I Dream Books
Consumer and social
book recommendations
SHOW HN2012
146points
89comments
#133of 1,677 in 2012
Top 8%of 2012 by points
How HN took it
MixedNo clear lean
12 positive, 10 neutral or asking, 10 mixed, 31 critical, out of 63 comments about the project. Thread score -0.25.
Execution: 1 for, 14 againstIdea: 5 for, 7 againstDesign: 2 for, 7 againstPricing: 2 for, 2 againstPerformance: 0 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Clean design and a useful idea for discovering books
From 3 comments
Nice --- really like the layout
msredmond on HNI 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…
flippyhead on HNYou 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…
jackalope on HN
Good concept compared with Amazon user reviews
From 2 comments
Rotten Tomatoes aggregates reviews from several different sources to determine a final score. Amazon mainly just employs user reviews.
alecdibble on HNFirstly, 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…
socksy on HN
Objections
Catalogue is missing many well-known books and authors
From 4 comments
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…
commieneko on HNInteresting 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…
organic_code on HNSounds cool. But where are all the books? No Hemingway, Vonnegut, Faulkner, Kerouac, Fitzgerald. Why no classics?
jwallaceparker on HNLove, 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…
ghshephard on HN
Search returns irrelevant results
From 4 comments
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…
ComputerGuru on HNLove, 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…
ghshephard on HNGood to hear, I was frustrated when searching for a particular author, ie "Robert Jordan" would return results with "Robert" or "Jordan" anywhere in the title or author name.…
Foy on HNSearched 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…
mmanfrin on HN
Ratings seem wrong; the binary positive/negative scoring is questioned
From 4 comments
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…
socksy on HNI'm not sure how giving such a binary 'good' or 'bad' to a review is helpful for books. Reviews could be on a continuum (hence the star rating system that many folks use) and…
alphakappa on HNThe 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…
siodine on HNThe 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…
endersshadow on HN
Grey text and blue headings are hard to read
From 3 comments
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…
jackalope on HNI 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…
commieneko on HNGood 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.
b0 on HN
Slow load time
From 2 comments
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…
rprasad on HNhttp://www.webpagetest.org/result/120724_PJ_YQW/ Slow as hell, but far from 5 minutes.
jQueryIsAwesome on HN
Requests
Show author's other books and reviewer pages
From 2 comments
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…
danso on HNTo put a slightly finer point on it: sites like this are incredibly relational. Everything (almost) should be clickable for a collection view.
rhizome on HN
Show personal preference for review sources
From 1 comment
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…
tijs on HN
Add purchase links such as Amazon affiliate
From 2 comments
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.
Meldryn on HNI 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 ($$$)…
tyleregeto on HN
Support exact title matching in search
From 2 comments
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,…
ajb on HNGood to hear, I was frustrated when searching for a particular author, ie "Robert Jordan" would return results with "Robert" or "Jordan" anywhere in the title or author name.…
Foy on HN
Separate Science Fiction and Fantasy categories
From 1 comment
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…
afterburner on HN
Questions
How is each review classified as positive or negative?
From 2 comments
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…
socksy on HNNice 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…
murz on HN
Is the review aggregation automated or curated?
From 1 comment
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…
ComputerGuru on HN
What does signing up do?
From 1 comment
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)…
lpolovets on HN
Alternatives named
Goodreads
From 2 comments
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…
rprasad on HNAside from Goodreads, my list includes: http://www.librarything.com/ http://www.shelfari.com/ http://49thshelf.com/ http://openbooktoronto.com/ http://www.filedbyauthor.com…
Kroem3r on HN
LibraryThing
From 1 comment
http://www.librarything.com is another that's quite popular.
thestu on HN
Amazon user reviews
From 2 comments
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?
d0m on HNAmazon is user reviews only. We like RottenTomatoes aggregate from professional critics like NYTimes & select bloggers to create a book recommendation of higher quality.
rahooligan on HN
Rotten Tomatoes
From 2 comments
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?
d0m on HNOne 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…
runaway on HN