GoodBook.reviews - Steem Powered Book Reviews ๐
GoodBook.Reviews is a new platform for the STEEM Blockchain.
The aim of this project is to create a book review platform that is powered by STEEM encourageing people to write in-depth valuable reviews. Steemit & Busy are both general purpose blogging platforms, that means they are able to accommodate many types of content but specialise for none. I believe creating a specialised platform for books on-top of STEEM can foster a new community and bring value to the Blockchain as a whole.
GoodBook.reviews will feature custom design with books taking first place. Features like rating and genres being readily available allows an enhanced way to interact with data on the blockchain.
Choosing a Project Name
The name is currently a WIP, I spotted goodbook.reviews was for sale and thought that would be a good placeholder at-least while in the initial development phase. Although powered by STEEM I think this deserved itโs own name not STEEM-somthing.
Current Features
The project is build with Node.js powering an Express.js backend. Steemconnect for authentication. Steem-js for retriving Data from the Blockchain.
Gallery View
The primary view for the platform will be what Iโm calling the Gallery/Library. This view can accommodate 6 - 12 books on one screen depending on screen size, allowing for a fast viewing experience. User can switch between the Latest, Trending, Featured and personal user feed (who they follow) easily. All but the featured feed pull directly from the STEEM blockchain using the steem.js API.
Generes have also been added to the sidebar but this has not yet been implemented and will require additional data before it become useful.
Single View
Possible the most important page, the actual review template. The intended result is to stick to a familiar format where the books cover is the featured image and displayed alongside the main content. Book metadata such as Title/Author/User rating is also displayed alongside.
The aim is to keep the reading experience minimal without sidebars, recommendations etc alongside the actual content.
Create Post
The platform requires additional information to create the expected experience and there allows and in future will enforce posting from the platform.
Along with the main content of the review the platform stores more information such as Book Title, Book Author and Rating as custom JSON. Storing this information on the blockchain allows other platforms to access this in future. Data is not siloโd to this platform.
Authentication
Authentication is with Steemconnect, the recognised standard for STEEM token based auth. Users can securely access the platform without putting their STEEM keys at risk.
Authentication is currently used to allow users to post directly from the platform with the create view. Voting + commenting is set up on the backend but not yet implemented in the UI.
Release Date?
This initial version is not hosted and is not intended for public use. There is no reason why it wouldnโt work but is subject to many changes over the coming releases. It is not recommended to post content until a more solid data structure is decided. Iโll open up a hosted platform shortly and ask for beta users to post content.
Roadmap
There is a lot of work to be done and I am working to bring this project up to speed asap. The tasks below are what I'm focusing on first but there are plenty outside of this too.
- Hosted version for Beta use
- Voting + commenting UI
- S3 hosting for book covers
- Non-logged in Landing page explaining the project
- User dashboard, where you can see/edit your own posts
- Recommendations at single footer
- genre search/tags
Contributions & Suggestions
If you watched the d.tube video you will have seen a sneak peek at this already. I am really interested to hear what you all think of the platform. There is a lot of work to be done to create the platform I am imaging.
Are there any key features you think the site would need?
What do you think the most important part of a book review is?
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Thanks for another review Vladimir, I appreciate you taking a look. ๐
I have been summoned by @techslut, so I am here with thoughts.
The thing that makes Goodreads great, and made Shelfari great (before it was integrated into GR after Amazon bought both) is the underlying database of books that allows you to to use it to keep track of current and future books. Now, getting the database is not an insignificant cost, but it would allow you to do so much more. As someone who runs a wiki that's partially about books, a built in database would be a tremendous boon.
What makes GR terrible is that they suck at making data accessible to users. I can't use it to see which books are coming out this week unless some user made a list. Considering every book has a listed release date, that's bonkers.
So, yeah. Reviews are great. Awesome. But reviews built on a books database, so each book has an identity that allows you to see all the reviews for it is so much more powerful. And while you could crowdsource that, it would take serious critical mass to make that feasible.
I would also look at litsy, which I don't personally use, but is a significant player in the field.
@didic, that's what I said... Great minds think alike I guess ;) I've noticed you around while curating #book stuff but never stopped in to say hi... So hi! :D What Discord servers do you hang out on?
@sambillingham Yeah, we definitely need a database. You could add books details as reviews are posted for each book to make it easier to implement. Doing it this way would also be cheaper as you could just look up book details in the Google or Amazon api. I'd also cut down on the complication of multiple editions that Goodreads has by making only one listing per book.
