Show HN: Shelvy Books

by tekkie00 • 6 months ago

52 20 6 months ago

Hey HN! I built a little side project I wanted to share.

Shelvy is a free, visual bookshelf app where you can organize books you're reading, want to read, or have finished. Sign in to save your own collection.

Not monetized, no ads, no tracking beyond basic auth. Just a fun weekend project that grew a bit.

Live: https://shelvybooks.com

Would love any feedback on the UX or feature ideas!

Meleagris• 6 months ago

Out of curiosity. Where does the metadata for the books come from?

fifferfaffer• 6 months ago

Cool! I used to use goodreads and have been looking for another way to organize my digital bookshelf.

Some UI/UX feedback since you mentioned it:

- The bounding box for the books is large enough that I can trigger the popup of a book on shelf row-1 from current row.

october8140• 6 months ago

Where do the covers come from?

snitty• 6 months ago

I miss Delicious Monster's Library app

fmajid• 6 months ago

Why? It still works for me.

voisin• 6 months ago

Is it possible to import Goodreads history?

tekkie003• 6 months ago

Unfortunately, Goodreads disabled their API. However, Shelby can natively import a Gooreads CSV export! Hope you can give it a try.

sanufar• 6 months ago

Wow, the shelf UI is a real throwback to the old iBooks shelf design! Looks great. +1 on the bounding box issue, it takes me out of the flow when accidentally triggering a book below the current shelf.

tekkie003• 6 months ago

Thank you! Amazing feedback, will fix the bounding box issue :)

sam537• 6 months ago

I have completely lost track of what I have read and my thoughts. I really should journal. That being said as somebody else mentioned this is very pleasing to the eye. The UI with no ads and no buy buttons is so refreshing. I see that some of the covers are from specific editions. Any way to change those? Where are they coming from? I will give it a try and add a few books and see. Good job!

BugsJustFindMe• 6 months ago

Can you import from existing book list services (StoryGraph, Goodreads, etc)? If not then the friction to use this will be quite high for people with established collections.

adamlgerber• 6 months ago

I just tried a few books that were not found or could not get the cover, even though they are both well known (over 50k reviews each on Goodreads).

The Physician https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4692.The_Physician

Soumission https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23929479-soumission

Is there something that might cause some popular books to not show?

tekkie003• 6 months ago

Good call out, will definitely address this!

nezaj• 6 months ago

Love this. +1 for the Goodreads import! I think it will make it easier for people to try!

Adding a link to buy the books on bookshop in addition to Amazon could be a nice touch too to support local bookstores

sacul• 6 months ago

Very nice! Care to share more technical details? Like others, I'd be curious to know how you're fetching the book covers.

Personally, I dislike skeuomorphic design in digital interfaces. But still... very cool!

batica81• 6 months ago

Looks nice, imported goodreads no problem. Ai recommendation fails with unauthorized :(

pizzamiheart• 6 months ago

Looks fun! Just signed up.

Can you add date read or like a date range you read it, or even just completed date?

And are comments like notes for the person adding them or are they social, visible to others?

jamesholden• 6 months ago

Do you offer it as a GitHub project, for people who would rather self-host it?

dSebastien• 6 months ago

Coming soon to an Obsidian vault near you :p

em-bee• 6 months ago

looks good. those are not amazon affiliate links are they? personally i don't want to promote amazon if i can avoid it so i'd prefer links to other book stores or a neutral site, but if you link to amazon, i'd make them share some of that profit.

Show HN: Shelvy Books

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