The top search is a Harold Robbins novel in Crystal Lake. I would not have bet on that.
Field Tests
Ideas I couldn't
leave alone.
So I build small versions and see if anyone cares. Some grow up. Some get killed, and those stay on this page too. It's the same method I use with clients. Small test, real numbers, then decide.
The question
When a character on screen is reading something, does anyone else hit pause to find out what it is? I always do. I wanted to know if that was a market or just me.
The test
I built a catalog of the books characters read in TV shows and movies in a weekend with Claude. Every book gets an entry with the scene, the character, and why that book ended up in their hands. Buy links go to Bookshop.org, so the money lands at indie bookstores and Jeff Bezos will be fine without this one.
Field notes
What's happened so far.
Numbers with a green line update on their own.
Nov 1
The catalog holds 15 shows and films, 213 books and 186 scenes. 262 people have stopped by, and Google sent 98 of them without being asked. Revenue from readers is $0.
Oct 28
Oct 28
There's one $3.59 commission on the books, and I'm guilty, that was me buying a book.
Oct 27
Told LinkedIn. Built it quietly, then stopped being quiet.
Oct 21
Gave the Spine Scanner its own key. Reader screenshots now fill themselves in.
Oct 17
Shipped v1 over a weekend. One show, one library stack, five books.
How it works
The nerdy part is
my favorite part.
Four steps from a paused TV to a page you can buy from. Built with Claude, Next.js and Vercel. The AI brings me leads. I make the call.
01
Spine ScannerSend a screenshot. Or a crooked phone photo of your TV.
It reads every spine in the frame and writes down exactly what it saw, even when the edge of the shot cuts a title off. Then it matches each one to a real ISBN and scores how sure it is. It reads the streaming player's scrub bar too, so it knows the show, the episode and the timecode.
1
2
3
4
5
Carrie · S1 E2 · 31:46
| What it read on the spine | Matched to |
|---|---|
| “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings / Maya Angelou” | Angelou |
| “LAST NIGHT AT THE TELEGRAPH CLU” | Malinda Lo |
| “MARGARET ATWOOD THE HANDMAID’S T” | Atwood |
| “JOHN GREEN looking for alaska” | Green |
| “ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST” | Kesey |
02
Episode modeFeed it a whole episode. Get back one contact sheet.
It pulls a frame at every scene change. A cheap model throws out anything without books in it, and a smarter one reads what's left. Most of an episode is faces and hallways, so most of the work is knowing what to skip.
Every cutA frame at each scene change
Cheap modelAny books? Most frames get skipped
Smart modelReads the spines on the hits only
03
Auto-assetsEvery find dresses itself.
Cover, show art, a share card, a Reel sequence and a buy link, all without me touching it. It always picks an edition with a real cover, because a gray cloth binding never sold anyone a book.
04
I make the callNothing goes up as fact until I say so.
Each draft arrives with scene context pulled from the episode transcript and the sources it leaned on. I approve it from my phone. Rather incomplete than incorrect.
Reader frameUnconfirmed
The stack behind Kate, Madam Secretary
Back in season 2, Kate gets told to pick a gimmick, “pins like Albright,” and goes with a black suit instead. Two seasons later the pins still lost, but the book made the set.
Source · The Diplomat S2 E5 transcript
What happens next
The deadline.
0 / 10
Reader frames from strangers by Nov 30
0 / 250
Newsletter subscribers by Nov 30
2 / 100
Founding Sleuths, the first 100 readers with a published frame
Friends and family don't count. If strangers don't show up by the end of November, this moves to Killed and I'll write about why.