July 28, 2026
A Tale of Two Comment Sections
Show HN: tale.fyi, we deserve a home for fiction
A dreamy new reading site drops, and the comments instantly turn into book-club chaos
TLDR: tale.fyi is a new free site for reading and listening to classic fiction, with tools for saving your place and posting your own stories. Commenters were split between loving the elegant idea and roasting the autoplay audio, while others immediately demanded totally different features instead.
A creator showed off tale.fyi, a new website pitched as “a home for fiction” online, built around free public-domain classics like Dracula and A Christmas Carol. The big promise is simple enough for anyone to get: start reading, switch to audio when you want, save your place, and even share notes with friends. There’s also a tool for writing your own stories, with a bold promise that writers keep ownership of what they make and their audience too. Very wholesome, very literary, very "the internet has forgotten stories" energy.
But the real page-turner was the comment section, where admiration and eye-rolling arrived at the exact same time. One camp was instantly charmed: people called it “Fantastic,” praised the clean look, and started requesting extras like French support and a clearer bookmark button. Another camp came in with the cold splash of reality: one commenter flatly said, “We have many homes for fiction already,” then dragged the site for autoplaying audio, calling it awful. Ouch. Even the grand line about humanity’s fiction library got side-eye, with someone questioning why copyright law got top billing.
And then came the classic internet plot twist: a commenter basically said, “Nice site, but what I really want is Letterboxd for books.” That may be the funniest part of all. In other words, the launch sparked the oldest online drama there is: people love the vision, but immediately want a different product, three more features, and no autoplay.
Key Points
- •tale.fyi is introduced as a free web platform for fiction focused initially on public-domain works.
- •The platform includes progress saving, switching between reading and listening, and note sharing.
- •The author argues that the internet is largely built for non-fiction and positions tale.fyi as a dedicated home for fiction.
- •The current proof of concept, including a version of *Dracula*, was built over the last two weeks using public-domain resources from Project Gutenberg, Standard Ebooks, and LibriVox.
- •The site also includes a story publishing tool, `tale.fyi/tell`, and the author says creators retain ownership of their work and audience.