Show HN: The missing link of a bookstore's tech stack(bookhead.net)
bookhead.net
Show HN: The missing link of a bookstore's tech stack
https://bookhead.net/
27 comments
Interesting project! I'm in charge of all things technical at the book store I work at, so this piqued my interest. We've solved for ourselves many of the problems that Bookhead solves since we've been open for a few decades, so this doesn't seem like something we'd want to switch to, but I'm still bookmarking it and keeping my eye on it. Also I hope you don't mind me offering some suggestions/observations...
- If you're _not_ using AWS, I'd explicitly mention that somewhere. I know there are a lot of indie bookstores who care about avoiding Amazon and any Amazon services. If you _are_ using AWS, well, you might find that you get more business from indie booksellers by not using it.
- I'd add an explicit list of supported POS systems in the Overview of the docs. This was one of the very first things I wanted to check. (My store's POS isn't supported, btw.)
- I'd add an explicit list of supported channels in Overview of the docs, as well. This was also one of the very first things I wanted to check.
- I'd focus on adding Square as a supported POS. From what I see in the ABA forums, this kind of thing might appeal to the bookstores using Square as a POS. Especially if you can load the book data you have into their POS, possibly based on SKU? Maybe that actually would warrant a separate product you could offer (or that someone else could make).
- If you're _not_ using AWS, I'd explicitly mention that somewhere. I know there are a lot of indie bookstores who care about avoiding Amazon and any Amazon services. If you _are_ using AWS, well, you might find that you get more business from indie booksellers by not using it.
- I'd add an explicit list of supported POS systems in the Overview of the docs. This was one of the very first things I wanted to check. (My store's POS isn't supported, btw.)
- I'd add an explicit list of supported channels in Overview of the docs, as well. This was also one of the very first things I wanted to check.
- I'd focus on adding Square as a supported POS. From what I see in the ABA forums, this kind of thing might appeal to the bookstores using Square as a POS. Especially if you can load the book data you have into their POS, possibly based on SKU? Maybe that actually would warrant a separate product you could offer (or that someone else could make).
yes!! love all this. what POS do you use?
i have a chicken and egg problem with POS providers. i've had to reverse engineer the ETL to accept FTP files, making the sync generic since nobody will let me develop on their system without a customer who wants it. i've been waiting two weeks for basil to add the integration for our first customer. and about to start with ibidie for a test customer.
and yes 100% on not using amazon. i was indoctrinated against them as an indie bookseller. i've even avoided using free amazon credits.
the docs feedback is great. thank you!!! and square is next step after i finish shopify. i will use that to sell my books at pop-up events and it would be a great little starter system for a small bookstore. then i'll add ingram integration with ordering etc. going towards "the brains of your bookstore". sort of a newer take on POS that integrates with everything, and the basis is the inventory system.
i have a chicken and egg problem with POS providers. i've had to reverse engineer the ETL to accept FTP files, making the sync generic since nobody will let me develop on their system without a customer who wants it. i've been waiting two weeks for basil to add the integration for our first customer. and about to start with ibidie for a test customer.
and yes 100% on not using amazon. i was indoctrinated against them as an indie bookseller. i've even avoided using free amazon credits.
the docs feedback is great. thank you!!! and square is next step after i finish shopify. i will use that to sell my books at pop-up events and it would be a great little starter system for a small bookstore. then i'll add ingram integration with ordering etc. going towards "the brains of your bookstore". sort of a newer take on POS that integrates with everything, and the basis is the inventory system.
We use Wordstock as our POS, our website is an IndieCommerce site (I'm quite adept at pushing IC to the limits), and we list on a couple marketplaces doing manual uploads of exports from our POS that were processed by scripts I've written.
The "brains of your bookstore" goal sounds great. If/when Bookhead becomes a full POS, then my store might consider switching, but until then, we've got 20+ years of history in Wordstock the product and with Wordstock the company, so Bookhead would need to be significantly better than our current system in order to be worth switching to. WS isn't perfect but we're used to it, and they've modified it in many ways as per our requests. And Jeff in their support department is the best customer support person I've ever dealt with anywhere for any reason.
