Hardcover

Hi PH crew, I'm Ste I've been working together with Adam on Hardcover for the past 2 years. 🫡 Very eager to get this in front of the eyes of all readers everywhere. No matter where you are on your reading journey, check us out! Hardcover is optimised both for huge libraries of 1,000s of books, and readers just starting their journey. It's also great for book discovery via our OpenAI integration and feed where you can see what others are up to (spoiler: reading). Our vision is to become not only a valid G**dreads replacement (which we might already be) but also a functional operating system for the book industry. When we began working on this project, we had little idea about the magnitude of the problems readers, writers, publishers, and everyone in the book space were facing. When you think about it, books are still the main vehicle for new ideas and stories. And right now the fate of the whole ecosystem depends on a few large companies. That have been doing good work in the past, but not an amazing job lately. Hardcover is part of the shift to something new. In the meantime, it's a great place to build your library. Maybe even follow other readers. I've also personally found it to be a great escape from all the noise on other social networks. Building a library and seeing others post their updates is always surprisingly calming. If you sign up, let us know how it goes! ✌️

👋 Hi Book Friends! I'm Adam, the founder of Hardcover, and I'm excited to share our newest version after over two years of building a community, a website, and iOS & Android apps! During that time, we've 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. 🥳 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! This is a bootstrapped passion project by a small but dedicated team working in public with the book community. We absolutely love this space and will be around in the comments. We'd love to hear what you think! 🙌 Join our community and be part of Hardcover's journey!

Congratulations team, I've been following for a little while now and it's so exciting to see this launch finally happening!!

I have actually been having the problems that you guys are trying to solve, having a bunch of books on Kindle's library and not knowing which one to read and then basically stopping it. I think I am going to use this!

SWEET! As an avid book reader this is going to be super helpful for me. I'm sharing it with my team as well. Thanks for making this Ste and Adam, this is amazing! (And as a marketer, I loved loved loved the branding and design, too...)

This is the first Goodreads alternative that actually feels sustainable as a replacement. I've been using it now for a few months, have tried a lot of the other book social and reading log apps out there, but Hardcover is the first where I've felt they're releasing features (and for a bootstrapped app they have incredible momentum releasing new features and improvements) that actually improve on what Goodreads offers, instead of just being "less bloated" than GR. Adam and Ste are dogfooding the app like crazy, and their obvious love of reading and books shows in every decision and aspect of the product. I have a lot of confidence in this app getting better and better as they continue to build it out. Also a lot of revenue potential, when you consider that authors, publishers and bookstores all have a financial interest in getting their books in front of a targeted reading audience. (I trust the creators' ability to find the beneficial balance there and not just bomb the app with ads.) Since I know they're reading, I will offer 1 piece of feedback: this concept of the "Airlist," I really don't get what it's for, or why that's its name. Is it, like, built on Airtable under the hood, and the name is playing off that? If so, non-tech readers won't get that and it's confusing. Can it have a more book-relevant name? Is there a function to it existing? I dunno.

Congratulations on the launch! 🎉 The platform is absolutely phenomenal, making it a top place for readers on the internet! Love the ongoing improvements. Keep going! 🙏