7 ms·
Show HN: StumbleUpon for books
- untitaker_ 13y agoFetching books from HN threads is IMO a really good idea, but using the submission title seems to produce completely inaccurate teasers for me. I'd recommend fetching the title from Amazon too, and also somehow weighting the books by comment upvotes.
- raimonds 13y agoThanks for your feedback and suggestions! Book titles would make more sense definitely. But post titles lead to surprising and funny results sometimes.
- openastorenow 13y agoVery cool idea. I recently spent quite a while paging through HNSearch.com looking for book recommendations. My recommendation would be to make sure the "Next" button never moves. Some really long titles cause it to get pushed down a bit and that gets annoying when you're clicking on "Next" at a fast rate. I also agree there needs to be a little more information on the page because of the sometimes-indirect post titles. I find myself hovering the Amazon link to see the name of the book.
- raimonds 13y agoGreat feedback! I'll try to fix that nasty Next button.
- tathagatadg 13y agoAnd can you add keyboard navigation too?That'd be supper addictive
- raimonds 13y agoGreat thought! I will do it!
- jjsz 13y agoIf I recall, there was a guy who also scraped hn but included movies and other things. It wasn't limited to clicks, he had all the information in lists.
- raimonds 13y agoMaybe it was me again with http://www.hnstore.co/ http://www.hnstore.co/
- mistermcgruff 13y agoVery cool. Naturally, scraping out of HN is gonna provide a few wonky teasers, but a great idea nonetheless. Just submitted my book per the site's instructions for kicks http://www.amazon.com/dp/111866146X http://www.amazon.com/dp/111866146X
- raimonds 13y agoThanks for the kind words!
- loceng 13y agoFun name. Took me a moment to realize it's a word combination.. but cool. :)
- raimonds 13y agoGlad you liked it! Name was one of my concerns.
- cocoflunchy 13y agoYou need to add an Amazon Associate tag to all these links!
- raimonds 13y agoBut is it worth it if visits are not in millions?
- thursdayb 13y agoThere are some sites that generate decent Amazon Associates revenue without millions of visitors — it's a question of whether one of the main interactions users expect to make with your site is buying something from Amazon. Considering what you're building, it's worth at least experimenting with. Other booksellers (like Powells) have their own affiliate programs too.
- cheald 13y agothursdayb, you're shadowbanned (which is a shame, because that was a good comment). Might email pg and see what's up. Your comment history looks benign to me.
- raimonds 13y agoThat was a good comment indeed! Thanks thursdayb, cheald!
- vikp 13y agoFinding interesting books to read is a huge problem for me. I have tried Goodreads, but its recommendations are poor. I usually just use random lists to find things to read. I really like the general idea of something like this, but a way to restrict by category or train it in some way would make it a lot more useful for me.
- joshmlewis 13y agoI don't like how the titles aren't necessarily about the book or what you're going to get.
- raimonds 13y agoSorry about that! I thought getting something unexpected would be more fun. But majority here want to see real book titles so I will look into it.
- stasy 13y agoIf you could get images for the titles and possibly a short summary, it would be a lot better.
- kenshiro_o 13y agoGood idea. But the site needs some polish. Moreover, you should add a thumbnail of the book in question.
- Nicholas_C 13y agoA back button would be nice as well.
- enrmarc 13y agoI think the same. If I miss one I have to start over.