Designer: You're right, of course. I'd like to have someone to work with, but I can't pay right now, so it'd have to be someone coming on board to work on this and other sites for equity. I'd like that, but even then the person needs to be a good fit. Anyone here is welcome to get in touch with me and talk. Beyond that, thank you for the specific discussion points. That helps my "engineer-visual-design" brain target concrete things that I can improve.
- Moving the ratings/voting up is probably a good idea.
- A separate page for the discussion might risk making it invisible - the scenario I envisage is someone coming to the site, seeing a comment and feeling a need to respond to it because it makes sense, or is wrong, or needs responding too in some way. But if that's all burried under a 'discussion' link, it might not be so easy to find. Of course you're right that it doesn't (can't really) jump out at you right now because it's at the bottom of the page...
- book marketplace: I'm not convinced - that's Amazon's business, and I have no hope of competing with them. I do have a shot, I think, at creating a place for people to come and discuss the books, because their review/comment system doesn't really foster that kind of interaction, and I'm targeting a niche that is small/concentrated enough that I have a chance at prevailing.
- Moving the ratings/voting up is probably a good idea.
- A separate page for the discussion might risk making it invisible - the scenario I envisage is someone coming to the site, seeing a comment and feeling a need to respond to it because it makes sense, or is wrong, or needs responding too in some way. But if that's all burried under a 'discussion' link, it might not be so easy to find. Of course you're right that it doesn't (can't really) jump out at you right now because it's at the bottom of the page...
- book marketplace: I'm not convinced - that's Amazon's business, and I have no hope of competing with them. I do have a shot, I think, at creating a place for people to come and discuss the books, because their review/comment system doesn't really foster that kind of interaction, and I'm targeting a niche that is small/concentrated enough that I have a chance at prevailing.