The main problem with a database for this project would be if you wanted to store it all on the blockchain. Book listings need to be updated as new editions come out and Steem doesn't let you update older posts. Would it be possible to only store the book listing details on your side until a review is posted then transfer the listing data to that post? (not a developer, so not totally sure).
@carn Hi! The easiest way to find me is in all the servers mentioned in this post by @ladiesofsteemit, and also in Isle of Write. Of those, @TeamGirlPowa, where I'm a mod, is probably the one I'm in most often. I also found and joined your server just now, and will have a better look tomorrow.
As to the database/blockchain compatibility issue, I'd make each edition a separate database entry, because in the ISBN database, they already are. But I'd connect the entries, using the (some method someone who actually understands how this would work could figure out).
You're both hitting on an interesting point. Linking reviews across individual book editions to an overarching book will be tricky but should be possible.
I naively had no idea you could buy this data off the self. It was actually cheaper than I expected. I would really like to be able to add "keeping tack of current and future books" once the site is a little more mature.
Do you know where the information originally comes from? Do publishers, authors or users upload the information about books that are yet to be released or is it pulled from an external resource?
Feels a bit of a catch 22. Lots of books in the database but no reviews or all books have reviews but only a handful of books listed.
I do plan on having individual book pages that list all reviews and rating from users. you're 100% though, getting a critical mass so that the book you are looking for is already there with a review is a challenging endeavour .
I appreciate you taking the time to give feedback. I hope to have a version online we can start playing with soon.
When a publisher wants to publish a book, they buy an ISBN number from an affiliate of The International ISBN Agency. They have the original data.
As a reviewer, having the book available as a thing to review - without existing reviews - would be far preferable to having to add it manually. I also run book review contests, and can foresee this being very useful for that.
After ISBN has been purchased for the new book does that information get listed anywhere?
100% agree I'll look at what I can do. Might not be ready for the initial beta launch but hopefully, before the grand opening it would be ace to have this. A really simple 'review this book' button from the book page and it throws you right into the review with all the associated information setup for you. ๐ค
Not by the agency, but multiple companies use their data. Amazon is basically built on it. There's an ISBN Search engine. But as to how companies get the data, I have no idea.
Thanks for all the info. I'll see if I can find a way to get new ISBN numbers as they are registered, I think you would need this to keep the database of books up-to-date.
Once you have a large enough database, users can totally carry the load of adding books. And if the platform becomes big enough, publishers will add books, like they do in GoodReads.
This looks really nice! I really like the design of your sites -- simple/clean and easy to use.
The most important parts of a book review to me are some sort of quick rating system like what you have with the stars, and a place to offer one's opinion.
Looking forward to trying this out! I don't generally use Good Reads to write reviews, but because of the gamified feeling of Steem I definitely think I would use this. Keep up the good work! ๐
Thanks for the feedback Jeff. I'm aiming to start with individual reviews in the typical STEEM post way. In future adding an individual 'book' view that shows all of the related reviews, averages ratings and allows more of a comment on the book rather than a full review.
A classic project that seems to grow in scope every time I think about it, lots of work to do ๐
Haha, yeah I'm starting to have the same problem ๐
Good luck with the development of this -- looking forward to using it!
Just some quick thoughts:
First, the name is a little close to Goodreads so I'm glad it's not permanent.
Second, your feed should show book reviews from people you follow but browsing any other way should be by book and not reviewer. Latest could show the latest book reviewed, trending could be the most popular books lately, and featured could be books users vote on each week. The books need to be the focus on most pages.
Thirdly, have you considered letting users keep track of their reads on this platform? Would it be possible to store a full list of read books in the json of a weekly post or just store them everytime a user reviews something?
If you do go this route, it would be nice to see something a little more visually appealing then Goodreads. Something I've thought would be neat would be to have a user page look like a library with shelves that store each book. You could create a standard book image, randomize its height then adjust width based on a book's page count. Letting users rearrange books' order on the shelves might be more difficult but would be awesome.
Goodreads is currently the only site of its type, but it has so much room for improvement that it's very possible to build something more engaging and fun than it.
This is perfect, exactly the plan. I want it to be more about the books that the reviewers. Not entirely sure on how featured should work yet, to start it will probably manually curated and in future I can create a bot that ignores promoter bots and does some vote value/reputation/num of votes calculation to find vauable content.
