I have been hanging out on reddit.com/r/startups as well as Onstartups for a while now and I thoight I should give in to HN. It is a very interesting community and I would really value your feedback.

http://bit.ly/10xNPsS My idea is to allow users to discover books. Many people say thay they do not remember the full title of a book that they saw. Sometimes they remember certain words such as "Lord","Fly", or "slaughterhouse". Sometimes they do not even remember that! However, I believe humans can rememver objects, shapes and colors much more than words. My "application" would allow users to come on the website, entere colors, words, objects that they remember seeing on the cover, perhaps summarize the book's story (all fields are optional) and even narrow it down by categories if they are confident in the book's genre.

So, if user described a white horse illustration on a red book with yellow titles and one word "rye", they would see a cover of possible books on of which would be "Catcher in the Rye".

Plot summary would work a bit differently but I do not think my explanation of that algorithm is related to the question.

I already know that this isn't a million dollar idea. Rarily do people look for books online. On Goodreads.com however, there are more than 12000 posts about users describing the plot trying to figure out the name of the book. I feel like I want to pursue this idea mainly to gain valuable experience. I have many other more "vaiable" ideas but I feel like this is a good start as there are less variables for me to worry about.

My plan is to contact publishers and ask for their opinion about this. Whether they would think it's worth it to submit keywords for possibly getting more sales is anyone's guess.

Do you guys think I can gain experience from success/failure from this idea? How else can I get keywords (colors, objects etc)? Any other general feedback? I asked my friend about this who has experience with Ruby on Rails but he is not interested, where else can I find potential tech cofounders (please refrain from suggesting forums)? I am looking to learn Django this summer once my University semester is over but I need someone with experience. I can handle design and other aspects of course!

Thanks! Very excited to see what you guys have to say.

- bhargav.