by aspaviento on 11/28/19, 11:56 AM
I don't get what's the point on this. In my opinion a single page has barely content enough to develop anything interesting and because of it, it could be quite difficult to bring the context of the previous page every day you read a new one. I can't see how one can get hooked to read a book this way.
by whytaka on 11/28/19, 4:17 PM
I think this is a great idea but I echo the critique that a single page isn’t enough.
How about if one were to be able to set their own pace? Many blog sites have those “5minute read” things that naively just count the words or lines and map it to some average reading speed. Maybe even have a tool that measures your reading speed and then let users configure how many minutes of reading they want to allot.
Another possibility is to send an email that gives you time options instead. The email will consist of several button links (5, 10, 15min) and then each button will take you to a server side rendered page that has the allotted amount with a Done button at the end to bookmark the position.
Just some ideas. I would definitely sign up if it wasn’t just one page for sure!
by pgt on 11/28/19, 12:28 PM
Now if only you could geofence this to restrooms all over the world so it will send you a page as a push notification...while you push.
I'm calling it: Push to Read™️
by codingdave on 11/28/19, 1:59 PM
Page breaks are not necessarily good breaks in the story. Your sample image on your page shows that it broke in the middle of a sentence. I would think that would make this a difficult way to read a story.
What feedback have you received about the effectiveness of "one page at a time"?
by sandoooo on 11/28/19, 1:00 PM
Implement this as an android app instead of email. Have a system where I can open a random page of a book in a genre as many times as I want for free, and I can continue reading from that page, but if I read through x continuous pages I have automatically bought the book (or a chapter of it) and it goes in my library.
by marai2 on 11/28/19, 6:56 AM
I actually implemented something like this for my ownself.
I have a suggestion that you may want to try out as an experiment.
Somehow give the user the ability to choose when to receive the next update (and maybe even how much). So for example I know I'm going to be busy the next couple of days but I want to keep the continuity, so maybe I can schedule to have only a couple of paragraphs sent to me. Or I know I'm going to be bored out of my mind this weekend I can schedule a page sent to me every 4 hours.
In other words if you can add this little gamification aspect and the idea that I have or can have more active control over what's delivered to me, I suspect you'll have better engagement.
For me after the novelty of implementing my own a-page-a-day solution wore off and when I missed a few days then it just seemed like a chore to catch up with my missed reading.
by officemonkey on 11/28/19, 1:14 PM
Your thumbnail of the Iliad is of the Robert Fagles translation, which is not in the public domain.
I'm not sure that many people would want MORE email.
Years ago, I did something like this with Samuel Pepys' diary. I didn't get more than a week in and then I forgot. It was easy to get overwhelmed with the backlog and then I unsubscribed from the RSS feed.
I'm not sure that people have "no time for books." There's plenty of time for books. People are just not in the habit. There are ways to get into the habit, but I don't know that one page at a time is the easiest way.
by 4d66ba06 on 11/28/19, 12:43 PM
Cool idea! Getting: "Request failed with status 500" when trying to subscribe to "Walking"
by steven_pack on 11/28/19, 5:36 AM
Maker here. AMA! Happy Thanksgiving!
by cellularmitosis on 12/1/19, 2:43 AM
I was sitting on a pile of tech book pdf's but realized I simply wasn't going through them (and was wasting my life endlessly refreshing social media feeds). I threw together a web service which serves up a random page from a random book and it has been great for engaging with these books -- just enough of a tease to make you want to dig in further.
https://gist.github.com/cellularmitosis/1dabd7587662f8aa7652...by happy_path on 11/28/19, 12:39 PM
Great idea. Subscription does not work for me at the moment but I really like it.
Only thing I would suggest is showing some categories with several (3-4) books in each.
by fcarraldo on 11/29/19, 11:19 PM
Not affiliated, but I’ve been using an app called Serial Reader [0] which does this using push notifications for some time. It’s quite good and offers more than a page per day for those that want it.
[0] https://www.serialreader.org/
by silverreads on 11/29/19, 3:46 AM
Last week I wrote a shell one liner to find all the chapter titles in a book's ToC, grab the line numbers for each chapter start in the text, and head/tail the text into individual chapter files. These files are then sent to me via jabber one per morning and discarded.
I just finished part 1 of a tale of two cities this way.
by puranjay on 11/28/19, 2:03 PM
It's a cool idea but the thought of receiving 600 emails just to read Moby Dick is somehow making me very anxious.
by text_exch on 11/28/19, 11:57 AM
Anyone who enjoys this might enjoy an email newsletter I run, Thinking About Things [1], which sends readers a single interesting and thought-provoking link every morning. It's a similar idea - small, manageable parts of ideas for people who are too busy to pursue idea discovery full-time.
[1] thinking-about-things.com
by heymartinadams on 11/28/19, 7:05 PM
Hi Steven, great idea, just signed up (I’m one of those too busy to read, so no excuse now).
Feel free to include my published book as well; it’s copyrighted in the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0. https://www.unitism.com/
by lawlorino on 11/28/19, 11:32 AM
This looks pretty cool, congratulations! I was wondering how you set up your email server to get around the automatic filtering a lot of email providers use on the user end. For example, I think Gmail automatically filters anything from a known AWS IP address.
by fitzroy on 11/28/19, 10:59 PM
I've keep pitching friends on the idea of "Infinite Text" (Infinite Jest, one sentence at a time in text messages).
Also, Tolstoy's 'War 'n Pieces'.
That said, a page/day via email and using public domain works seem like a better compromise.
by fakeinc on 11/29/19, 11:48 PM
I really like the idea. However, the Chinese quote on this page “千里之行” should be “千里之行，始于足下。“ with the author as “老子”, otherwise, it's incorrect. Just my two cents.
by BlackLotus89 on 11/28/19, 12:35 PM
Tried the man who folded himsel, the time machine and some others but got no hits. I hope my taste is not too bad or that I'm blind...
by Insanity on 11/28/19, 2:28 PM
Kudos on the idea but I don't really see this being useful. Reading one page at a time, you'd just end up losing all context.
by miguelrochefort on 11/28/19, 12:46 PM
- I couldn't find a way to get a list of short non-fiction books sorted by popularity.
- After entering my email address, I get a 500 error.
by hwestiii on 11/28/19, 10:18 PM
Is this supposed to be _new_? I was subscribed to a service called Daily Lit 10 or 15 years ago that did the same thing.
by Raphmedia on 11/28/19, 3:22 PM
This is pretty nice, I'll without a doubt be using it. With the way gmail threads the mails it works great too.
by osrec on 11/28/19, 2:44 PM
Interesting idea. Btw, the look and feel of the landing page is similar to stripe's. Did you model it on that?
by zackproser on 11/28/19, 8:52 PM
This is awesome, Steven! Well done.
by pgt on 11/28/19, 12:23 PM
No call-to-action above the fold? Struggling to give you my email address.
by _threads on 11/28/19, 10:57 AM
Daaamn that’s something I wanted to do for a very long time !
by kevintb on 11/29/19, 6:51 AM
Love the idea, but maybe have an optional # of pages?
by nimvlaj30 on 11/28/19, 11:34 PM
Website does not work with JS enabled.
by nikalras1 on 11/28/19, 9:59 AM
Read 15 pages already. Great job!
by ngunity on 11/28/19, 6:46 AM
This is great I like it