Thoughts on an idea for a books website?

[The Big Peat]

Thanks for your various replies, The Big Peat, they've been very interesting and helpful. Since you mentioned you previously gave some thought to this type of idea, I wonder if you've come across Lit Hub's Book Marks, and if so what you think of it? (sorry, I'm newish to Chrons and can't include a link to the site yet)

First I'd heard of it! My initial thought is that's a nice layout... no, tell a lie, the initial thought is it takes me a while to figure out where genre is, then that's a stereotypically literary take on Fantasy alright.

Then once you get to the Fantasy page, its a nice lay out.

I think its existence is further proof something might be possible; its overall literary range also allows a niche for a fantasy-specific site to prosper.

However, I think their Fantasy selection does point at one weakness, and that is: "How many credible fantasy critics are there?". Are there enough to make this work? Pullman and his ilk aside, Fantasy doesn't get reviewed by national papers. You have the big Fan Sites, probably a few magazines... and are they really filled with the people whose opinions I care about? Routinely the top book blog reviews on Google are fairly meaningless.

The other problem is, as people have pointed out, getting the scores. If you sold it well, you'd persuade critics to update their scores there themselves (and why not? Its effectively free advertising for them). But that might take a lot of work to get there. Are there any major fantasy magazines where the online content is behind a pay wall?

Getting it to pay its way in terms of hosting, nevermind paying for your time, would also be difficult, but then so are most financial ventures.


p.s. Goodreads' social media element is borderline unusuable to the point where it makes me angry. Its not why I use GR and I'm fairly sure its not why other people use GR. Its a handy way of cataloging your books and hopefully doing people a favour with reviews. Although if other people read GR reviews as seriously as I do, I'm probably not doing much of a favour.

Of course, some people do value and use it. But

a) From what Doris is saying, I'm not sure the plan is to major on social interactions, so I'm not that side of it is a threat.
b) Even if it is, there's plenty of overlap in today's social media options already, and there's probably room for another if its good.

 

[doris.ehcd]

The other thing to consider is that building a code to pick out and compile results from different bloggers on different website is not as easy as it sounds. To do it manually is time consuming, but to do it with a computer automatically might be a nightmare. And that's before you even touch on the fact that not all reviewers will score the same way and some might not even "score" a book.

Also when I look at a lot of review sites today they are more about pushing advertisements than the reviews. In fact I don't read many because they can be so chock full of ads that it becomes near impossible to focus on the article because of the ad placement and saturation. So that tells me that there is more/easier/only money in the ads more than what the reviews generate. That is unless your Amazon and thus able to profit from book sales directly (Amazon currently owns Goodreads).


The thing is considering income is important because if the site does well then traffic and managing the site become a cost that is significant and thus the site will require some means to support itself (unles you can fund it totally yourself).


You have a neat idea, but the practicalities might be hard to overcome, plus you've got to consider how you market the site. What you offer that Facebook, Goodreads, Amazon reviews etc... don't offer and how you're going to reach out to the market. How you are going to get people to come to you over and above the other choices. Esp considering that Goodreads and Facebook both have big social aspects to them; that Goodreads already has authors commenting and using it as a marketing platform of their own; and that Facebook often gobbles up what's left. Heck many forums have suffered huge losses of new member recruitment and retention because Facebook now does so much socialising online for the majority of people.

Thanks, Overread, that's a valid set of cautions that you raise. I also hate sites that are covered in ads, and the advice I've gotten from friends in the tech sector is that the income from ads is negligible until the site has a very large userbase. So my aim would be to eventually at least cover costs via income from affiliate sales.

Aside from the core unique features, marketing a site like this to stand out from the giants or find its own niche will be what makes or breaks it, absolutely.

 

[doris.ehcd]

However, I think their Fantasy selection does point at one weakness, and that is: "How many credible fantasy critics are there?". Are there enough to make this work? Pullman and his ilk aside, Fantasy doesn't get reviewed by national papers. You have the big Fan Sites, probably a few magazines... and are they really filled with the people whose opinions I care about? Routinely the top book blog reviews on Google are fairly meaningless.

Yeah, I haven't found a solution to this problem yet. The site would only be as good and credible as the reviews that it aggregates. It's possible that "book connoisseurs" (if you will) like ourselves will only ever trust reviews from people we know, have engaged with, or whose reviews we've previously read and agreed with. But perhaps the more general public could be interested in a quick, alternative way to take the temperature of how a book has been received...

Thanks for taking a look at Book Marks - it's helpful to hear what others think of their layout, which I personally don't find very intuitive.

 

[Overread]

Chrons is certainly a small subset of the overall fantasy community. Even in very geeky hobbies only a very tiny fraction come online to forums - in Warhammer clubs you might have one or two at any club who actually go online and converse and interact; most of the others are "aware of it" and might read some pages, but otherwise don't take part.

So yes, forums can be great for research, but always best to remember that its often only a tiny (if insane/keen/extreme) end of the fanbase/market.