Show HN: I built a modern Goodreads alternative (kaguya.io)
Since 2005, Goodreads has been the default book tracking site, connecting millions of readers. But let’s be real—it’s barely changed in 20 years. It’s the same site it was, just with more ads.
Still no half-star ratings.
No proper DNF (Did Not Finish) option.
UI still looks like it's from 2005.
Amazon owns it and doesn't care.
What’s live:
Custom shelves (Organize however you want)
Rich-text reviews (format your thoughts properly)
10-star rating system (More nuance than 5 stars)
DNF, On-Hold, and other reading statuses
Likes, shares, comments on reviews
Import your library from Goodreads/StoryGraph
A beautiful design that doesn’t make you feel like you’re using an ancient website
Coming next:
Deep tagging system (Genres, moods, character traits, tropes)
Beautiful stats & insights (Visualize your reading habits)
Discussion forums for every book (Think subreddit-style discussions)
213 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 256 ms ] threadOxide and Friends did a great episode on it at the time [1].
[0] https://www.cockroachlabs.com/docs/stable/licensing-faqs
[1] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/whither-coc...
Do you use supabase’s api interface to do the queries? Or do you use supabase for other features?
For queries, we don’t use Supabase’s API interface—we interact with Postgres directly through our backend
Little note: It seems the search is only by book title, not by author and not resilient to typos.
Yeah, search is currently by book title and series name. It should handle typos pretty well—Meilisearch allows for up to two—but I still need to tweak it further
If this site takes off, you'll need a moderation strategy. Goodreads has been plagued by extortionary negative reviews.
https://www.npr.org/2023/12/17/1219599404/goodreads-review-b...
Goodreads does that though. Reviews from friends and people you follow are shown first
Besides, I wouldn't even know who to 'friend' or 'follow' on a site like this. What's the point? Chances are I'd just end up in some bubble, which defeats the whole point of reading.
I can't say I've ever thought of reading as a way to fight against a "bubble", nor am I sure that being in a "bubble" is inherently a bad thing. I don't think my life is any worse for identifying that I'm not into fantasy smut or steven pinker or self-help neuroticism and in fact my life is better without these authors in it.
Less optimized for farming my attention and ads, more optimized for me discovering things, and not being shoehorned into choices.
Of course there are plenty of monetisation and engagement reasons for that UI item to be awkwardly placed…
Kaguya seems a little better here, but it too starts with a huge 'MAKE AN ACCOUNT OR FUCK OFF' message in mid screen, with the search field in the navigation bar on top. If you want become the Goodreads alternative, start with realising that a lot of people just want to see if the reviews are any good before committing to creating an account and contributing in turn.
It's just a bunch of basic usability problems like that that they've never bothered addressing.
There are other corners of it that could be nicer. It's not so much about modern tooling as much as it is about using modern tooling to achieve better flow and more pleasant presentation.
I have the same complaint about BoardGameGeek. If it was super snappy to go with the dated design, I wouldn't bat an eye, but it is also kind of a slog.
Both are things I use for discovery a little bit more than I use to record my thoughts about my previous experiences, so my browsing behavior is very breadth-first search and that makes the slow loads more of an acute problem for me.
The book I'm currently reading does not appear when searching.
Rotten Tomatoes' system has a lot of positives and I see a ton of signal in Rotten Tomatoes scores. It only works with a critical mass of people rating a given piece and I don't think anyone could get that critical mass for books aside from Goodreads.
I had an idea of a rating system where people would have to create a ranked list of the movies/books. Their rating for a given piece would be based on where it is in their list, linearly. Then ratings would be relative to other content. I think this would be much harder to get off the ground than a Rotten Tomatoes system.
So if I rate Feature Film I II & III as 30 50 70, and you rate them 70 80 90, we would basically "agree". It's a neat system that I wish other rating systems would use.
[1] https://www.criticker.com/
It's also quite slow, but I suspect that's just part of it being a smaller site.
They also de-emphasize reviews, hiding them under a button. There are no likes or comments on reviews, and they don’t have shelves like Goodreads.
But to me, a big part of Goodreads is the community, library organization, and reviews, so I want to emphasize those on Kaguya.
Also, I just think our design is much better.
Does one really get anything meaningful out of saying this was a 6-star book vs a 7-star book?
Personally I think 4 levels is sufficient. Either it's rather bad, not bad but not good, good but not great or it's great.
Anything beyond that will have to be written in words.
It doesn't matter how many times you down vote Mexican soap operas or singing talent shows. If you keep watching they're gonna keep suggesting them.
Netflix recommendation system just does not work. It does not allow me to find movies I can like, it allows me to see the same thing I seen once before.
