Show HN: Hardcover – Letterboxd for Books(hardcover.app)
hardcover.app
Show HN: Hardcover – Letterboxd for Books
https://hardcover.app
24 comments
Switched from Goodreads to StoryGraph to escape Amazon’s nonsense a while back. Felt like it was missing a few things and found Hardcover recently, and I haven’t looked back.
I don’t really use the social features of these apps, so I’m more interested in the progress tracking and recommendations: I can’t think of any other apps that are working on “AI” recommendations, which so far have been pretty good.
Adam’s email updates are refreshingly non-corporate. Interesting, technical, and honest (he often discusses Hardcover’s finances).
I don’t really use the social features of these apps, so I’m more interested in the progress tracking and recommendations: I can’t think of any other apps that are working on “AI” recommendations, which so far have been pretty good.
Adam’s email updates are refreshingly non-corporate. Interesting, technical, and honest (he often discusses Hardcover’s finances).
Thanks, that's amazing to hear (I'm the Ste Adam mentioned btw)
We've got a lot more plans in the area of AI recommendations. For readers that prefer to avoid the social part of things, I have a hunch that approach might be more comfortable.
We've got a lot more plans in the area of AI recommendations. For readers that prefer to avoid the social part of things, I have a hunch that approach might be more comfortable.
Hi Adam,
Thanks for creating and sharing this. I was using my notes to keep track of it since GoodReads was not a viable option anymore.
I have a couple suggestions/questions:
1. Is there a way to bulk edit a list? I want to most of my Want to Read books and going one by one is slow.
2. Related to the first one, when I click the "Want to Read" big yellow button, it takes about 100-200ms for something to show or be clickable. This is very annoying and probably worth optmizing.
3. When in Airlist (not sure what it means, but appears to be a more advanced view of regular list) when I click manage, nothing appears. This appears to be a bug (and maybe the bulk actions are here).
4. This is a suggestion, make it possible in the settings to configure what the home page is. E.g. I do not like feeds in any application. I would prefer it to be the blog page of hardcover.app or my library, instead of the feed, and have the feed reachable elsewhere.
5. Do you think it will ever be open source? It appears to be an amazing Ruby app, would love to see it's source. Of course the book data could be private (or public even better), but the application source code open source (or even public source with a private license, but ideally open source).
That's basically it. Very grateful for the alternatives that have been popping. Hardcover looks amazing overall.
Thanks for creating and sharing this. I was using my notes to keep track of it since GoodReads was not a viable option anymore.
I have a couple suggestions/questions:
1. Is there a way to bulk edit a list? I want to most of my Want to Read books and going one by one is slow.
2. Related to the first one, when I click the "Want to Read" big yellow button, it takes about 100-200ms for something to show or be clickable. This is very annoying and probably worth optmizing.
3. When in Airlist (not sure what it means, but appears to be a more advanced view of regular list) when I click manage, nothing appears. This appears to be a bug (and maybe the bulk actions are here).
4. This is a suggestion, make it possible in the settings to configure what the home page is. E.g. I do not like feeds in any application. I would prefer it to be the blog page of hardcover.app or my library, instead of the feed, and have the feed reachable elsewhere.
5. Do you think it will ever be open source? It appears to be an amazing Ruby app, would love to see it's source. Of course the book data could be private (or public even better), but the application source code open source (or even public source with a private license, but ideally open source).
That's basically it. Very grateful for the alternatives that have been popping. Hardcover looks amazing overall.
Hey hey! We've talked with a bunch of people using notes and sheets to manage their libraries. Seems to be a common trend from people who want a little more control than Goodreads offers. Here's my take on each of these:
> 1. Is there a way to bulk edit a list?
Not today, but I love the idea. What were you hoping to do in bulk? Change a status? Add to list? etc?
> 2. Related to the first one, when I click the "Want to Read" big yellow button, it takes about 100-200ms for something to show or be clickable.
Yeah, good point. We do like 4 queries there to get all the data for the button, but we could do that in one query and get everything. That would speed it up. We've also talked about splitting the button into a "mark as want to read" button and a "dropdown" button. That way if you just want to mark as a book as "want to read" it's only 1 click.
> 3. When in Airlist when I click manage, nothing appears
Hmm, I see what you mean. That's supposed to be a dropdown with options for edit list, reorder list, save list ordering (in localstorage). But we're in the process of rebuilding that feature, which means sometimes there are no options there. Adding this to our issue tracker.
