justinberding

To clarify on the magic link, you only have to do that the first time. The authentication in the backend remembers you when you go back to the site, automatically logging you in. Ideally you'll only have to check your email once.

The email you're referring to is just the single "magic link" email to get you signed in for the first time, which is how Slack and other "magic link" sign-in processes do it too.

You can reply to every other email you receive from booqsi and someone from the team will see it and get back to you. Or, you can reach out directly to contact@booqsi.com or feedback@booqsi.com.

Yeah, we're using Heroku, which host all of their own services on Amazon's EC2 (meh), which was an unfortunately short-sighted tech decision early on that we're looking to remedy. We're hoping to transition to Azure or Google Cloud. Any recommendations?

We're pulling all of our book data from the Google Books API, so Booqsi itself doesn't store any of that data. As for reaching out, feel free to email contact@booqsi.com.

Thanks for the feedback! The book's info page doesn't have a lot going on, except to see some info about the book (or add it to a shelf, or recommend it to a friend) and see if any of your friends have read it.

Your comments about Goodreads and the average random person's opinion is spot on and one of the inspirations for wanting to build something new. I noticed that its my actual friends and family -- not necessarily a random person -- that have the biggest impact on what I read next. A book rec from a friend you respect goes a long way. Booqsi is attempting to harness some of that.

I agree, reading by nature is very personal. Have you tried reading when you're surrounded by a group of friends talking? Yeah, hard to do. Doesn't really work.

But, where I've found the "social" element being important is more in helping me to determine what to read next (like a friend recommending a book to me), discussing books with others or sharing something interesting about what I'm reading, seeing what my friend's of family's all-time favorites are, etc.

The interaction comes in-between reading sessions and has greatly enhanced my enjoyment of books.

Love this idea. Gamification of reading is something people have dabbled with for awhile; would be great to eventually build in something like you mentioned.

Definitely. On the roadmap, with Google as one of the first we're rolling out. Not only does it reduce the barrier to sign up, it also helps you discover (or invite) friends.

The goal isn't to be another reviews or ratings site; that's been done before. The goal is to leverage the power of your personal book community to help you better decide what to read next. Drop book recommendations to each other, post about books to your feed and engage in discussion, see what your friend's favorites are by viewing their top 10 favorites shelf, etc.

Looks cool. Good luck!

No downside, it's just not something the site provides today as part of beta. An anonymous experience is something we're exploring.

1). Persistent design choice, as its built to be primarily a social platform. We felt like an account with your name was bare minimum for something like this to function correctly.

2). No GIFs. But, noted that GIFs could be a fun add.

Sorry to hear that you lost all of your data. That's rough. We're starting first with an import feature so that you can move all of your data into Booqsi, but an export feature is a natural follower to that. You should see both before too long!

That's a great question. I can't say for sure that Goodreads was part of Amazon's affiliate program prior to them being acquired in 2013, but I don't see why they wouldn't have been.

Booqsi is specifically not part of Amazon's affiliate program and instead of focused on the local bookstores via bookshop.org, so I'm not an Amazon affiliate expert, but I would imagine that Amazon wouldn't have any issue with a site like this linking users to purchase books from them.

Totally get the sentiment, but also felt like a membership wall was required for building out a platform that is primarily social in nature. Would be interesting to see what anonymous features we can provide down the road.

Thanks! Google Books is our source currently.

Definitely! Goodreads import is in the pipeline.

Agree on the author-sentiment too. The long-term vision is this to not just be a site for readers, but a site for authors, publishers, bookstores, etc. A true ecosystem. As a reader, you can follow your favorite authors and bookstores and receive updates, but as an author you can engage with your audience and self-promote. A win-win.

We pull all of our data from Google Books currently (so to avoid needing to maintain an internal database right away), so if it's not on Booqsi it's because it's not on Google Books. It's been fairly broad in scale, but we've certainly seen situations where books don't show up. Thanks for the feedback!

The problem we're trying to solve is that existing book platforms don't provide the social features many book lovers are looking for and/or are archaically designed. The Amazon-less part is a bonus.

Right, if the question is asking about exporting your book lists from Goodreads and then (eventually) importing them into Booqsi, that's definitely allowed.

Ha, totally get that as well. Yes, private bookshelves are available! The only ones that are "public" are the shelves on your Profile.

Definitely a must. We're working on it; stay tuned!

To be honest, if you're looking just for book info, ratings, and reviews, Booqsi probably isn't the right site for you anyways. It's specifically meant to be a social platform, not a ratings or reviews site, which is why we don't actually have give users the ability to do either.

We built it to be a social platform for you to engage with your community about books, with the underlying motivation that a book recommendation from a friend (or seeing what their favorites are) is inherently more powerful than a random review online.

Having a login and simple profiles that represent your person seemed like the bare minimum for a social platform to function. Also worth noting... we're trying the magic link approach for logins, so a one-time email input is all that's required.

Thanks! Yes, having Booqsi be independent of Amazon was one of the inspirations for wanting to build it in the first place.

You're not the first to use their Reminders (or Notes) app for book lists. If you're not interested in the social elements of Booqsi and just want to improve upon your current approach, a couple thoughts come to mind:

1. it's built specifically for books (unlike the Reminders app), so you'll be able to easily search for and add books to your "To read" shelf with the option to then "mark is as read" when you finished it, making it easy to track that aspect of your reading journey as well.

2. if you choose to buy it, it'll link you directly to bookshop.org to purchase it from a local bookstore instead of Amazon.

Now, if you wanted to elevate your experience, I feel like the social aspects of Booqsi is where it shines. For example:

1. if a friend drops you a book recommendation, it'll automatically add that book to your Books Recommended to Me shelf. If you like that book, you can move it to your "to read" shelf, or just go buy it. I've found it makes tracking book recs so much easier.

2. anytime someone in your community mentions a book, it'll come through your feed; you can then easily take action from it by navigating to the book's info page, adding to a shelf, going to purchase it, etc.

Those are just a few that come to mind! Regardless of if you want to use the site independently of others or engage more socially with others, there's something for everyone.

Yes! We realized pretty quickly that we need a way to import booklists (specifically from Goodreads), so we're actively working on that! Should be rolled out soon.

Yes, I've used StoryGraph as well, but felt like I needed something that provided a few more social features. The book mention feature of the social feed is one of my personal favorites with Booqsi.