I don't get why is this on the homepage. They clearly have a button to unsubscribe from all the emails. And it works. I found it in maybe two days after registering for an account and realizing that they send an email about everything. Never received an email from them since then.
Even so, that's a crappy reason to hate a company that could be solved in so many simple ways.
It's on the homepage because it is a somewhat humorous comment on the bad UX of putting the unsubscribe all at the end of pages of unsubscribe checkboxes.
I'm surprised you're clever enough to have found the button but are unable to figure out why this made it to HN's front page ...
I'm an avid reader, and I can say that Kindle, Goodreads, Google Books all fill the use case of finding new books to read, but is very lacking in the tracking department. I've had some small plans of making an app/site that just focuses on the tracking part, making and managing a list of books to read/already read with local ratings. I also want the ability to subscribe to an author or a book series and be notified of new releases.
I haven't been able to find a good service that does this in a good way. I have a prototype working pretty good right now, the only problem is that the book databases I use isn't that good sadly.
> I also want the ability to subscribe to an author or a book series and be notified of new releases.
I also want this and am kind of surprised it doesn't exist (or if it does, I haven't seen it). "Following" certain authors on Kindle doesn't seem to have done anything useful, either.
Have you come across LibraryThing before? From what you're looking for in terms of tracking, list management etc it should meet your needs. The only bit i'm not sure about is the ability to subscribe to new releases by an author author or in a series.
While this is a practice that infuriates me in most cases, this article is quite hyperbolic if you take just a minute to look at the examples given.
Goodreads has a long list of checkboxes, ticked by default to send you an email in the case of an event, so it looks at first glance like they'll be bombarding you. But looking through the list of events, 90% of them are both significant (involving a deliberate action of a friend of yours on one of your account posts/reviews/&c.) and relatively infrequent (extremely infrequent in the case of my own account, which I would guess actually has above average activity in the context of all Goodreads users).
They should untick a few of them by default - e.g. the newsletters. However most of them make sense (unless you're of the opinion that all services should default to opt-out on all notification emails absolutely).
Also - anyone not reading the entire 100% of the article is going to miss Goodreads' redeeming feature at the very end.
I'm glad to see that the Goodreads comments aren't agreeing that Goodreads sucks. I'm not that kind of reader, but my wife wrote her first novel about Bulgokov's writing of Master and Margarita, and it's getting good reviews on Goodreads (she was on NPR a couple of weeks back). Googling her book is actually how I found Goodreads.
Myself, instead of unsubscribing, I filter all emails. I stop receiving them, and they still have to pay for the email they send to me. It works every single time and I don't have to play any games like the ones in this article.
[+] [-] r3bl|9 years ago|reply
Even so, that's a crappy reason to hate a company that could be solved in so many simple ways.
[+] [-] Ensorceled|9 years ago|reply
I'm surprised you're clever enough to have found the button but are unable to figure out why this made it to HN's front page ...
[+] [-] FabHK|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abhinavk|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] netzone|9 years ago|reply
I haven't been able to find a good service that does this in a good way. I have a prototype working pretty good right now, the only problem is that the book databases I use isn't that good sadly.
[+] [-] hownottowrite|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TulliusCicero|9 years ago|reply
I also want this and am kind of surprised it doesn't exist (or if it does, I haven't seen it). "Following" certain authors on Kindle doesn't seem to have done anything useful, either.
[+] [-] true_religion|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KJKingJ|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xbmcuser|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucideer|9 years ago|reply
Goodreads has a long list of checkboxes, ticked by default to send you an email in the case of an event, so it looks at first glance like they'll be bombarding you. But looking through the list of events, 90% of them are both significant (involving a deliberate action of a friend of yours on one of your account posts/reviews/&c.) and relatively infrequent (extremely infrequent in the case of my own account, which I would guess actually has above average activity in the context of all Goodreads users).
They should untick a few of them by default - e.g. the newsletters. However most of them make sense (unless you're of the opinion that all services should default to opt-out on all notification emails absolutely).
Also - anyone not reading the entire 100% of the article is going to miss Goodreads' redeeming feature at the very end.
[+] [-] dhimes|9 years ago|reply
For the interested: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31243075-mikhail-and-mar...
[+] [-] lithos|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shash7|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andoon|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] r3bl|9 years ago|reply
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/user/edit