iChatBook lets you chat with your books. Existing book apps we tried don't actually have knowledge of the book contents. Other apps that let you chat with your files, don't make it easy to chat specifically with books.
we were on the hunt for a product to let us read/discover/study books. there were some things out there, but nothing that fit the bill.
using AI is great, but it doesn't know everything,. it doesn't know about things in books. other apps out there let you upload a bunch of files. chat with your files as one big long list. that's great, but we needed a way to group and categorize our books into collections. so we built shelves.
the apps that are targeted at book readers, let you create representations of books with the title and book cover. we say 'representation' because some of these apps didn't use the book contents as the source of truth. we found a couple book apps in the wild, that didn't even use the book. it was just gpt. so we built a way to import the books and use that as the source of truth.
most of the apps didn't do much, in the way of prompt engineering. we wanted our chats to be engaging and interesting, so we paid a bit of attention to that, too.
uploading books is great, but, a lot of users don't even have any books as files. not everybody keeps book files on their phone or laptop. we wanted a way to click once, to chat with a book. no uploads, no downloads, no typing. so we built instant chat features for the most popular books.
we humans are social creatures. that's why we create book clubs. we want to be encouraged to keep on reading. we want validation when we finish a book. we want to discuss with others, about all the things in the book. we wanted a way to share our bookshelves with others. so we built a solution to share bookshelves.
lastly, a big part of reading books, is discovery. who doesn't get excited going to the bookstore, the library, or shopping for books online? all the new titles you discover, some of your favorite authors; and new ones, too. so we are building better ways to discover and chat with your book authors. this is an ongoing endeavor. more to come soon.
we didn't need another book reading app, or reading tracker, or ai book chat app. we needed a very specific solution to a very common problem. it's still early days, and some things may break unexpectedly, but it's mostly working really well, and we invite you to give it a try!
Brian Yang