Hey HN,

My aim with Sunday Books is to 1) recommend good nonfiction books via text message and 2) make those books available for quick purchase from the same text. Why SMS? It's quiet, calm, accessible, and you don't have to wade through newsletters, popups, ads, social rankings, endlessly scrolling cover photos, and thousands of mass-market reviews just to figure out if you might want to read a book.

I know there are a lot of people working on book discovery apps and alternatives to Goodreads, but none of that interests me as a reader. I don't need social features, public reading lists, suggestions from the algorithm, or digital bookshelves. I want recommendations I can trust from people with similar literary tastes, so that's what I'm working to build.

Quick details:

* You opt-in to receive texts, start your subscription via Stripe.

* We recommend a book twice a month via text message.

* At launch, we'll provide guidance on where to find the book. Soon, you can buy the book directly from us.

* No need to create an account, log in, or manage a cart to checkout.

* Text messaging available only in the US and Canada; shipping only in the US to start.

Current status:

* Sharing this publicly to see if it resonates. You can send an email (in my profile) to get on the waiting list.

* Learning about text message opt-in laws and deliverability gotchas, and figuring out which SMS tool to use.

* Rounding up people who have a similar literary taste to help write recommendations.

* Opening accounts with book wholesalers and publishers.

* Trying to sync subscription status from Stripe to Heymarket, though I'm at the edges of my technical know-how with the APIs. I'm currently using Zapier (god has it gone to shit) to sync subscription status to Heymarket contacts but would like to build something less clumsy, more robust.

Challenges:

The biggest challenge is the bookstore side of the business—it's a real hurdle and may not be practical, even if I sent orders to a large distributor, like Ingram. It's likely that I'll launch with recommendations only, provide ISBNs and sources for buying the book in the text message—no marketing or affiliate links. From there, I'll figure out next steps for the bookstore.

Note that the language on the website is still a work in progress, the recommendation that's on the site is just a copy/paste sample, but wanted to show what I'm going for. That section will scroll through previously recommended books once I've got them added.

I'll be ready to test and to start adding people to the list the week after next.

Your comments and suggestions are appreciated.

Submissions by greenrock

Book recommendations via SMS

Book recommendations via SMS