The "brains of your bookstore" goal sounds great. If/when Bookhead becomes a full POS, then my store might consider switching, but until then, we've got 20+ years of history in Wordstock the product and with Wordstock the company, so Bookhead would need to be significantly better than our current system in order to be worth switching to. WS isn't perfect but we're used to it, and they've modified it in many ways as per our requests. And Jeff in their support department is the best customer support person I've ever dealt with anywhere for any reason.
this information is so valuable to me, thank you!
> but until then, we've got 20+ years of history in Wordstock the product and with Wordstock the company, so Bookhead would need to be significantly better than our current system in order to be worth switching to.
i have a hard hill to climb. but i'm glad to know there are other book-ish technologists who understand the value of this and what i'm trying to do. at the very least, i'm working towards some features that could complement what you're doing with wordstock, instead of replacing it, but it sounds like you have the skills where you wouldn't need anything like that.
thank you so much for commenting. if you ever wanna work together, hit me up at [email protected].
> but until then, we've got 20+ years of history in Wordstock the product and with Wordstock the company, so Bookhead would need to be significantly better than our current system in order to be worth switching to.
i have a hard hill to climb. but i'm glad to know there are other book-ish technologists who understand the value of this and what i'm trying to do. at the very least, i'm working towards some features that could complement what you're doing with wordstock, instead of replacing it, but it sounds like you have the skills where you wouldn't need anything like that.
thank you so much for commenting. if you ever wanna work together, hit me up at [email protected].
What are the main advantages over Bibliopolis and BookRouter (the most popular solution used across the world)? I am not asking in a bad way, I am really interested because as a book collector I checked this space in the past but it seemed too crowded (and with a real winner)
[deleted]
great question! still figuring that one out. very glad you asked this. dunno if you are a bibliopolis spy but i will be transparent and open.
it's a similar product (right now) and definitely a very crowded market. i only need a small sliver of the market to sustain the business, so i think there is room. there are a lot of other similar products too, like booktracker. some of the book point of sales have the inventory syncing built-in, at least for some platforms. bibliopolis is built on wordpress so that gives them technical limitations (at least from an outsider - i could be wrong about that). i'm not even sure if they can sync from a point of sales onto their platform because i've seen bookstores manually enter all of their inventory from ibid into bibliopolis (which now i gotta go fact find that because now that i write this out, this seems like the greatest value-add to your question). i'm not sure how coupled bookrouter is to wordpress. i don't think they support integrations with shopify or squarespace or square etc. bookhead is platform agnostic but "platform agnostic" is too developer-y to the average bookseller so the pitch is more: "this will work with your existing tools and connects everything together" which is a pitch we are always refining.
i have a different overall vision than those products, and it's built with a more modern tech stack and design considerations. i have an ai prototype for appraising books that i've successfully used to appraise and list my own collection. and i plan to build in some automation tools that would be useful to a bigger brick & mortar, like "order me 5 more copies of 'as i lay dying' when inventory count gets down to 3" and other ways a savvy bookseller could hook into automation that could help them with their work. and for the non-technically savvy users, i'm hoping to have great customer service to help them with some automation. i think this might end up being a core part of the product but only time will time. i also have some marketing tool ideas that nobody has built, based on some past experiences working in library tech and my time doing marketing for a bookseller.
also, most of the incumbents don't have the greatest reputations but stores have no choice to use them. there is no reason that a store needs to go through customer support to set up an integration (which is the norm), though support will always be there to help if a customer struggles with that. there is also no reason that your product should have a waiting list, but this is common, too. bookhead is designed to be self-served.
one thing i've found weird: being able to sell "new" and "used" books has been a differentiator for some incumbents, which is strange and suggests to me that these apps have a bad data model. so i'm hoping to change that. it's awkward to communicate this in marketing.
