Exploring Libraries
I’m scared of libraries.
I’m scared of libraries.
I like Goodreads - It’s so much better to read reviews than to skim bookshelves in a store or library - How else will I know if a book is any good?
I love bookshops. The cosy atmosphere. The full shelves. Books on all sides. The serendipity of discovering unknown books. Peak local business.
Back to my fear: A wall of books. The great problem with libraries is: I see a book on a shelf, and I don’t know if it’s any good. There’s no quick way to determine if a book is worth reading, or if I’ll enjoy it. Bookshops have implemented a genius piece of technology to solve this problem: the Human. Walk up to what they call a “staff member” and ask for a recommendation. Then the “staff member” will make some suggestion. Pretty great.
But staff members are, in fact, only so scaleable. Amazon knows what I want to read better than my librarian friend - they’ve got more data on me. I still check reviews online, even when at a local bookshop. While judging books by their covers is fun, I’d like to avoid it.
Solution
I’m shocked we don’t already have an AR product for readers to discover great books in person. Point your phone at a shelf and highlight the best books.
Look - there’s this research from 2011 - it’s exactly what we should expect. It’s got to be trivial to productize this now.
A mobile app can highlight the top rated or most expensive novels. You can search books on a shelf. Exploring stores gets more fun. Even throw on some AR game while you’re at it.
A mobile app to point at a bookshelf to search and filter books provides clear value: Staff can find misplaced books. Guests can navigate large libraries. Valuable books don’t get lost. Research confirms what everyone knows: books on the bottom shelf aren’t oggled at as often as books on eye-level shelves.
Market
AR apps for finding and searching stock have been obvious for a decade. And they work. Walmart uses one:
Walmart tells us it used to take an employee about two and a half minutes of searching to find the right box in the back room. With the app, it takes one third as much time. Now an employee needs just 42 seconds on average to find that box of mustard or toothbrush heads in the back room.
There’s a particular type of local business that has a lot of stock that customers (and staff) need to navigate… bookstores.
The number of independent bookstores continues to climb. The number of public libraries has remained around 9000 since 1992. Print publishing revenues decline, but it is still a massive industry - $75 billion in 2021. That’s more than enough to sustain custom software.
There’s another way this product provides value beyond consumers and search: It’s useful for identifying valuable books in second hand shops or estate sales. Digging through piles of potential trash and finding the valuable books is hard. A Brickit-inspired tool makes uncovering value that much easier. If selling to booksellers doesn’t work, selling to book buyers is an equally valid business, even if the TAM is smaller.
Next
Does this already exist? Are librarians sufficient? Do you know any libraries that use something like this? Does this spark ideas? Drop a comment or email me at npeercy@substack.com.