Show IH: bookjot - Jot down your thoughts from books you've read and see others'
I actually meant to build the landing page a couple months back but was too lazy to get off my ass and do something worthwhile haha. Finally got around to it, and I'm as happy as can be!
I'm still in the validating process for this product, and thus am only collecting emails. Trying to see how many I can get, and if the interest is large enough, I'll build the full product.
Here's the link.
Looking for feedback, critiques, and hopefully some emails 😁
Hey, sounds cool! Quick feedback, from the landing page I can't really tell what this will provide beyond what I'd get by just keeping a list/folder of text docs. If it's just the association of notes <> books, that's kinda cool but maybe not something I'd pay for.
But the second half of this sentence I think is worth emphasizing more:
That is, what value could this provide in terms of social interactions, book discovery, etc.?
Anyway this is totally up my alley and I'm working on a book-discovery sort of site on my own (https://www.antilibrari.es/) so look forward to seeing how this develops :)
I'm using goodreads at the moment, still the idea could be interesting :)
Very neat idea. I think many people would pay $1 per month. The main reason might not be to keep notes on their own books but to read other people's notes on books they haven't read themselves. I would be interested to see other people's takes on specific books. Cool idea, nice simple landing page.
It's worth being clear if you would integrate with Kindle book highlights. I imagine most people use Kindle, and being clear on whether you integrate with Kindle is probably a key decider for many people.
Also, I'm not aware of an official API for this from Amazon.
Congrats on launch of your landing!
I love to read books too :)
As for the product and price... in the past, I had similar idea, like service to show others what I'm reading now and to make some notes on the reading, ask questions, discuss etc (I never did it :( )
But anyway I thought about the business model. And I thought it must be free, completely. Because people won't pay just for the opportunity to make some notes or discuss, it contradicts the whole idea of the Internet. But you still can make money, for example: show affiliated links to the discussing books, put some book-related ads etc.
Good luck!
I work in the book industry. I think the most difficult part is finding an API that has the book and metadata information you need to populate books. Google books is available but you will have a fairly low api limit (5k per day) and it isn't the most up to date sometimes. There is Ingram with their web API as well, but I haven't worked with it before. I believe Ingram has the most comprehensive compilation of book data. I think cover images are extra though, not exactly sure how much it would cost.
I love the minimal interface and the simple idea. I hope you can launch it.
This comment was deleted 7 years ago