aesthetics and design matter to some people, too. most bookselling software is ugly and hard to use. think about drip or basecamp — those products were in crowded markets but they were still successful because they took their own approach and it fit some people but not everybody.
but of course, the market will have to decide.
it's a similar product (right now) and definitely a very crowded market. i only need a small sliver of the market to sustain the business, so i think there is room. there are a lot of other similar products too, like booktracker. some of the book point of sales have the inventory syncing built-in, at least for some platforms. bibliopolis is built on wordpress so that gives them technical limitations (at least from an outsider - i could be wrong about that). i'm not even sure if they can sync from a point of sales onto their platform because i've seen bookstores manually enter all of their inventory from ibid into bibliopolis (which now i gotta go fact find that because now that i write this out, this seems like the greatest value-add to your question). i'm not sure how coupled bookrouter is to wordpress. i don't think they support integrations with shopify or squarespace or square etc. bookhead is platform agnostic but "platform agnostic" is too developer-y to the average bookseller so the pitch is more: "this will work with your existing tools and connects everything together" which is a pitch we are always refining.
i have a different overall vision than those products, and it's built with a more modern tech stack and design considerations. i have an ai prototype for appraising books that i've successfully used to appraise and list my own collection. and i plan to build in some automation tools that would be useful to a bigger brick & mortar, like "order me 5 more copies of 'as i lay dying' when inventory count gets down to 3" and other ways a savvy bookseller could hook into automation that could help them with their work. and for the non-technically savvy users, i'm hoping to have great customer service to help them with some automation. i think this might end up being a core part of the product but only time will time. i also have some marketing tool ideas that nobody has built, based on some past experiences working in library tech and my time doing marketing for a bookseller.
also, most of the incumbents don't have the greatest reputations but stores have no choice to use them. there is no reason that a store needs to go through customer support to set up an integration (which is the norm), though support will always be there to help if a customer struggles with that. there is also no reason that your product should have a waiting list, but this is common, too. bookhead is designed to be self-served.
one thing i've found weird: being able to sell "new" and "used" books has been a differentiator for some incumbents, which is strange and suggests to me that these apps have a bad data model. so i'm hoping to change that. it's awkward to communicate this in marketing.
aesthetics and design matter to some people, too. most bookselling software is ugly and hard to use. think about drip or basecamp — those products were in crowded markets but they were still successful because they took their own approach and it fit some people but not everybody.
but of course, the market will have to decide.
Just some feedback: Most people are going to ask about the difference between you and the incumbents. Mentioning spies in this regard - especially at this stage - even as a passing joke imo comes off as a little odd. You're pretty early in this process, and it sounds like the kind of incumbent dynamic where you should be relishing (along with improving/iterating on) the answer to the incumbent question rather than thinking of it in any way as a burden.
Fwiw your landing page seemed to do a good job in this regard.
Best of luck!
Fwiw your landing page seemed to do a good job in this regard.
Best of luck!
thanks for your feedback!
I prefer the "Sync your inventory everywhere" as the tagline. "Share your books with the world" is a bit trite for 2025 (might he OK for 2001). But "Sync your inventory everywhere" is more exciting as it implies more sales as well as how that is possible and that its supposedly easy. You could work on that tagline a bit more as well as I'm sure it can be improved.
thanks for your input!
eCommerce for booksellers is an interesting problem. Many bookstores use IndieCommerce / Bookweb which has an unconventional status (a trade site? non-profit?). Where the frontend is lacking, it seems to make retail operations easy. Pretty sure that the ordering from distributors all the way through the inventory and POS sort of work out of the box. We've had a time adding a same-day delivery carrier integration to IC because they don't have a lot of development resources.