> 4. This is a suggestion, make it possible in the settings to configure what the home page
That's an interesting one! We've talked about two things that could help there. One is making the feed filterable. If we added feed items for blog post and you could set your filter to only show those that would work. The other thing was creating widgets to show in the left/right columns on the feed page. Do you feel like either/both of those would work?
> 5. Do you think it will ever be open source?
Yes! We have a path to open sourcing that we're starting down this year. It's a difficult one to run locally due to the 8 docker containers needed as well as a lot of local data for books. Right now a big advantage of the team is our agility, and at the moment open sourcing (and getting to the point people can actually run the app) would take some time.
We are thinking about open sourcing the front-end first though. In that case people would work on the Next.js app but use a staging API/database. Any thoughts on that kind of approach to start? Or are you much more curious about the Rails side?
> 1. Is there a way to bulk edit a list?
Not today, but I love the idea. What were you hoping to do in bulk? Change a status? Add to list? etc?
> 2. Related to the first one, when I click the "Want to Read" big yellow button, it takes about 100-200ms for something to show or be clickable.
Yeah, good point. We do like 4 queries there to get all the data for the button, but we could do that in one query and get everything. That would speed it up. We've also talked about splitting the button into a "mark as want to read" button and a "dropdown" button. That way if you just want to mark as a book as "want to read" it's only 1 click.
> 3. When in Airlist when I click manage, nothing appears
Hmm, I see what you mean. That's supposed to be a dropdown with options for edit list, reorder list, save list ordering (in localstorage). But we're in the process of rebuilding that feature, which means sometimes there are no options there. Adding this to our issue tracker.
> 4. This is a suggestion, make it possible in the settings to configure what the home page
That's an interesting one! We've talked about two things that could help there. One is making the feed filterable. If we added feed items for blog post and you could set your filter to only show those that would work. The other thing was creating widgets to show in the left/right columns on the feed page. Do you feel like either/both of those would work?
> 5. Do you think it will ever be open source?
Yes! We have a path to open sourcing that we're starting down this year. It's a difficult one to run locally due to the 8 docker containers needed as well as a lot of local data for books. Right now a big advantage of the team is our agility, and at the moment open sourcing (and getting to the point people can actually run the app) would take some time.
We are thinking about open sourcing the front-end first though. In that case people would work on the Next.js app but use a staging API/database. Any thoughts on that kind of approach to start? Or are you much more curious about the Rails side?
> What were you hoping to do in bulk? Change a status? Add to list? etc?
For now, remove from list, maybe move/add to list.
> One is making the feed filterable. If we added feed items for blog post and you could set your filter to only show those that would work. The other thing was creating widgets to show in the left/right columns on the feed page. Do you feel like either/both of those would work?
I am already pretty happy with the suggestion I did in Discord and has been already deployed, of having the div id in the feed.
Having a setting to disable feed in the settings, or making it show some stats, books read this year, progress bar on goals it more fitting for me as I don't want a feed.
> Any thoughts on that kind of approach to start? Or are you much more curious about the Rails side?
I never had a big open source project of my own, my suggestion is: It does not have to be perfect, nor having an amazing contribute guide. Not even a readme or a license. You can start adding those slowly.
Ideally some time after open source it, from my point of view, I like having a one liner or couple of commands to run the project. That way I can pull, make some changes and test those changes. Then when I open a PR I can get extra insights from the maintainers. Be it a Nix flakes file, a shell.nix file, a docker-compose, or docker container, even a shell script.
[0] https://github.com/mig4ng/ublock-origin-filters
For now, remove from list, maybe move/add to list.
> One is making the feed filterable. If we added feed items for blog post and you could set your filter to only show those that would work. The other thing was creating widgets to show in the left/right columns on the feed page. Do you feel like either/both of those would work?
I am already pretty happy with the suggestion I did in Discord and has been already deployed, of having the div id in the feed.
! Hide hardcover.app Feed
hardcover.app###feed
Having a setting to disable feed in the settings, or making it show some stats, books read this year, progress bar on goals it more fitting for me as I don't want a feed.
> Any thoughts on that kind of approach to start? Or are you much more curious about the Rails side?
I never had a big open source project of my own, my suggestion is: It does not have to be perfect, nor having an amazing contribute guide. Not even a readme or a license. You can start adding those slowly.
Ideally some time after open source it, from my point of view, I like having a one liner or couple of commands to run the project. That way I can pull, make some changes and test those changes. Then when I open a PR I can get extra insights from the maintainers. Be it a Nix flakes file, a shell.nix file, a docker-compose, or docker container, even a shell script.
