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SHOW HN2022

345points
293comments
#109of 2,570 in 2022
Top 5%of 2022 by points

How HN took it

MixedNo clear lean

20 positive, 54 neutral or asking, 3 mixed, 42 critical, out of 119 comments about the project. Thread score -0.19.

Execution: 6 for, 18 againstIdea: 6 for, 10 againstPricing: 3 for, 5 againstPerformance: 0 for, 4 againstPrivacy: 0 for, 2 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Site works well and is a useful way to find non-Amazon sellers.

    From 2 comments
    • Love the cheeky jab at George R.R. Martin, the site works fantastically, though as others have mentioned an ISBN search would make the entire workflow miles more efficient.
      reayn on HN
    • Pretty nice as a way of finding non-Amazon places to buy books. I don't care so much about cheapest, but I do prefer to support independent shops and authors. Any plans to add…
      unhammer on HN

Objections

  • Results are only accurate for US visitors; other regions are not optimized.

    From 2 comments
    • Sorry for the confusion, the site hasn't been optimized outside of the USA yet, so some of your results may be a slightly off in terms of pricing and delivery times. Working on…
      shnksi on HN
    • Yes it takes shipping into account but it's only optimized for USA users at the moment, if you're anywhere else your results might not be entirely accurate. I'm planning on…
      shnksi on HN
  • Title search misses exact matches and returns irrelevant books.

    From 1 comment
    • Looking for the book _Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy_ I searched for “Mechanical Accuracy.” While the site did find the book, it was the fourth one listed. None of the books…
      Hnrobert42 on HN
  • Cheapest is not the right goal; independent shops matter more.

    From 2 comments
    • Is "cheapest" the right objective? Because if that's the case, book piracy seems like the clear winner. But maybe we should consider "cheapest with some boundaries". For…
      socialismisok on HN
    • "Cheapest" is not in my criteria. When I share book links I always take the time to find the original publisher and / or author's website and pass that around. Pay an extra…
      rapnie on HN

Requests

  • ISBN search.

    From 2 comments
    • Would be nice to search by ISBN. I tried some titles and didn’t get the right matches
      zeroonetwothree on HN
    • Love the cheeky jab at George R.R. Martin, the site works fantastically, though as others have mentioned an ISBN search would make the entire workflow miles more efficient.
      reayn on HN
  • No Amazon filter.

    From 2 comments
    • I'm going to add a "No Amazon" filter in the next couple of days which excludes Amazon and it's subsidiaries from all searches. I also plan to add ebook and audiobook support but…
      shnksi on HN
    • Thanks for your comment. To address Amazon's supremacy I'm working on a "No Amazon" filter that ignores Amazon and any Amazon subsidiaries.
      shnksi on HN
  • Ebook and audiobook support.

    From 2 comments
    • Pretty nice as a way of finding non-Amazon places to buy books. I don't care so much about cheapest, but I do prefer to support independent shops and authors. Any plans to add…
      unhammer on HN
    • Its sad I've looked up old books on Amazon and come to discover via the reviews that there are counterfeit e-books on their platform. I would of thought that if I wanted an…
      giancarlostoro on HN
  • Browser extension version.

    From 1 comment
    • This functionality makes a lot more sense as an extension; it saves us the hassle of visiting/bookmarking a new site. It also saves you the hassle of building good search…
      ChaitanyaSai on HN

Questions

  • How are the catalogues obtained, scraping or APIs?

    From 1 comment
    • I have a question. How do you get the catalogue of books? Have you had to scrape a whole bunch of book stores, or do you make a ton of api calls? Do you store all the catalogues…
      weavie on HN
  • Does the pricing include shipping?

    From 2 comments
    • so, doesn't look like it's finding the cheapest. You should probably check against amazon as a sanity check. (I was ignoring shipping, here) Do you take shipping into account?
      _tom_ on HN
    • Good start! Not quite the cheapest, though! https://i.ibb.co/bF8nVjV/gone-with-the-wind.png * AbeBooks: $2.87 * PagesOnPages: $4.17 Disclaimer: I worked at AbeBooks over a decade…
      thangalin on HN

Alternatives named

  • AddAll

    From 2 comments
    • While not the most modern UI in the world, addall.com has been around forever and still does the trick well enough for me. Although these days I usually just go straight to…
      indigodaddy on HN
    • I've compared a bunch of book price comparison sites, and AddAll has been consistently the best or second best. https://www.addall.com/
      bufferoverflow on HN
  • Booko

    From 1 comment
    • https://booko.com.au/ is a great example of this. You search the title first, then you can select the concrete book/edition on the next page, then a nice list of options.
      teki_one on HN
  • BookFinder

    From 1 comment
  • AbeBooks

    From 1 comment
    • Good start! Not quite the cheapest, though! https://i.ibb.co/bF8nVjV/gone-with-the-wind.png * AbeBooks: $2.87 * PagesOnPages: $4.17 Disclaimer: I worked at AbeBooks over a decade…
      thangalin on HN
  • isbn.nu

    From 1 comment
    • Shout out to https://isbn.nu/ which has been online doing book price comparison for 20+ years. It's by Glenn Fleishman, better known as an Internet journalist, and is one of the…
      NelsonMinar on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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