Tomatoes and the like. Don't sites
like Amazon, where you can actually buy the product, already accomplish this?
Unless you have actual authors or news critics writing critiques for a book,
there isn't much that makes it different from sites where you can buy the
product.

Anyway, why no technical literature section? Why isn't there a genre on text
books? Novels are fine, but I like learning something when I read.

~~~
astine
On Rotten Tomatoes they _do_ have actual news critics writing critiques.
That's the whole point of the site. It's an aggregator for critical reviews of
movies.

I think that this site is doing something similar.

~~~
jshowa
Might as well just forget about a technical section then.

------
Kroem3r
There are quite a few book sites providing good discoverability combined with
community, combined with curated selections, etc. etc.

You've added a nice design, but the categorization of the books is weak as is
the selection itself. I looked at History, which seems to be comprised of
'historical fiction' and I looked for "Tony Judt" who was a significant
recently published historian but is not represented.

~~~
Cyranix
Can you list them? The one I'm familiar with is Goodreads, but if there are
others, I'm interested.

~~~
Kroem3r
Aside from Goodreads, my list includes:

<http://www.librarything.com/> <http://www.shelfari.com/>
<http://49thshelf.com/> <http://openbooktoronto.com/>
<http://www.filedbyauthor.com> <http://www.thecopia.com/home/index.html>
<http://www.booksprouts.com/> <http://www.bookglutton.com/>
<http://weread.com>

You'll note that some of these are dead or dying, which leads me to the small
point that I'd make: creating a book site is pretty easy: the audience likes
print-media and there are rafts of digitized content available, but getting a
site to sustain is hard.

------
tijs
This would be awesome if i could set personal preference for the review
sources. I really don't care what Yahoo voices or some of the other 'critics'
think but you are bound to have some reliable critics in there that i do care
about.

Maybe even more so than for movies readers tend have more in common with some
critics then others and the 'meta' opinion is just not that interesting.

------
atonechris
Really cool idea. As you grow you should definitely keep news papers in mind
as a possible acquirer. Best of luck!

------
botolo
I love this idea and I have bookmarked your website. Well done, I will keep on
checking your website!

------
wowoc
This is NICE. Really. If only it had more titles... Also, think about foreign,
not-yet-translated-to-English books. For example, there are fabulous SF books
in Polish (not just by Lem, and not just SF, actually...) which should be
there.

------
organic_code
Interesting but lacks way too much content still. I could not find Brandon
Sanderson, Patrick Rothfuss, Brent Weeks, etc. Every Fantasy author I tried
that did not have an HBO series currently did not come back..

------
tijs
Just a tip: the confirmation email went straight to my spam folder (with a
very high spam rating). You might want to think about using something like
mailgun or sendgrid for better deliverability...

~~~
rahooligan
oh no. what email service was it (yahoomail?)...dont forget to unspam it!

------
danso
Very cool. One feature that RT has that you don't have yet is the ability to
see all reviews by a reviewer/institution.

Actually, being able to see all books by the author would be especially
useful. And it's a view more particularly essential than it is for RT (since
an author has a more singularly important role in the quality of a work,
compared to the actors/studios/directors/writers/producers/financial backing
that go behind a successful movie)...being able to see an average for an
author's books, or even a sparkline (to see if he/she is going downhill) would
add a lot of value with minimal effort.

Related to that: I know it's kind of important to people to see the blurb,
which necessitates a multi-column layout for the listed reviews. But I'd
rather see it in a tabular format, with Reviewer Name, Date, Rating, and then
a long field for 20-30 word blurb. It's easier to see distribution of reviews
in a tabular format.

~~~
rhizome
To put a slightly finer point on it: sites like this are incredibly
relational. Everything (almost) should be clickable for a collection view.

~~~
jilebedev
That's taking it a bit far, eh? Tasteful user interfaces answer relevant
questions - not just any question at all.

~~~
rhizome
For sure it's an ideal, but come on, you should be able to click on a
reviewer's name to get their other reviews, or an author's name to get their
other books, or a date to find other reviews posted at the same time (with its
own range functionality), as well as by-publisher, by-review-site, etc.

------
mmanfrin
Searched a couple books, found none:

2666 (none found), Vanished Kingdoms (none found), Twilight War: After the
Fall (tried 'twilight war' and 'after the fall', each gave unrelated results).

------
soulclap
I am currently working on something similar, not related to books though.
Thanks for the inspiration provided by your site and the comments on here, HN
is once again very helpful.

------
davidandgoliath
Get in touch if you are interested a better domain name, I've got bookjury
that may need a new home -- despite a large % of the code being done. :)

------
dmazin
This is well-executed, but I thought those were happy/sad little pieces of poo
for a little while and I'm not exactly inattentive.

------
jwallaceparker
Sounds cool. But where are all the books?

No Hemingway, Vonnegut, Faulkner, Kerouac, Fitzgerald.

Why no classics?

~~~
dinkumthinkum
I know, I'm dying to know what snarky sophomoric Internet dweebs think about
Cat's Cradle rather than just read it for myself. :)

------
jaspero
Seems like search tool needs some work. I can't find books that I am looking
for 3 out of 3.

------
msredmond
Nice --- really like the layout

------
estebank
Please, add OpenID login.

------
wildermuthn
Needs a new name. Otherwise, terrific.

------
axx
Great idea!

------
rprasad
_cough_ Goodreads. Already has network effects going for it, and a very
vibrant author community. It does pretty much what all the comments on this HN
page suggest you should add/change.

Also, your site took almost _5 minutes_ to load. That is simply unacceptable.

~~~
rahooligan
We focus on critic reviews to create a recommendation of higher quality (they
don't do critic reviews).

~~~
aristus
There's a problem with "critic" reviews, at least from where I'm sitting:
critics don't review anything that's not backed by a huge publisher,
effectively locking out all of the small-time authors who might actually have
something good.

For example, I was interviewed about my book for School Library Journal, but
the book reviewer side of the house refuse to even consider it for a proper
book review.

------
b0
Good stuff.

Can you please make the text darker - I suffer from some sight problems which
make grey on grey quite hard for me to read.