I know some stores that use Shopify or Adobe Commerce. When it comes to books, there are a LOT of SKUs (think IC has 2-3 million on it's built-in catalog). 5 years ago, that was a big challenge for folks wanting to sell on Shopify (which is IMO the best eCommerce platform)
I know some stores that use Shopify or Adobe Commerce. When it comes to books, there are a LOT of SKUs (think IC has 2-3 million on it's built-in catalog). 5 years ago, that was a big challenge for folks wanting to sell on Shopify (which is IMO the best eCommerce platform)
bookhead started as my response to struggling with an indiecommerce site but now the product vision is different with some similarities. i have some ideas to collaborate with them if they are willing. it's a valuable product for some stores, but i agree that shopify is the best and i'm hoping to provide tools for stores to use shopify if they also feel that way.
> When it comes to books, there are a LOT of SKUs (think IC has 2-3 million on it's built-in catalog). 5 years ago, that was a big challenge for folks wanting to sell on Shopify (which is IMO the best eCommerce platform)
i have a blog post planned about this. i think the modern indie bookstore tech stack should be bookshop.org doing it's thing + a website with your local inventory. let bookshop sell all the inventory you don't have on hand but can easily get from ingram, and then your unique inventory will rise above in SEO. it doesn't make sense to me for 600+ IC stores to all have the exact same inventory, competing in SEO with the exact same metadata. but what does your local bookstore have? unique titles that only they carry.
> Bookweb
tells me you've been around for a while... if you are a bookseller, come find my table at winter institute 2026!
> When it comes to books, there are a LOT of SKUs (think IC has 2-3 million on it's built-in catalog). 5 years ago, that was a big challenge for folks wanting to sell on Shopify (which is IMO the best eCommerce platform)
i have a blog post planned about this. i think the modern indie bookstore tech stack should be bookshop.org doing it's thing + a website with your local inventory. let bookshop sell all the inventory you don't have on hand but can easily get from ingram, and then your unique inventory will rise above in SEO. it doesn't make sense to me for 600+ IC stores to all have the exact same inventory, competing in SEO with the exact same metadata. but what does your local bookstore have? unique titles that only they carry.
> Bookweb
tells me you've been around for a while... if you are a bookseller, come find my table at winter institute 2026!
I wish you the best of luck which is why I'll tell you that in my experience
> I have a very exciting roadmap that I'm not ready to fully reveal
actually means:
> I've made up a list of cool / fun to build features with no user input whatsoever
> I have a very exciting roadmap that I'm not ready to fully reveal
actually means:
> I've made up a list of cool / fun to build features with no user input whatsoever
there it is, and here it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44662250
specifically
> i have a different overall vision than those products, and it's built with a more modern tech stack and design considerations. i have an ai prototype for appraising books that i've successfully used to appraise and list my own collection. and i plan to build in some automation tools that would be useful to a bigger brick & mortar, like "order me 5 more copies of 'as i lay dying' when inventory count gets down to 3" and other ways a savvy bookseller could hook into automation that could help them with their work. and for the non-technically savvy users, i'm hoping to have great customer service to help them with some automation. i think this might end up being a core part of the product but only time will time. i also have some marketing tool ideas that nobody has built, based on some past experiences working in library tech and my time doing marketing for a bookseller.
helps to have somebody helping me who works in a bookstore. and also helps to use it myself, since i am user #1. was waiting for the HN cynicism! glad you like it :)
specifically
> i have a different overall vision than those products, and it's built with a more modern tech stack and design considerations. i have an ai prototype for appraising books that i've successfully used to appraise and list my own collection. and i plan to build in some automation tools that would be useful to a bigger brick & mortar, like "order me 5 more copies of 'as i lay dying' when inventory count gets down to 3" and other ways a savvy bookseller could hook into automation that could help them with their work. and for the non-technically savvy users, i'm hoping to have great customer service to help them with some automation. i think this might end up being a core part of the product but only time will time. i also have some marketing tool ideas that nobody has built, based on some past experiences working in library tech and my time doing marketing for a bookseller.
helps to have somebody helping me who works in a bookstore. and also helps to use it myself, since i am user #1. was waiting for the HN cynicism! glad you like it :)
Seems like a cool app ! Would love to have it on https://superlaun.ch :)
Interesting project Sam. Thanks for sharing.
