I'd say the interface is not one of the strong points, since it confuses a lot of people and turns them away from the site. But, it is powerful if you want to engage with it.
For example, I could compare my library to yours and get a list of the books we share, that we both liked, but aren't generally very popular. Or I could get a list of books I've read, sorted by their Lexile score. Or get a list of all the epigraph quotes printed in the books I've read.
Basically, it's a database approach rather than a social approach. You can do all the above stuff on the website, but their API is also really powerful, and free. In fact the whole site is completely free.
Another thing I really like is the Member Recommendations. They have an algorithm that recommends books you might like, based on other books. But, in addition to that, they have a list of books recommended by actual people who have read both books, explaining what it is about book B that might interest you if you liked book A. So, more like what an actual librarian would do. Here's an example of what I mean:
Lastly, I just think the vibe at Librarything is better than Goodreads. They're a tiny company made up of librarians and developers, and you feel the scrappy Web 1.0 charm from them and the community there in a way I never saw with Amazon-owned Goodreads.
For a long time I had a "todo" to make a better way to display my favorite books. Before we started working on Zeneca, I had a bullet list on my personal website. I noticed so many other people did the same. For example in Naval's Almanack he also has a bullet list with some comments on his favorite books. It struck us that a better experience could exist, and for now most people just accept the status quo.
Having a nice way to display my books was enough of a "hair on fire" problem for us to start working on Zeneca. It's been cool to see other people using the platform and asking for more features to solve broader problems and engage more frequently.
Which APIs? Worldcat, with decent data but paid licensing and lots of dirty data? Amazon’s, which they’ll shut down if you build a competitor? Try finding an API that gives you high-quality book cover images, too. And the ability to retain results.
Totally by hand over the last 3 months, I have quite a lot of automation in place to help me do it, but at the end of the day I work with each author to craft these.
With just me I should be able to scale up to 300 new lists each month, and I am looking to further accelerate that.
It is a pretty easy sell as it is win/win for them. They recommend five books on a topic they already know well and then I feature them and their book alongside the list forever. Plus, what we are finding in early user testing is that by giving those little recommendations readers get to peek in their head and it increases interest in their book.
Half my long term goal with this website is to give authors better ways to market themselves and their books. There is a growing trend that authors have to do full time marketing and I worry that a lot of authors spend more time on marketing than their craft. And, for new authors it is a catch 22 to try to get that first book noticed.
Good approach! I also tried at some point a project to enable authors to self-publish, but couldn't solve their problem of getting readers. Wishing you success!
This is the billion dollar question, but having the right answer at the outset may not be necessary. In fact, most successful business go through multiple iterations on monetisation opportunities before they strike gold.
It is more important to build a product that solves problems that Goodreads doesn't solve right now, and find a way to acquire customers that doesn't rely on Google SEO.
This is a very valid argument. You have implicitly invested effort (in form of lists) in Goodreads, and wouldn't want to lose them. It's another reason why a challenger can't rely on book tracking as the primary feature to drive adoption.