I am not in the mood for serious documentary evey day of course, it takes more concentration. But when I am in mood for one, I should be able to find it.
For clarity I'd replace rating systems with "was it a good spend of my time?" yes/no question. Then just show percentages. Could not be clearer.
There is a general problem with a 5 or 10 star voting system, consider a [malicious] user who only gives a 1 or 10 star vote, thus ending up with more voice than one that votes in the range of 4-6 which would be what the majority of the content deserve. Therein lies another problem too, while the scale would imply 5.5 to be average [out of 1-10 with no 0 option], most people tend to consider 7-7.5 to be average instead, there's a very natural bias on the scale.
This idea isn't actually uncommon however, as platforms tend to work with a thumbs-up, thumbs-down, and a `favorite` action of sorts. Some platforms tend to respect favorites in recommendations and some don't. I have found that YouTube doesn't care all that much about my... let alone favorites, it doesn't even care about my votes. TikTok however did this well, I had downloaded it one day and at the end of the day my feed consisted of neat programming tricks and lessons on color theory. Which kind of revealed something my own prejudice too, as I had expected TikTok to show me the worst content and it was the platform that respected my choice the most. That said these things change a lot so it wouldn't surprise me if the same test shows the opposite results a year from now on.
When you grade by competency (not by knowledge), you also assign a written description for each grade. That helps a lot. I think those platforms are keenly aware of those facts I just described, and are trying to boil them down to simple actions for users, that impart large signal, and that respect the cultural norms of evaluation. That's why Letterboxd has a 5-star with half-stars rating system, but also has a like button.
Reasoning: number ratings are subjective. My 4/5 is not the same as yours... or even the same as mine 2 years ago.
I don’t think this system is right for everyone, but I like it. Depending on the platform I may even use a rating system of 1, which represents the starring and everything else is just read/watched.
The difference between 1 and 2 on a 5 point scale is not useful.
It’s hard to come up with a nice visual for it though, you just have to use the numbers themselves (or rather ugly emojis)
Suggestion off the top of my head: down arrow / thumb down; circle / horizontal dash; up arrow / thumb up; star / heart.
The circle / horizontal dash could be ambiguous in isolation but should be clear in context.
- books i wish i hadn't lost time with
- books i've read and were probably ok
- books i would give/recommend
That said perhaps multiple binary dimensions would be better. Good story yes/no, interesting/unique premise yes/no, overall good acting yes/no, good cinematography yes/no etc etc.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3082241
One of the main frustrations I have with Goodreads is how limited the API is nowadays, and how there appear to be no measures against brigading and other campaigns. One of the core issues with ratings services.
Personally I'm hoping Open Library by the Internet Archive grows more in popularity, given how most websites come and go:
https://openlibrary.org
Not dissimilar to what Steam implemented, which is basically Bollinger bands for ratings.
If I'm trying to pick a movie, I don't care what its score for rewatching is, I care about what its score is for watching it the first time.
And once I've watched a movie, I don't care about whether other people say I should watch it again, I care about whether I want to watch it again.
A movie is different from buying a board game. If I'm shelling out $50 for a game, I'll want to know if it's still fun the twentieth time I play. But that isn't a consideration when picking a new movie to watch, the experience may be worth it even if I never watch it again. And ditto with books. I'm probably not going to read that 800-page book again, but that shouldn't stop me reading it once.
It's also a genre independent quality metric. That's not to be underplayed. Some examples of films that successfully passed it for me: Casablanca; Portrait of a Lady on Fire; Hereditary; Under the Skin; My Neighbor Totoro; The Fifth Element. I'm pretty sure most people would agree at least half of these movies are good.
It turns out most of the things I consider worth revisiting at least once are also things other people would consider that way. So for me a Rewatchability rating is a positive signal.
These movies are some of the most impactful that I have ever seen, but by no means would I rate them highly rewatchable. They are gut wrenching, and some people can only stand to watch them once, few want to rewatch them, but they are also incredible.
I also gain a lot from a rewatchable piece of content, but you might be shorting yourself by always watching things designed to tickle the dopamine receptors.
>I also gain a lot from a rewatchable piece of content, but you might be shorting yourself by always watching things designed to tickle the dopamine receptors.
Now this I just do not understand. Things designed to be good on primarily the first watch, and allowed to degrade on future experiences, seem much worse for this.
I think we are coming from different feelings about rewatchability.
If you asked me to rate movies as to their artistic merit, their excellence as films, I would say that those all fall into “instant classic” territory. However, I would not want to rewatch them in the same way that I might want to rewatch a Coen brothers film, for example.
That's fine by me, of course. The more signals I have, the better my decision can be made on what to watch next on average.