Can you share how your catalogue management works and w/ cover images?
Are you ingesting ONIX from publishers? Or is catalog creation downstream of the bookstore owner ordering the book?
thank you!
you can create book products three ways:
1. automated file upload via FTP (this is what most POS providers can do)
2. manual inventory file upload (requires the same file format as FTP sync, but as a simple file upload in the admin UI)
3. manual user entry via a web form (this is what i do for my own inventory since i don't have a POS)
each way will search for the title's bib data and use that to create the foundation of the product. does not work for books without an isbn, unfortunately.
the bibliographic data is evolving and something i like to nerd about. right now, i'm only using isbndb's database. it gets the job done for what i need right now but it's not perfect. when a book product is created, i take the isbn and fetch the bib data for that `Edition`. this data includes author, title, description, publisher, cover image, etc. a bookseller can edit the `Edition` by add/removing whatever they want. they can add additional information to the `Copy`, like the book condition, jacket condition, signed, first edition, etc. they can also add custom photos to the `Copy`, which is useful for collectibles.
i have more details about the data model here: https://docs.bookhead.net/docs/inventory#about-bookheads-dat...
if isbndb data isn't available for a title, then the web form has a way to search the open library database to auto-populate the bibliographic data as best it can. this is not that great tbh and something i might remove. one day, in the further future, i would love to create my own bibliographic database and share it with open library.
i've prototyped a data pipeline that will be able to take onix feeds from ingram and any publisher. ingram's data is the best, but their subscription is expensive, so i'm waiting for a paying customer who requires the best data. it also requires a lot of storage space and compute for the data pipeline. that data source will be a premium feature.
you can create book products three ways:
1. automated file upload via FTP (this is what most POS providers can do)
2. manual inventory file upload (requires the same file format as FTP sync, but as a simple file upload in the admin UI)
3. manual user entry via a web form (this is what i do for my own inventory since i don't have a POS)
each way will search for the title's bib data and use that to create the foundation of the product. does not work for books without an isbn, unfortunately.
the bibliographic data is evolving and something i like to nerd about. right now, i'm only using isbndb's database. it gets the job done for what i need right now but it's not perfect. when a book product is created, i take the isbn and fetch the bib data for that `Edition`. this data includes author, title, description, publisher, cover image, etc. a bookseller can edit the `Edition` by add/removing whatever they want. they can add additional information to the `Copy`, like the book condition, jacket condition, signed, first edition, etc. they can also add custom photos to the `Copy`, which is useful for collectibles.
i have more details about the data model here: https://docs.bookhead.net/docs/inventory#about-bookheads-dat...
if isbndb data isn't available for a title, then the web form has a way to search the open library database to auto-populate the bibliographic data as best it can. this is not that great tbh and something i might remove. one day, in the further future, i would love to create my own bibliographic database and share it with open library.
i've prototyped a data pipeline that will be able to take onix feeds from ingram and any publisher. ingram's data is the best, but their subscription is expensive, so i'm waiting for a paying customer who requires the best data. it also requires a lot of storage space and compute for the data pipeline. that data source will be a premium feature.
This looks really nice! I'm not a bookseller so I can't speak to the value props, but it's clearly coming from a well-informed position based on your background.
thank you!
