Show HN: 73,530 free book summaries in 40 languages (with paid audio)

by jazz3020 • 2 years ago

39 46 2 years ago

jazz302020• 2 years ago

OP here—happy to answer any questions! We’ve been working really hard since writing the first line of code 4 months ago.

botro• 2 years ago

Which LLM is used for the book summaries and which TTS for the audio?

jazz302020• 2 years ago

llm: prefer not to answer tts: open ai

ubggret3• 2 years ago

4 months, 73k summaries, 0 mentions of AI on the website/in the FAQ.

How are you doing it?

jazz302020• 2 years ago

we used to mention AI in the title, but we removed it. we did list it on a bunch of ai directories like future pedia which does say we use ai

EDIT: just added a help article saying that we use ai

add-sub-mul-div• 2 years ago

It's 2024, it's not worth the time it takes to stop and wonder if it's LLM shovelware. It always is.

giancarlostoro• 2 years ago

As others already clarified that it is using an LLM do you allow users to report issues with summaries? I would think this might be important.

jazz302020• 2 years ago

Yeah, great point. Will add that!

lantern_oil• 2 years ago

Hello and great site! Just a note that the "business" isn't spelt correctly. I'm enjoying it ATM. Tks.

jazz302020• 2 years ago

Oh, lol. Just fixed it!

janice19992• 2 years ago

I expected the books to be public domain, but no, it's just random (?) books from many different publishers. I hope you have a good legal team...

jazz302020• 2 years ago

I believe the content falls under Fair Use. More details: https://docs.sobrief.com/en/articles/9905825-is-sobrief-infr...

janice19992• 2 years ago

Laundering a pirated book collection through OpenAI is a hell of a business model. Good luck!

rockemsockem• 2 years ago

Did you read the title or site? It says they're summaries which are definitely fair use.

Now whether they're interesting or not is another question.....

dave333• 2 years ago

Definitely more useful than the teaser sections Amazon makes available for free.

mdhb2• 2 years ago

Thanks, I hate it and this is exactly the kind of thing I fear is ruining the internet.

jazz302020• 2 years ago

How would this ruin the internet?

mdhb2• 2 years ago

It’s the very definition of autogenerated sometimes correct sometimes full of shit with no way to tell spam that isn’t even being honest with users that it’s AI nonsense.

yawnxyz2• 2 years ago

this doesn't prevent you from reading the books though?

fuddle• 2 years ago

Do you purchase the book before making a summary? How does that work?

jazz302020• 2 years ago

Yes, we try to borrow as often as possible and buy when necessary

lofaszvanitt2• 2 years ago

This is why no one buys books. Books are too long, too broad, the interface of books is the same since 868 CE and 90% of the text is just filler. Kindle brought some innovation into this space, but it's UI and support tools are still ridiculously cro magnon like.

The invisible hand that somehow forces authors to bloat their 3 paragraph gist into 200 pages kills the whole industry. I don't care if a book is only 15 pages long and costs $10, just leave the filler out or separate it with a blank page, then could come the 200 page long bs.

braza2• 2 years ago

I used to buy books personal development, management and productivity books and a very sad transition in that space in the last 15 years is that most of the time the author needs to used a lot of anecdotes and make a narrative instead to do directly do the point.

I used to call that as a "Talebnization" of business/management writing that everyone uses more or less the same format to convey a idea: - Some random quote to support the point

- 1 paragraph with the point

- 1 or 2 anecdotes or researched case about the point

- Some broad cherry-picked statistic to bring some rigor

- A success case due to the point

- Closing thoughts without any counterpoint, critique, or presence of any downside in the main point of the chapter.

Do that for 20 chapters and you have a book.

jazz302020• 2 years ago

I have mixed feelings. I generally agree—the industry tends to incentivize writers to fill a certain amount of space, much like college essays. However, there are quite a few books I've enjoyed in their entirety, discovering new insights when re-reading them.

lofaszvanitt2• 2 years ago

Yeah, but I'm talking in a broad way, and would want the average people to read more books. Relevant books, something that clicks with them, but in order to do so, this current, outdated and sloggy format books have must go.

irq-1• 2 years ago

Please wait for the current search to finish.

This message modal appeared when I tried to select a book. I'm sure you know that's not the user experience anyone wants.

jazz302020• 2 years ago

Good point! Easy fix.

braza2• 2 years ago

As an ex-Blinkist I think the work here it's quite impressive.

From what I found based in some titles that I have read in the past and in comparison with Blinkist:

- The summaries here feels that has more "meat in the bone" in terms of bring complex ideas and have more bullet points

- Maybe it's about the prompting, but the language used you can definitely know that is generated by an LLM

- Having the direct quotes from the book after an initial definition of the theme of a chapter it's good

- The whole experience with the LLM kicking in on the fly, makes the whole experience quite bad; maybe you should consider have that pre-stored in some place

Honestly, I think your product it's 85% of theirs (and this is not something bad).

The pricing USD 79 for a lifetime it's OK, but without giving some kind of access or even make some library available it's quite hard to see someone paying for a library that you do not know the books that is in there.

From the legal perspective, I think you might be in some hot water since some publishers can dispute the fair use due to the fact that you're monetizing part of their content.

jazz302020• 2 years ago

Okay, I really appreciate the feedback! Agree on the "meat in the bone," quotes, and LLM-like writing style (which is somewhat intended).

On-the-fly/cache: Yeah, I agree. We're only four months old—the number of on-the-fly summaries will go down significantly over time.

85%: What could make it 100%?

Pricing: I think that's fair. But considering Blinkist charges for $100+ for yearly, the $80 lifetime deal isn't that bad.

Legal: We actually drive a decent amount of traffic to Amazon, Audible, and Kindle. We're hoping to partner with the publishers and authors in the future whether in the form of revenue sharing or licsening.

rurp2• 2 years ago

I tried this with a non-fiction book I read recently and it honestly feels like a pretty generic LLM output. The summary roughly follows the text, but in many spots takes things out of context to a degree that the summary would be very misleading to anyone who hadn't already read the book.

The quotes at the start of each section were some of the worst offenders. I really have no idea what the first quote was referring to. It didn't relate to any of the themes of the book, or any of the following summary points, and I don't remember reading that line at all; it just seemed totally out of place.

I'm not really sure what I would use this service for. When I'm interested in a book that I haven't read it's generally the overarching concepts and takeaways that I want to know, not a spotty outline of the different sections of text. Perhaps students who want to skim through some assigned reading would find this useful. I'm also not that interested in Blinkist so I might not be the target audience here.

jazz302020• 2 years ago

Hmm, which book was it? I can check. It is designed to complement the original work by allowing you to preview/review books before/after reading them, not to replace the need to read the original book.

votick• 2 years ago

This is clean, nice work!

jazz302020• 2 years ago

Thank you!

cpill• 2 years ago

oh man, LLM summaries usually blow, particularly the longer the text they are summarising. have you heard the HN generated podcast? still better to read the actually post and comments.

jazz302020• 2 years ago

are you referring to this one? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35831177

Show HN: 73,530 free book summaries in 40 languages (with paid audio)

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