I have and would really enjoy this feature myself. It's not on the immediate roadmap but I would like to have it eventually. Technically it wouldn't be too difficult, there is actually a
custom_jsonbroadcast that could be used for exactly this type of feature.I agree. One of my main motivations was to create a book space that is friendlier to the eyes than Goodreads
Thanks for your feedback, hope to have more info soon.
This looks great - I'm looking forward to using it. Regarding the book cover photos - would these be scanned in by the user? Would there be copyright issues? How would it work with old out-of-print books, eg, books read via online libraries like Project Gutenberg, or simply downloaded as pdfs? Could you just use a general image for illustration if there was no actual book cover available?
I would also place importance on the searchability, ensuring that books can be found even if you don't have every single word or apostrophe. It would be good if books could be searched by genre, title and author.
Also - genres are important, but can be very subjective. It's so annoying if you have a niche interest that doesn't really fit into wider categories. I'd like a mechanism whereby review authors can create genre categories, maybe similar to the Steemit tag system.
I was worried about this but from my research using book covers is acceptable if it's for the purpose of review. You can't use any other material or graphics form the book.
Possible for the very first version this could be sourced online but in future, I would like to implement book covers automatically based on the book title/version. I need to look into what options are available for this.
I had not thought of this. Perhaps there are already images out there for these kinds of resources that we could match content with.
I agree. Search is important and a great feature. It probably won't be added for awhile but the aim is to have it in future.
Totally possible.
thanks for all of your ideas and feedback
Thanks for your detailed reply. I think this is a really exciting project!
Why not pull them from Amazon? I think that can be done with the book serial number (ISBN?) which can also help with buy book now links. You'd probably want to add that as a mandatory field in the post for that to work, @sambillingham.
Yes was hoping to add something like this in future ๐
Book covers can be legally used in reviews under fair-use laws.
Great - thanks for clarifying.
This is awesome! I am loving this idea, and just got @didic interested - he happens to know his way around books and is a book publisher.
What are your opinions on monetization? A cut from the payout like most dapps? I believe that this project also merits Amazon referral links to the books reviewed. Shouldn't be hard to implement.
I would be happy to chat with you on Discord and will probably have some ideas. Also, when this is a product and you need this marketed? I am your girl. Look me up on the Utopian discord. I am the pink one who doesn't code.
hey ๐,
When the site takes off I would like to add a small beneficiary, that SP earned could then power the main account to upvote good content. I had also thought of Amazon referral links, I wasn't sure if users might see this negatively? Would really like to implement that if it wouldn't put people off.
Thanks for your feedback. Working on some more updates now and hopefully have extra information out soon. Totally keen to talk more and hear your thoughts as the project develops.
I think that "buy this book" links are not intrusive and are actually helpful to users. This looks like a really exciting project from all sorts of perspectives. As the marketing manager of Utopian, I am eager to see how I can help out.
I'd personally choose Amazon referral links over beneficiaries. I can see why it would be good to have beneficiaries though. I'd just suggest you keep it lower then a lot of the sites out there.
Great job!! I know It was coming as I have watched the dTube video. GoodBook.Reviews catches the eyes right away. Buy the name if you can. I am waiting to test the live website.
Thanks! I've brought the name, I would like i to have a better brand name in future but for now, it is obvious what the site is for and that should help some traction. I hope to have a version online later in the week If I can make the time for updates.
Looking forward to it and wish you all the success.
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Glad to hear about the GoodBook.Reviews, I like the initial user interface and above the fold area looks quite good to me.
did you implement the posting page with the Markdown features?
What you used for the frontend mean angular, react or Core CSS?
Overall the project is awesome. It will be a good place for people to share their book reviews separate because I agree, Steemit & busy networks are not fit for all types of contents.
Looking forward to the initial version release.
update Expres.js with Express.js
Yes the posting accepts markdown. Currently, there is no preview but am looking to add that before launching.
The frontend is currently very basic, mostly jQuery & ES6 templates, I'm looking to use something different once the MVP is up and running. I might try vue.js as I have never used it before. My main aim is to get the feature in first, then some content and optimise from there.
Thanks for the reply. Glad you like it so far.
That's Amazing Sam!
Yeah, If you will add preview before launching, It will be a great User experience for the users.
I've used vue.js a bit, It is a simple and a great MVC framework. I know you can do it.
You're welcome. Good luck!
Awesome concept!
thanks ๐