Curious, if you’re integrating with their POS why is it a subscription instead of taking a percentage of sales?
good question! still figuring out pricing. that might be a better way to do it.
edit: for now, i don't have time to do the accounting etc that sales percentage would require
edit: for now, i don't have time to do the accounting etc that sales percentage would require
looks great. what's your tech stack and background?
django + htmx + vanilla JS, basically. celery and redis for ETL with my own state machine models.
oh yeah, my background: i'm a former bookseller who taught myself to code html and css to redesign the website. i found i liked the creativity and problem solving of coding and became a software developer. my second dev job was the most transformative: i worked for datamade, a civic tech company based in chicago. they mentored me and helped me grow as a developer, eventually becoming a lead developer. i worked on a variety of cool projects for them...a lot of data engineering and projects that make a difference. they are an excellent company and i was fortunate to work there, but i quit that job last year because i was burned out from a variety of things, including building bookhead in my free time. when i quit, i wasn't sure if i wanted to pursue bookhead seriously, so i revised a novel i had written while i decided whether or not to go for it with bookhead. i was lukewarm on pursuing yet another bookselling e-commerce as a business idea. i've seen firsthand how hard it is being an entrepreneur, but i've been excited about this once i landed on the current product vision last winter.
i'm currently working freelance within the civic tech space, doing devops and data engineering for organizations who are working toward criminal justice reform.
i'm currently working freelance within the civic tech space, doing devops and data engineering for organizations who are working toward criminal justice reform.
I use bookshop.org and have had a great experience. Not sure I'll try anything else.
do you have a brick & mortar store? if so, what do you use for managing your inventory? if not, then you might not be the right fit. nonetheless, great feedback if this distinction isn't clear.
also, bookshop is wonderful! we love them. from my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44662335
> i think the modern indie bookstore tech stack should be bookshop.org doing it's thing + a website with your local inventory. let bookshop sell all the inventory you don't have on hand but can easily get from ingram, and then your unique inventory will rise above in SEO.
also, bookshop is wonderful! we love them. from my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44662335
> i think the modern indie bookstore tech stack should be bookshop.org doing it's thing + a website with your local inventory. let bookshop sell all the inventory you don't have on hand but can easily get from ingram, and then your unique inventory will rise above in SEO.
I built Bookhead because I used to work as a bookseller and I wasn't happy with the software options when I decided to sell my own collection online (with the hopes of one day growing so I can open my own brick & mortar). So I decided to make my own bookselling app...a classic hacker distraction.
Bookhead has two main parts: 1. an inventory management app that allows a bookseller to list their books anywhere they want to sell books (like Squarespace, Biblio, eBay, Shopify (coming soon!), etc) 2. an e-commerce platform with a CMS for selling books and letting a store control their online brand
I have a very exciting roadmap that I'm not ready to fully reveal, but it's all based on books. I'm building a sorta Zapier-like platform for independent booksellers. Everything is so fragmented and disconnected, which makes it hard for booksellers to do their work. I'm hoping to change that. I have a blog post that lays out my vision here: https://bookhead.net/blog/fragmented/
The current iteration is like "data engineering as a service for books." A book is a powerful thing. I'm hoping to give a bookstore everything they need to sell books online. Inventory, e-commerce, marketing, etc. It's a crowded market but I've had fun making the bookselling app that I believe should exist.
If you know any booksellers, please let them know about this! I'm onboarding my first customer right now and the biggest bottleneck is the other bookselling software providers, despite my intention to collaborate instead of compete. It's frustrating to wait for two weeks for a point of sale provider to setup an integration. It's almost like they don't care about their customers. Some providers even require ethernet cables for their software...still partying like it's 1999. Perfect for early-adopter booksellers frustrated with current tech who understand the power of automation.
I'm currently looking for funding so I can focus on this full-time. My biggest problem right now is time (aka money) because I have to sell my time to make rent etc, and can't focus on this project like I need to. I've gotten good validation from booksellers and other technically savvy folks in the industry (I've heard from two different companies that they've considered building something like this), so I believe I have something valuable. I'm not interested in funding from somebody who doesn't share my love for books or doesn't support my mission: help people use technology to promote literature. I believe that literature is one of humanity’s most prized creations, and we can use technology as a tool to keep this gift alive.
Please email me at [email protected] if you know of booksellers who might want to be an early adopter, or know of any funding opportunities that might be a good fit.