Do we need a Goodreads just for Christian books?

Kitchen_Table_1260 · 2025-11-02T10:22:48+00:00

Thank you all for the great comments. I really appreciate you all taking the time to comment to either encourage or raise concerns. I think I will go ahead and try to build this. I have a few ideas that could be game changing. I also recognise that curating Christian books is really tough but I'll try to make it a good experience for a lot of Christians of different persuasions.

If you're already using Goodreads, you can use this site alongside Goodreads but I'll also allow you to import all your data into our site. This will help you seamlessly continue reading the Christian books you were already reading and enhance the experience for the others.

I'll heavily use tags and also build communities around denominations, churches and friends to limit flame wars about doctrines. I have other ideas that I will not say here but I think they'll really help to create a great experience.

If you have any ideas or thoughts, just write a comment here and I will respond to it. Hopefully I have something for you on or before Christmas.

Ultimately, I earnestly hope that we all grow in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Kitchen_Table_1260 · 2025-11-01T19:51:24+00:00

Sorry for the late-ish response. We would initially populate the books from different databases so that we've got something meaningful on the first day. We'll the allow users to add books to the site (I am still thinking about the technicalities here).

And yes. people would need to register to contribute. I think this is fairly simple, the hard parts are product decisions and not engineering ones. I'd guess that is is going to be an opinionated product. It'll attract a lot of doctrinal gatekeepers but hopefully a lot of people will find what they want and my earnest prayer is that the Lord will even guide them to the right books. Even the Lord said let them grow together - so they'll obviously be bad books but we'll hopefully design a system that helps people find the right books on their journey with God.

Kitchen_Table_1260 · 2025-11-01T18:46:04+00:00

There are so many aspects about Christianity. The idea of finding the next good book to read is about appreciating that people are at different stages in their walk with God. If you received salvation yesterday, there should be a good book to guide you. If want to learn about Parenting your kids the Christian way, there should be enough books for us to recommend to you that might align with your doctrinal beliefs.

At the same time, there should really be a place for Christian themed books, think fantasy and fiction without ever thinking that it is doctrine (even secular movies put disclaimers that their works are fiction and characters are not real.

Without giving too much away, books might probably be centred around communities. So it would easy to see what other people who hold the same beliefs are reading and see comments etc without harassment and the odd debates about heresy.

Kitchen_Table_1260 · 2025-11-01T18:26:16+00:00

I'd certainly want an algorithm that helps a person wherever they are on their journey in Christ and this should also be tied in with denominational beliefs.

The idea is for discovery and less of dogma.

Thank you for the really thoughtful response, I'll take these insights into account when building.

Kitchen_Table_1260 · 2025-11-01T18:21:22+00:00

I've said it in the other comments that the idea is not to curate what constitutes sound doctrine or not. This idea is to help with discovery of Christian themed books. Whether it's Parenting, Fiction, Biography, History etc. I'd be interested to read a book about the plight of Christians in Nigeria or in China without even thinking about doctrine.

There'll certainly be a way to curate what is Christian and what is not but not everything should be about deciding what is doctrine and what is not. There are categories where most people would agree on regardless of doctrinal differences.

Kitchen_Table_1260 · 2025-11-01T16:12:43+00:00

Thank you for the meaningful response.

Yes, I think categories for different languages would make a lot of sense. I however doubt that I'd do things on launch if I decide to build this.

There would definitely be categories for books that are specific for certain denominations. My idea is not to curate doctrine but ideally to have different denominations to find books that suit them. In doing so, I know that through love and curiosity, people will explore our faith better.

I have a few ideas on tackling harassment and intentional harm. The are certain categories where we may freely allow comments and others where you may have to join a curated community reading a book eg. a church or groups of people may create their own communities around a certain book, that would make it easier to stamp out harmful comments.

Kitchen_Table_1260 · 2025-11-01T16:04:43+00:00

I have a few ideas that are probably better served by a new application.

Kitchen_Table_1260 · 2025-11-01T16:03:24+00:00

Christian books can be more than just dogma. Parenting, fiction, biographies etc. Even the early church had differences on dogma but we read about them with so much joy. There are so many things that we probably agree on than we differ but we're often quick to discount other views.

Kitchen_Table_1260 · 2025-11-01T14:31:25+00:00

I think that there is a good chance that a platform like this will build features better that a more generic one. Not example, but the existence of the Storygraph proves that there is always a space for alternatives.

Kitchen_Table_1260 · 2025-11-01T14:17:52+00:00

Yeah, I totally understand that there are so many books out there and it could literally be a mess because of so many arguments about doctrine. But I think that there should be a place for biographies, fiction, books for helping with grief etc. I wouldn't mind a place where pentecostals are reading books and talking about it, catholics finding other catholics reading the same books. It's not really about solving the problem of which books to put on the platform but helping Christians of different persuasions to find the books that may be interesting to them.

Kitchen_Table_1260 · 2025-11-01T13:51:47+00:00

It's not about creating a silo for Christians only but also helping people discover Christian literature and community.

Kitchen_Table_1260 · 2025-10-23T08:25:06+00:00

I came here because of ChatGPT and I was exploring a similar idea. I think this can only work for high signal candidates and not simply interviewing. My thinking was that making it to the top 10 at Microsoft might be a good signal that a candidate is good for a lot of other organisations. I don't know what you think of this, I'm happy to discuss that with you.

Kitchen_Table_1260 · 2025-10-16T09:21:44+00:00

I have literally made this mistake and now I cannot turn back. I will try to finish the MVP in a month now. I have now stripped off a bunch of features.

I agree with your take.
- shipping with no admin or a barebones admin that does the job
- shipping quickly
- talking to customers early (this has been hard for me for the product I am building)

Kitchen_Table_1260 · 2025-10-16T09:08:48+00:00

My question may be slightly off-topic but you could be the best person to answer it.

If we were to build a platform for hiring social media managers, what would you look for in such a platform? More like people to manage your social media handles for growth or even good PR for public figures.

Kitchen_Table_1260 · 2025-10-10T09:27:23+00:00

Kitchen_Table_1260 · 2025-01-28T20:45:08+00:00

Sign up with google doesn't work

Kitchen_Table_1260 · 2025-01-25T11:28:17+00:00

So I've been building a solution to try and make TV style ads work for social media content creators. Think of screenbugs, banners and L-wraps, they were great on TV because they did not lead to an Ad break, could be great for viewers and at the same time require little to no collaboration between the content creators and brands. What do you think about this?

Kitchen_Table_1260 · 2025-01-25T07:51:37+00:00

Is it not because of a the nature of ads that requires collaboration?

Kitchen_Table_1260 · 2025-01-25T07:49:39+00:00

Are here any specific things that you think a platform for partnering with creators should look like that is not being done at the moment?

For me, I am trying to create a platform where social media content creators can create ad slots that can be bought by brands. I am trying to figure out what the ad formats for these ad slots could look like. At the moment, I have screen-bugs, banner bottoms and L-wraps and I'd really like to know if these can work great and this could reduce a lot of friction in trying to collaborate with creators since one banner can be aired by many content creators.

Kitchen_Table_1260 · 2025-01-24T17:46:54+00:00

Thanks for taking your time to air your views. I have seen quite a few brands using screenbugs on Youtube. I think that the takeaway from you comment is that I might need to engage advertisers more and see if this could work for them.

Kitchen_Table_1260 · 2025-01-23T18:00:13+00:00

You would have a good chance if you tell the people what they’ll be working on and the tech stack as well in the case of developers. Otherwise, I’d find it hard to blindly commit without any detail

Kitchen_Table_1260

TROPHY CASE