Life & fun · February 28, 2022
A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads
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…
In plain words
Booqsi is a social platform for book readers that aims to be more engaging and community-focused than Goodreads or StoryGraph. It features a book-focused social feed and streamlined design for discovering and discussing books. The platform distinguishes itself by being independent of Amazon, instead directing users to Bookshop.org for purchases to support local bookstores. Built for readers seeking a more social and interactive space to share their reading experiences.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
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 it was important for Booqsi to be independent of Amazon; we care about supporting local bookstores, so every book in Booqsi links you to Bookshop.org to purchase that book (not Amazon). Here are some of my favorite features launched as part of beta: - A book-focused social feed (finally!) - Beautifully-rendered custom bookshelves to show off to your friends - Streamlined book recommendations to friends - Easily track reading goals and books you've read And many more... It's completely free and easy to use, and we would love your feedback as you explore the platform.
Does the same job
all alternatives →
- IBI built a modern Goodreads alternative2025 · kaguya.io · ▲254
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,…
- ISI scraped 3B Goodreads reviews to train a better recommendation modelNov 2025 · book.sv · ▲606
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…
- RRReadwise Reader, an all-in-one reading app2022 · readwise.io · ▲326
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…
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