I quit outsourcing my reading taste to Amazon and built a Goodreads alternative with my wife

Amazon has owned Goodreads since 2013, and it's barely changed since. The biggest bookstore on earth runs the place millions of people use to decide what to read next. That bugged me enough to build the alternative instead of complaining about it.

It's two of us (my wife and me). I write the code; she runs testing, community, and every support reply. It's called Seekquel (web + iOS + Android).

Three commitments we designed the whole thing around:

- No ads. Ever. Not on free, not anywhere.

- No promoted books. No publisher can pay to climb your recommendations. What surfaces is what fits your taste.

- One revenue line: an optional Pro subscription. We're bootstrapped, no investors, so the only people we answer to are the readers.

A few things I'm proud of:

- 5-axis ratings instead of one star. Rate writing, characters, plot, atmosphere, and impact separately (the axes change for non-fiction; romance gets its own spice rating). A single number throws away why you liked a book.

- A live stats dashboard that runs all year instead of a December recap.

- Import your whole Goodreads or StoryGraph history in one go and export it all back out whenever you want.

- Recommendations that read your actual ratings and the moods/tropes you gravitate toward. They get sharper as you rate more but honestly still early, since the catalog's growing.

Happy to answer anything about the build, the bootstrapped economics, or taking on a platform Amazon owns. I'm Sabri and this is the thing I most wanted to exist.