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Literal — Track your reading and discover your next favourite book
Literal is the place to keep track of what you've read and discover your next favourite book through the people you trust. It's designed around the idea that trust beats algorithms when it comes to book recommendations and that we are all trusted by someone.
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Replies
Piet Terheyden
Maker
📌
Hey Product Hunt and thanks Marc!
We started Literal more than a year ago after not having found something that felt like home for our books, and couldn't be more excited to be here today!
In short, we wanted to get away from the 4.2/5 stars from 10.000 strangers and build a space where communities and niche groups can grow organically and really get nerdy about whatever they’re into.
As much as I love a good fiction novel I'm thrilled to dive into a bunch of the best product and startup books with you all in the Product Hunt Book Club!
Looking forward to hearing what you all think,
Piet, Co-founder of Literal
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@pietterheyden Off topic, but are you guys Dutch? My mother was Dutch and I speak it some.
Maker
@robert_stevens Hey Robert, we're currently from Germany, Denmark, Romania and US :) It's just my name that's Dutch
If any of you are curious about the books from Product Hunt you can check them out here: https://literal.club/club/produc...
Neat Idea. I achieve the same effect just by following certain authors on Goodreads, who both write in my preferred genre (fantasy) and are prolific readers/reviewers of my genre... but it's still definitely a struggle to find new books in the Amazon feed.
+1 It's looks way too much like @okuclub and how they launched on PH! https://www.producthunt.com/post...
I am an early user and honestly I have never used good reads, nor I have ever written a review on amazon for a book. What I love about Literal is the ability to keep track of the best passages in a book. I am still a paper book kind of person (tried the other, didn't like it, for most books) and I have a very elaborate system of underlying and earmarking and stuff like that. But then it is all in that book which some times I cannot even find anymore. With literal I just take the screen shot of the passage I like and boom, it's there saved under the book I am reading. thanks.
some feature requests:
- better social sharing: I'd like to be able to do live reading on twitter (for example) like, I start a book and I post that I have started (even auto posting would be fine). Then every time I share a highlight, the tweet/post is tied to the previous one so that I have a full thread of all the best passages (and notes) of a book. How could would that be @pietterheyden ? 🙏
- reading list api/json embed: for some time I was keeping truck of the stuff I was reading on my blog site. But that's a pretty tedious job so I would love to be able to just pull the info from literal, or like to a page maybe but better if embedded into my site's style.
- some private notes about the book itself, like "gave it to @stockmarr " or "at my mom's place" etc.
keep up the amazing work!
Oh man. I just put all my reading on Oku.club. Now I want this. What's Literal's value prop that could convince me? 🤓
@geffrey Hah, yeah, we had planned on launching later the same week actually, but postponed it to not have too much noise since there's a lot of overlaps. Right now I'd say Oku is the place to be if you're into goals/tracking and we're a bit heavier on the community stuff with clubs and highlighting. Would actually love to hear your thoughts on it, if you'll be giving it a shot!
I've been using Literal for a few months now and I truly adore it. It is one of the few places on the internet that leaves me with MORE energy after spending time there.
It's also so much more than 'a better Goodreads' (though it really is a million times better). I love how other people's shared Moments have convinced me to try a new writer or genre, I love the nudge to share how a book made you feel instead of trying to force those nuances into a 5 star rating, I love that I am reading more than ever before and I love how much everyone on there really just loves sharing what they are reading. I love it!!!! Great work! Can you talk more about what we can expect from Clubs?
I will never understand how people can so brazenly rip off another product and be out & proud about what they're making, you guys even copied @okuclub's ProductHunt cover image. This makes me sad. Why would you not want to have your own distinctive brand, product and identity? It's really not that difficult. This sucks and is not what this community is about.
Hey @marty, I get the optics and therefore I’m willing to accept that without knowing the facts, you have jumped to this conclusion. It does seem quite excessive to accuse people of “ripping off” without any proof whatsoever but hey, anybody his style.
I’ll address this once and then I hope we can put it to rest. We (Founders.as) started Literal together with @pietterheyden early 2020, not like 10 days ago as your message seem to imply. If you are interested in the facts, I can share them with you:
We had a call with @azizfirat over summer last year (when it was called readng.co), when we found out we were working on something quite similar. The end of the chat was basically that we had two different approaches on how to make it sustainable and that these two different ways of doing it would (my conclusion at least) lead us to work in the same space but be relevant for different people.
At that point in time we had already locked our offering and style in, and for better or worse haven’t changed it much since. We’ll dig up some timestamped designs from last year and share them so we can put this to rest.
The situation now is our brands look more similar than we’d like. It sucks. But we’re going to keep doing what we personally like and are not going to start doing something that’s not “us” based on what others are doing. Having said that, it is a free world and many things look similar without people having to fight or accuse each other with unsubstantiated claims.
I sincerely hope you have changed your mind about this and as said, we can close it like this, while an apology would be appreciated. Take care
Edit: here's the full story for those who are interested: https://literalclub.notion.site/...
@okuclub @marty We went through the whole "look & feel" thing decades ago with Lotus 1-2-3. Try both products. See where the differences lie. If Literal is literally just copying Oku, they'll never make it, because they'll always be behind. This isn't Microsoft copying something and then using their market clout to overwhelm the original developers. If you have substantive claims, like point by point comparisons, then make them.
I love books and I now I love literal, it's my happy nook on the internet where I can find new books and share the books I have read or am interested in reading. Feel free to follow me if you have an account, if not, go ahead, create one ;)
https://literal.club/hoomanaskari
Super cool idea, I've been keen to get back to reading for pleasure after a bit of hiatus. When you read so much for work, it can be a bit hard to feel inspired, but having personalized suggestions might just be the ticket!
I tried Goodreads a few years ago but never got into it (and nothing has changed since). It was too impersonal.
I joined Literal a few months ago and have been loving it! I feel a closer connection with the people I'm following and feel a more genuine curiosity for what they're reading—something that has helped me discover books that I actually look forward to reading.
It's such a beautiful product made by a great team. Congrats on the launch! 🥳
@alexandberg Thanks Alex! Super inspiring following along with your reading... If any of you are curious you can get closer to a minimalist zen state here https://literal.club/alex
One of my first startups was a social e-reading app. We believed that your favorite books would be the ideal meeting place for like-minded people. For a number of reasons we never succeeded in making that vision a reality.
So when I first heard about Literal I immediately was intrigued. Would they be able to execute a similar type of idea successfully?
Having seen them iterate on their product over the last months, I'd say yes! Their product design is top notch and I can't wait to see where they will take it.
Congrats to the team on the launch! 🎉