For example, I just watched the Gorge. I enjoyed it, but I wouldn't rewatch it. I don't think it necessarily deserves a bad grade though.
Now, some great movies I wouldn't rewatch. La vita e bella and grave of the firefly are beautiful, I just cannot rewatch them.
It's definitely a limited metric tho.
If one really feels the need for the "meh" category, I'd say go for a 3-level system: bad, meh, great.
It also means that 4% of critics did not recommend the movie. In a theater of 60 people, you and your friend would fit into that 4%. So there's nothing wrong with RottenTomatoes.
I rate for myself, and not others. And for over 20 years I've used a 10 point system.
10 = Easily amongst my favorite
9 = Awesome, but not in all time favorites
8 = Really liked it, and would recommend
7 = Liked it, was worth my time, but not so much that I would happily recommend to others
6 = Liked it, but wasn't worth my time
5 = Neutral
And below 5 I don't distinguish. I randomly pick to indicate I didn't like it.
(Actually, 7 points as someone else pointed out - by my point stands even with a 7 point system).
5: I enjoyed sections of this book but as a whole I didn’t like it
4: had some cool ideas and there were moments when I got excited but the execution wasn’t there. Basically an amateur with a good idea
3: readable but unsatisfying. I finished it but was roasting it in my head the whole time
2: garbage. Bad story idea and bad writing. Nothing good to say except that it seemed like the author was trying
1: offensive. Celebrity cash grabs, polemics, etc. no artistic value whatsoever, author was not trying to write a good book. “Book” is just a format here
The actual questions is: Whom can you recommend this book? Even mediocre books can be very useful for the right people.
[1]: https://blog.jgc.org/2007/12/seven-point-scale.html
5 - This book was so good that it’s life-changing
4 - This is a really good book
3 - I enjoyed this book, it was good.
2 - It’s alright.
1 - I hated this book with every fiber of my being, because it somehow tricked me into finishing it despite my hatred of it.
I rarely give 1 or 2 - in vast majority of cases it means I stop reading them, out of respect for my time.
What is nice, but underused (since most platforms want us to be excited, because of sales and adverts) is some kind of slider with mean at 0, for expected quality.
Even better, tags to choose from "awesome", "insightful", "well-researched", "funny", "cringe", "inaccurate" etc. I mean, there are tags, but I mean ones explicitly displayed next to rating.
I'm working on importing my library from a simple checklist app I made years ago. I posted one review.
Any idea why The Metabarons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabarons) isn't in the library? I guess comic books aren't in the data source.
Is there a reason Pandemic (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/710698.Pandemic) and The Rift (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/271167.The_Rift) aren't in Kaguya?
https://kaguya.io/books/pandemic-6 https://kaguya.io/books/the-rift-1
Thanks!
You're relying on a whole mix of people, from tweens to teens to old goats, who may, or likely don't, have similar tastes.
A pointless exercise imo. Similar to going to reddit for reviews. It's not what you really want.
There isn't a good way of sorting through all the stuff out there and I feel like I am missing a bunch of content worth reading as a result.
Out of curiosity how did you initially populate your site?
But if someone could make this work in a way that it's like a "if you liked this you might like" version of HN/lobste.rs it could be really useful.
I still use Goodreads almost exclusively.
Goodreads is still the competition. If you mean competition specifically between alternative to Goodreads, I think LibraryThing is the most popular by a fair bit. After a quick look around Bookwyrm, it definitely doesn't look like the one I'd choose. I'm mostly seeing "some rando's list of books they read in 2025" and "some rando commented on some random book".
Maybe once it finishes importing my Goodreads list it'll be more useful, but it's taking a while (kaguya was very quick), and my initial impression is that I'm not impressed.
However, its strongest point on it's favor is that anyone creating content on AP automatically has a potential reach of a few million users.
People aren't sticking around for shiny features or slick UI—they stay because Goodreads has a critical mass of users and reviews.
The value isn't in half-stars or fancy shelves; it's in the network effects. Unless you have a way to bring over millions of active reviewers (and their reviews), you're just building another pretty ghost town.
What will make a site like this useful though is:
1) How many people use it -- for this usage needs to be as frictionless as possible. You might want to consider at least being able to view it (though perhaps not post reviews, to avoid spam), without signing up for an account.
2) The quality of the reviews. If they're Amazon product level garbage, they become useless. One thing that might help is being able to filter by range of reviews -- i.e., see 2-4 star reviews only; or filter by books with an average rating computed _without_ taking 1 and 5 star reviews into account.
3) Not sure about 10-star rating system. I think that's harder for users to keep in their head. I'd suggest 5-star but allow 1/2 star ratings.
Its probably my device specifically, but the way the screen rendered, it wasn't immediately obvious I could scroll to see a skip button