[0] https://github.com/mig4ng/ublock-origin-filters
To me, the GoodReads model of book reviews, where one user has one review per book, seems quite limited and obsolete. If you were truly an avid reader in the past, you probably underlined text on the pages, wrote notes in the margins, and even kept a diary of your thoughts while reading. A new GoodReads should offer these features. I was inspired by the "How to Japanese" blog, where the blogger once tried liveblogging while reading 1Q84[1]. How wonderful would it be to see what others are thinking when I am reading the same book on the same page?
[1]: https://howtojaponese.com/2009/05/29/1q84-liveblog/
[1]: https://howtojaponese.com/2009/05/29/1q84-liveblog/
Wow, I am surprised, to me that sounds terrible and that it would distract from the entire experience of reading/thinking. I write a bit after I read a book as I think through it, or it invades my daydreams.
Do you do this for nonfiction only, or fiction as well? Very curious to hear more about what value this gives you!
Do you do this for nonfiction only, or fiction as well? Very curious to hear more about what value this gives you!
For both, actually. And I realize I didn’t phrase it very well. I didn’t mean checking out what others think in real time, but only afterward, and async.
And it doesn't have to be a long and complete thought, like an after-reading review, right? Most of the time, it's just, "I like this sentence," "I've had the same thought once," or "I disagree, but I like the author's reasoning," etc. These are ephemeral thoughts that occur during reading, and most of the time, they are lost. It would be nice to have a convenient way to capture them.
StoryGraph actually offers a very close feature called "Track progress", with which one can, well, track progress and add notes correspondingly. But it's only enabled when the status is "currently reading". Ideally, it should extend to any status, one can certainly have afterthoughts much later after reading a book, or even pre-thoughts before reading it. :D
And it doesn't have to be a long and complete thought, like an after-reading review, right? Most of the time, it's just, "I like this sentence," "I've had the same thought once," or "I disagree, but I like the author's reasoning," etc. These are ephemeral thoughts that occur during reading, and most of the time, they are lost. It would be nice to have a convenient way to capture them.
StoryGraph actually offers a very close feature called "Track progress", with which one can, well, track progress and add notes correspondingly. But it's only enabled when the status is "currently reading". Ideally, it should extend to any status, one can certainly have afterthoughts much later after reading a book, or even pre-thoughts before reading it. :D
You're probably gonna like what were working on right now.
It basically covers what you described. We've been wondering if it's actually a valid use case, and seeing that there are readers who'd want to do that is reassuring.
Would you want those notes public? And if they're public, how would you feel about people replying to them?
I will let users decide whether they want comments or not. I've also considered public/private notes, as I am working on something similar, and I've reached the conclusion that people post on a web app because they want to be seen; otherwise, they would just write in their diary. Private notes always give me a sense of false privacy, as anyone with admin access to the database can read whatever private things you've written, unless you make it clear to users that "private" means not viewable by other users but not private from the admins. An alternative is to offer an offline app, private notes never sync to the server (cross-device syncing can be done by iCloud, for example).
Gotcha, I can dig it :)
So like a nightly check-in in some ways, I read x much and had these thoughts. Like a little book diary.
So like a nightly check-in in some ways, I read x much and had these thoughts. Like a little book diary.
I know this is very niche, so I implemented it myself :)
https://luvdb.com/read/_hzw/checkins/
https://luvdb.com/read/_hzw/checkins/
Okay, I think this partly answers my previous question. Looks great!
We're looking to also let you add where you actually are in the book (page/minute) so the result can be close to an async book club. You'll also be able to set privacy, so they can be private notes or only shared with your network.
Hey! I'm pretty new to Hardcover, but I immediately fell in love with the design and brought my partner and friend over (hopefully will get another friend to join!) Planning on supporting next month. Everything about the app and the team are amazing. Keep up the good work! Didn't know about 250 members in the last three days - really happy to hear that & will be recommending Hardcover for a long time.
Aww, thank you so much! I think I saw you joined our Discord too. Welcome to the community. :)
The recent redesign of the book page alone took about 6 months of research, prototypes and discussions with readers before it got to where it is today. One of my favorite parts was posting on Discord, getting feedback, and then updating the designs over and over until it was right. I think we'll probably do that again for Discussions and Author page updates next.
The recent redesign of the book page alone took about 6 months of research, prototypes and discussions with readers before it got to where it is today. One of my favorite parts was posting on Discord, getting feedback, and then updating the designs over and over until it was right. I think we'll probably do that again for Discussions and Author page updates next.
I did, thank you! I recently got into reading again after a long time, and tried a few different websites before I found Hardcover through Reddit. Really happy I didn't settle. The amount of feedback you all take is really incredible and exactly what me and my friend were looking for - a great team alongside a great website that we want to support. I really didn't want to support Amazon. Excited to see what comes next!
