[newbie578]

Every so often, I would say like at least twice a month, someone publishes a new article regarding Goodreads and how it sucks.

And I really enjoy reading these articles, they are not wrong in any way, Goodreads sucks, yet people (including me) keep using it because I want to have all my read and to-read books in one place.

Yet none of these articles address the elephant in the room. Why Goodreads sucks, and why there is no alternative.

There is no viable business plan!

Simple as that, we can love reading, we can love making a better product, want something better, but truth of the matter is books are not really such a hot commodity in financial terms.

I personally have been tempted numerous times to build my own alternative, but as soon as I start planning, I see that it has no viable future.

Now if someone cracks the code, and finds a way to make a social network about books profitable, they have a billion dollar idea.

And if you do, please notify me, because I would love to see it.

[bwb]

I am not doing social, but I am building a book discovery website as we speak, launching in 1 to 2 weeks. You can see a beta as I am building it here:

https://shepherd.com/

Pretty basic to start, and then going to be adding topics, search, and so on.

[tomjohnneill]

Yeah I don't think anyone is ever going to build a better Goodreads from a bookmarking & automated recommendations perspective for exactly that reason. I think there is scope for some nice little niche tools for individuals to recommend books though. Whether that's the one I made in a weekend, seems doubtful, but I think there is a path there.

[SamBam]

You don't think that a website that encourages that people to buy more books -- books that they pay for with money -- has a viable business plan?