Readers can't reliably filter books to fit their preferences
Book readers want to narrow discovery results by things like genre, author, series, read status, and plot content, but requests show these filters are missing or inconsistent across shopping and recommendation experiences. Without them, readers have to sift through unwanted results or risk missing books they would enjoy. The Faircamp genre-filter request is about music, not books, and appears to be an outlier.
For readers who actively browse for their next book. Mentioned from Jan 2024 to Jul 2026 on Bluesky and Hacker News.
9 different people described this problem in 7 separate discussions.
- Indie fit
- 3.0/10
- Pain
- 5.3/10
- Frequency
- 8.3/10
- Willingness to pay
- 3.3/10
- Momentum
- 4.7/10
- Who pays
- Consumers
- Competition
- Medium
- Build difficulty
- Medium
What people said
Quoted word for word. Follow a link to read the whole discussion.
i wanna see those numbers. i would pay money for this filter. what exciting new worlds await us beyond this sea of sludge we must wade through to find a single fiction book that is not this
Bummer getting recommendations for another book in the same series as one I already liked and read. Feature request: Exclude books already in shelf. This is harder I'm sure. I've got 1146 books in my Read shelf
sosuke on Hacker NewsNov 2025
Build brief
See what to build and who will buy it
- 2 product ideas with the smallest useful version and pricing
- 3 places to find your first customers
- 7 more quotes from people who have this problem
- Current workarounds, existing solutions and risks