Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by sugaroverflow 1565 days ago
Booqsi looks really pretty and I love that it supports local bookstores! Are there plans to support imports from Goodreads? I know many people who have curated their shelves for years so that might be an important feature for them to switch over.

I've been using and loving an alternative, https://www.thestorygraph.com/it has similar vibes to Booqsi and also includes a Goodreads import, AI based recommendations, and some mood-based book tracking (i.e tags like fast-paced, dark, emotional)

3 comments

Are goodreads imports allowed? Isn't that kind of data sometimes against terms of service (for obvious anti-competitive reasons)?
Goodreads allows you to export your library via CSV.
Right, if the question is asking about exporting your book lists from Goodreads and then (eventually) importing them into Booqsi, that's definitely allowed.
Yes, sorry! I may have phrased that incorrectly - I meant exporting your Goodreads data and importing them into Booqsi (which Storygraph allows you to do, though it can take some time).
GDPR demands a machine readable export of your data. You could import that and I can't see how this could violate any ToS.
Well I don't think importing tweets and displaying them is allowed by their ToS for instance (even though some apps do), nor instagram pics.
The user owns the data, not the platform. The data is just ISBN numbers, dates, review comments and so on anyway.

It would probably be illegal to crawl Goodreads, if that’s what you’re thinking about?

I believe in some cases (e.g. instagram) the user agreement you sign when using the site makes your copyright over e.g. the pictures you upload be handed over to the site owners (again, to prevent competition). Just to point out that the common sense idea that "you own the data" thing isn't always true. Nevertheless this question has been resolved through other comments on here so it seems not to be the case in this scenario.
Just noting that GDPR is an EU law, not an international one.
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.

That sounds really great, good luck with that! I will definitely keep an eye on Booqsi, a social feed sounds really nice :)

Storygraph seems to be attempting something similar with the pair reads, but it feels a bit clunky and isn't there yet.

Storygraph also doesn't have an api, unfortunately. If they did I'd jump over wholeheartedly.