Looks good, will check it out. There is also BookWyrm, which works with decentralized, ActivityPub-servers: https://joinbookwyrm.com/
BookWyrm is doing some really cool stuff. Definitely want to see them succeed too. I like the idea that we'd eventually be able to federate with them down the line once we hit a point where we're at least cover costs.
I am a huge fan of hardcover! I've been using it to recommend books to my friends and newsletter subscribers for a while now. It's gotten tons of great attention over the past few months, too.
Keep it up - and congrats on the launch!
Keep it up - and congrats on the launch!
Thanks Mike! It's been a ton of fun to build this out.
Thanks for building this. A few suggestions
- The "Load More" in "Want to read" scrolls the page back up to the top. With thousands of books this becomes a pain. Firefox 116.0.3 (64-bit) on Ubuntu 22.
- Add multi factor authentication. In today's world it's a no-brainer.
The Goodreads comparisons are inevitable but we need more options, so it's good to see Hardcover. Storygraph does not cut it for me and we never know when Amazon might shutdown GR.
- The "Load More" in "Want to read" scrolls the page back up to the top. With thousands of books this becomes a pain. Firefox 116.0.3 (64-bit) on Ubuntu 22.
- Add multi factor authentication. In today's world it's a no-brainer.
The Goodreads comparisons are inevitable but we need more options, so it's good to see Hardcover. Storygraph does not cut it for me and we never know when Amazon might shutdown GR.
Also, the profile page status is incorrect. It shows Want to Read as 234, but the actual number is in the thousands - the correct number shows up if I go to userid/books. This is probably a caching issue somewhere.
Fantastic story and i think you are already better than goodreads!
Thank you so much! We've heard that from a dozens of members too. That's kind of staggering to me that two people working part time can create something that can compete with a top 100 site in the world owned by a trillion dollar company.
A little over two years ago, Goodreads announced they were shutting off access to their API. I was using it to show what I was reading on my blog at the time, and started looking for alternatives. I found a few that showed potential. I'd been using Letterboxd for a few years at that point and felt it had something that was missing from GR and the others I found, but I couldn't put my finger on it.
I decided to build it instead (I'm sure many creators can relate ). I made a post on the /r/cofounders subreddit about the idea, and found Ste. With me as a full-stack product dev and him on product design, we talked to hundreds of readers about what they want in a book tracking and social platform. We've listened to their feedback, tested and iterated constantly. We believe we've created a book space that feels as warm as a familiar library but as exciting as a midnight book launch party.
This past weekend we launched Hardcover on Product Hunt (and hit #3!). We describe Hardcover as a book tracking social network for readers to find new books, track what they read and make lasting connections with other readers. So, Letterboxd for books!
Here are a few of my favorite things you can do on Hardcover:
Find books - Search for books you know of, check out trending books, explore lists and prompts to find hidden gems, review your recommendations, stumble on friends reads in your feed, or browse all book by genre, mood or tag.
Decide what to read - Besides all the book facts you'd expect to see, we show you a personalized Match Score from 0% to 100% for each book based on your reading history. You'll also see ratings & reviews from readers you follow and readers most similar to you.
Track your reading - One place for every book you want to read, have read and more. You can set your privacy level to public, private (for a book?) or friends only. Use Airlists (our version of Airtable for Books) to further organize your library.
Log your reads - Rate and review books on a 5-star scale with half-star increments. Showcase your favorite books on your profile at hardcover.app/@username
Read even more - Set reading goals and explore your reading stats through charts and data visualizations to help keep you consistent and understand your own reading habits and tastes.
AI librarian, Bookle game, referral program, Goodreads/StoryGraph importer, GraphQL API, light/dark modes, an active Discord and so much more!
I'm excited to share and get feedback from the Hacker News community we've all been a part of for so long (even if I've mostly lurked here since 2009 ).
In terms of launch numbers (which I always love to see), here's our dashboard that shows how it went. We had about 250 new members join in the last 3 days, and a few new subscribers. We're still a ways away from being profitable. It costs us about $1,000/month to run Hardcover – even before salaries. We're about 30% of the way there.
https://wp.hardcover.app/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Screensh...
I'm most excited about the momentum from launch - seeing people share Hardcover with friends of theirs who read and growing the community. If you're a reader I'd love to invite you to join us! Any feedback, questions or comments are always welcome. I'm an open book, so feel free to ask me anything.
Adam https://hardcover.app/@adam