Today’s edition covers:
My 10 favorite book lists for April…
What are we building in the Book DNA app?
What am I reading?
Want to help us beta test the new reader app? Sign up here.
What will this app help you do?
Privately log what you read and why: Track your TBR, what you’re reading, and the books you’ve finished (including your ratings and notes) in a space that’s private by default and fully yours.
Book recommendations that match your taste: Book DNA learns from what you love and dislike to suggest books that are a better match for you, rather than what happens to be popular.
Fun size! 🦥
Reminder: James had this really cool project on HN that I wanted to highlight… It is called Librario, a book metadata API that aggregates data from Google Books, ISBNDB, and other sources.
Want to be matched with your Book Twins and see what their favorite reads have been over the last three years? Just share a favorite book or author here and get fantastic book recommendations.
Get a personalized email based on three of your favorite books/authors and three of your favorite genres/topics every 1/2/3 or 4 weeks. This is 100% human; every list on our website is made by a passionate author.
My 10 Favorite Book Lists For April…
I’m going to try a text format for a while and see what everyone thinks instead of visuals.
Also, don’t forget we have bookshelves like Ethiopia (and 3,000+ other genres and topics) with the best books of all-time, trending, new, filter by Book DNA, and lists by fans/experts.
What are we building in the Book DNA app?
Reminder: We’re building a smarter, more personal way to manage your reading life, with recommendations based on your Book DNA. Think Goodreads, but rebuilt for readers who want a private space to track what they read, keep notes, and get truly personalized book recommendations, like Pandora or Spotify for books.
The first 15 beta testers are in!
I ended up doing 9x 1-hour Zoom Sessions, plus adding some users directly via email with no onboarding. We’ve taken their feedback and are currently implementing UX fixes for areas we need to improve within (plus a few bugs).
I’ll start adding more beta testers once we ship substantial improvements in a few months.
What is an example of something we are improving?
We had a number of testers get confused when they were looking at book series, and next to books they had already read, it said: Add TBR
Here is an example:
Example of a point of confusion in the UX
We did some testing and are going to switch that to say “Read Again” instead, as that is testing a lot better.
We will add this to the beta soon.
What are some other things we are fixing over the next work cycles?
Fix the author order so that authors are shown first instead of narrators or illustrators. This was causing confusion, as we currently show only one author (we are working to expand that soon).
Improve our search system and how it weights different items. I am especially excited that it will return book series in the right order when you search for a series (among other tweaks).
Improving how our system processes books that our beta testers add (as well as from the big global book DB we use).
Add some buttons and improve some text labels that we missed in the UX that need to be there 😀
Updated the book covers for the currently reading section to a higher-quality size (thanks, beta testers, for spotting that).
Fixed a bug where the screen would scroll underneath a modal that was bugging us and a few testers.
Improved the underlying code for how merging books and profiles works.
Adding audiobook selection, woohoo!
And a bunch of underlying fixes testing helped us spot.
A fix for the “Read next” queue, as the star icon was confusing users, and moving that to a bookmark icon.
Add an optional ISBN field for the “add missing book” process.
What are we building over the next 3 months?
We are going to add a new page for “Reading Now” with more of a dashboard-like feel.
A lot of our beta testers wanted this moved out of the “My log” section, and my own use confirms that it feels more natural.
Mockup with fake data and some features we are still playing with.
Then what?
Imports from Goodreads and StoryGraph
A basic welcome process to help readers get settled in the app.
A simple genre filter for TBR and My Log
Some additional pages to auto-sort your TBR and Log.
Add user folders.
What am I working on in the coming weeks?
Testing mockups: Book Series Tracking + Favorite Authors
I’m going to start some light mockup testing of these features and make sure I’m hitting the right points and that I am hearing excitement around these two features.
I’m also playing with the book twins element so that is ready when we start working on that 😀
What am I reading?
I finished…
A Sunny Place for Shady People by Ryan Murdock: This was a fantastic nonfiction read about Malta, corruption, and the murder of reporter Daphne Caruana Galizia. I read it in one sitting, and if you like crime stories with a little travel, this is a great one. I’m thinking a lot about “amoral familism” and if the USA is going this route.
I am reading...
There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm: This was my pick for our family book club, and I am looking forward to some science fiction after the serious nature of the last book. I don’t know anything about it except that I keep seeing it mentioned on YouTube and BookDNA.com.
What have I been up to outside of Shepherd?
We did our family vacation early this year and spent 2 weeks in Crete, Greece. It was amazing, and I enjoyed the food, hiking, Greek people, and the beach.
Have a great week!
Thanks, Ben
P.S. Crete, Greece, Gorge hike 😀
Fantastic Gorge hike near Zaros
