Alternatives
Products that do what A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads does
Hey HN, I know reading books isn’t everyone’s thing, but it’s certainly been mine for as long as I can remember. Unfortunately, I felt like the online book space was missing a platform that does the book community justice. Goodreads is the go-to "social platform", but if you've been on Goodreads before, you'll probably agree that it's not all that social, and overall not all that exciting. So I set out to build what I personally was looking for (but could never find). The goal: to give the book community a more social and streamlined alternative to Goodreads or StoryGraph. We also felt like…
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Since 2005, Goodreads has been the default book tracking site, connecting millions of readers. But let’s be real—it’s barely changed in 20 years. It’s the same site it was, just with more ads. Still no half-star ratings. No proper DNF (Did Not Finish) option. UI still looks like it's from 2005. Amazon owns it and doesn't care. So I built Kaguya, a modern alternative, over the past 9 months. What’s live: Custom shelves (Organize however you want) Rich-text reviews (format your thoughts properly) 10-star rating system (More nuance than 5 stars) DNF, On-Hold, and other reading statuses Likes,…
2025 · kaguya.io
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Hi everyone, For the past couple months I've been working on a website with two main features: - https://book.sv - put in a list of books and get recommendations on what to read next from a model trained on over a billion reviews - https://book.sv/intersect - put in a list of books and find the users on Goodreads who have read them all (if you don't want to be included in these results, you can opt-out here: https://book.sv/remove-my-data) Technical info available here: https://book.sv/how-it-works Note 1: If you only provide one or two…
Nov 2025 · book.sv
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Hey HN, cofounder of Readwise here. We've been working on this cross-platform reader app for about 2 years, excited to finally share it in public beta. Probably the most notable thing that makes Reader unique is that it supports almost any content type you could want to save/read/highlight: * web pages * emails/newsletters * PDFs * ePubs * twitter threads * youtube videos (with transcripts) * RSS feeds With all of your knowledge content in one place, we built powerful reading and highlighting, as well as a bunch of novel triage/organization features, so you can actually…
2022 · readwise.io
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Hi HN! A little over two years ago, Goodreads announced they were shutting off access to their API. I was using it to show what I was reading on my blog at the time, and started looking for alternatives. I found a few that showed potential. I'd been using Letterboxd for a few years at that point and felt it had something that was missing from GR and the others I found, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I decided to build it instead (I'm sure many creators can relate ). I made a post on the /r/cofounders subreddit about the idea, and found Ste. With me as a full-stack product dev…
2023 · hardcover.app
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Hi HN! I've been working on BookWith, an open-source e-book reader that integrates AI as your reading companion. The problem: Traditional e-readers are passive. When you encounter something unclear, you have to context-switch to search for it. Your highlights and notes remain isolated, and you can't easily connect ideas across different books. My solution: BookWith embeds an AI that maintains full context of what you're reading. It features: - Context-aware AI chat: Ask questions about the current page/chapter and get instant answers - AI podcast generation: Automatically converts book…
2025 · github.com
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Hello HN, I noticed that I often looked for new books, depending on my mood (e.g., if I'm feeling tired, I want to find books that'll help me fix that and improve my sleep). So, I created my 1st indie project, BooksByMood. BooksByMood will help you find your next read based on your mood w/ - Books averaging 4.09/5 on Goodreads - Each book comes with an explanation of why it's selected for your mood - 18 moods to explore I hope you'll enjoy using the website, Cheers!
2024 · booksbymood.com
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Hey HN! I built a little side project I wanted to share. Shelvy is a free, visual bookshelf app where you can organize books you're reading, want to read, or have finished. Sign in to save your own collection. Not monetized, no ads, no tracking beyond basic auth. Just a fun weekend project that grew a bit. Live: https://shelvybooks.com Would love any feedback on the UX or feature ideas!
Jan 2026 · shelvybooks.com
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Hey HN, maker here. It was a serious 4-6 months of effort to build this. I have never poured as much love, attention and detail into a project before. So I really appreciate you having a looksie! The homepage has a fresh list of articles every hour and is open to all. Still, I recommend signing up so you can add stuff to your reading list and follow blogs. My initial plan was to monetize this with subtle ads, but that didn't work out as the traffic to the site isn't nearly enough for that. That said, I have a fair bit invested in this and I need your help figuring out a way to make this…
2023 · boredreading.com
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Hey everyone, I'm Michael, a product engineer at Hyperink. Over the past month or so, I've been developing a rich, social reading experience for our content, freeing us from the stranglehold of MOBI and EPUB file formats. Today, Jeff Atwood generously granted us permission to release half of his book completely free on this Crowd Reader (paid customers get to see all of it there).<p>The problem: paperback/print always wins over digital and arguably e-ink. Our solution: make reading a unique and asynchronously social experience.<p>I've love to get some beta feedback and…
2012 · hyperink.com
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Hi guys. I’m looking for some feedback from the great HN community. I just soft launched the beta version of my humble bookshelf application, bookqueue. I've been working on it as a pet project since 2007. The idea is having a place to track all books you have been reading and having some nice stats around it, with less focus in the social aspects. My own queue can be found here: http://bookqueue.net/caffo You can also create your own at http://bookqueue.net/ Thanks!
2011
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