1. How will you overcome the chicken and egg problem and attract users who have read the books?
A. I was going to start out in a niche that I have familiarity with, IT certifications. I would like to reach out to three primary IT certification forums where users ask for advice about which books they should read to obtain a specific certification. I could use them as a test and pivot as needed depending on the outcome.
2. How will you screen users to determine that they have the necessary domain expertise to determine "knowledge maximization?"
A. Screening is going to be done through voting on the list. So there would be one list per subject, then users can vote up or down on any book in the list to change it's ranking.
3. How can a generic list of materials be assumed to apply to individuals with diverse backgrounds?
A. They can't. The hope is that the list will give the user a better idea of what to buy/read.
The reason I want to do this is because it is a problem I face all the time. When I want to learn a new subject such as Malware analysis. I search Amazon and get a fairly large list of books to choose from. Now I try to choose them by basing my decision on the amount of customer reviews, ratings and comments. What if we could simplify that and allow those same users to rank the books so you wont have to make a determination based on looking at three meterics for every book you want to take into consideration?
4. Finally, as soon as you see reading two books on the same topic as a problem, you have somewhat divorced yourself from the kind of people who typically read books - particularly readers in pursuit of technical expertise.
A. I don't see reading of two books on the same topic as a problem but the problem lies in the materials within the book. For example chapter 1-3 in one book and chapters 4-6 in another book might be the same material, so I want to avoid that. So I want to minimize the material you read within the books.