Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Each week Adam & Ste focus on a specific feature, idea or prototype in Hardcover and iterate on it together or with guests.
Adam (00:01.456)
Hey, hey, stay, how's it going?
Ste (00:03.728)
Adam is going well enjoying another evening in London with the kid to sleep and Yeah ready for this hardcover life. How about you?
Adam (00:14.062)
Thanks for watching!
Good. Just getting ready for the release this week. So I've been like, taking the weekend off to kind of prepare, because I feel like I'm more energized if I go into the week with like, you know, not having worked on things all weekend. But yeah.
Ste (00:38.297)
Yeah, it's good. It's coming up for everybody watching out there. We've got our Product Hunt launch on the 30th and it's a pretty big deal because we haven't done one since two years ago and Product Hunt is the place where products like ours get discovered.
and is the place where many of the things you're probably using right now have launched. And yeah, that's what we've been preparing for. And it's been fun. It's been fun. Are you? Yeah.
Adam (01:24.236)
Aside from that, what have you been up to lately?
Ste (01:26.808)
Well, nothing much, just parenting. Mostly, my kid entered what they call the fourth leap in perception or something like that, where you're able to tell events from one another. And yeah, up until this point, it was just separate things. I don't know if I might move my hand like this.
it would be like two separate stuff, my hand here and my hand here. Now it's a whole event. So it's like, whoa, waving. So yeah, that's been very, very exciting. Yeah. And apart from that, I restarted learning French and Japanese on the Worldingo. Yeah. So it was also that.
Adam (02:10.411)
Mmm.
Adam (02:14.962)
Oh, nice. Yeah. How's the so for French, at least like it's using the, you know, the alphabet, how is how have you found learning Japanese on Duolingo? Does it use like hiragana katakana?
Ste (02:29.784)
Yeah, yeah, it uses that and there's a separate place where you learn the actual characters and I have like a little notepad where I'm trying to scribble all of them. But I think they changed it because I started learning it about three years ago as well and then I dropped off and it was different. It didn't feel like this well put together but now it's pretty okay.
So you get the structure of the words and you can also practice the actual characters themselves.
Adam (03:06.554)
Nice.
Ste (03:07.188)
Yeah, I'm just starting out with French. I'm a little bit more advanced because I started I started like eight years in Uh high school, but yeah, it didn't stick so I'm kind of like trying to yeah, we learn it. How about you? Did you ever learn any french or japanese for that matter?
Adam (03:19.084)
Man.
Adam (03:27.286)
took seven years of Spanish because I grew up in Florida, so it made sense to learn Spanish as my secondary language. And a lot of it stuck with me, like I still know the basics. Like I'm able to understand maybe 25% of what my wife's family says. But for fun, a couple years ago I started learning Japanese too.
Ste (03:47.052)
Nice. OK. That's more than something. Ha ha ha.
Adam (03:56.342)
and I was using WaniKani for it, which is, I think it's... Yeah, it's more on the kanji side, so I was really interested in being able to read it, for being able to read manga or be able to read a video game, and it does spaced repetition of
Ste (04:04.568)
Yeah, you have to link me to that.
Ste (04:15.105)
Yeah.
Adam (04:26.026)
farther in the future for the next time you review it than if you get it wrong. So it kind of keeps track of knowing like what you need to learn and focus on the most.
Ste (04:37.68)
Okay, well that sounds really good. Yeah, it definitely gonna help.
Adam (04:41.962)
And it has like stories for every character. Like, so like for, I think for fire, for volcano or something, like it tells like the, there's this idea of radicals in kanji where it's like each like little sub symbols that make up a kanji. So it kind of breaks it down into like, a kanji has these three radicals, and here's the story of these three radicals and how it.
The result of that is this kanji. So it's a good memorization device.
Ste (05:12.16)
Oh, yeah, I never could get those and I'm a little bit scared of advancing because that's where I got stuck last time and I totally like blue it because I didn't like spend any time on it for three years. So yeah, definitely link me to that. Yeah, that's good. Nice. Apart from that other like events stuff you've been up to places you've went.
Adam (05:42.798)
This weekend was FANIX here in Salt Lake, which is our big comic book pop culture convention, kind of like Comic-Con or something like that. It used to be called Comic-Con, but then they had to change their name for legal reasons. But it was fun. It was like, I don't know, 10,000 people at a convention center and lots of panels and dealers' room to walk around and buy stuff and food trucks. So it was a fun weekend.
or Saturday.
Ste (06:14.476)
Yeah, that sounds fun. I mean, lots of stuff happening in Salt Lake, especially in this space.
Adam (06:22.098)
Yeah, yeah, it uh, my favorite panel ended up being, there's a YouTube channel that I watch called a Cinema Therapy, where it's these two guys on a couch, one of them's a therapist, one of them's a director, and they break down a movie and they talk about like, they talk about it from both a director's like point of view and a therapist's point of view.
Ste (06:46.784)
Wow, okay, wow, leather box must be like all over that. Ha ha ha.
Adam (06:51.675)
Yeah, so they did a live show where they broke down their relationship in the Star Wars prequel between Anakin and Padme and like the good and bad of that relationship, mostly the bad.
Ste (07:10.188)
Wow, okay, yeah, I've been interested in seeing that. Yeah, I guess for a psychologist, yeah, lots of stuff to dig into there.
Adam (07:21.496)
It's a good channel.
Ste (07:23.548)
Yeah, I've already searched for it. I got it in my tabs. That's nice. Yeah, that's perfect. What do you want to talk about today? Should we go over the hardcover launch maybe and, yeah, talk about next steps from there? And I was thinking, because last week we did that regular size for the discussions. Maybe we can either continue that or maybe do that for the
authors and maybe even the profile pages, maybe you can dig into some stuff there. What do you think?
Adam (08:02.362)
Yeah, I was thinking about launch stuff for sure. I know like you've been doing some work on the homepage. I was wondering if you wanted to chat about some of the homepage updates for the launch.
Ste (08:16.048)
Oh yeah, definitely. Yeah, we can go through the homepage and show people what we're planning to put up live in production. Let me see if I have the web open up. Here it is.
Ste (08:32.216)
Just a second so I can share this.
Ste (08:39.669)
Yeah.
thing here we go
Ste (08:47.5)
Yeah, does it show up?
Adam (08:51.054)
Let me see, I went full screen so now maybe it doesn't. Not showing up.
Ste (08:55.73)
Maybe I have to.
Ste (09:01.112)
Well, okay.
Adam (09:02.174)
There we go. Something's happening. Yeah. Cool.
Ste (09:04.388)
Oh yeah, here we go. Yeah, so this is the new hardcover homepage. And last week we've talked about how one little words can change your whole perception and your whole decision about, am I going to sign up to this? Is it really trustworthy? Am I gonna spend time in, especially, you know, thinking that we're an app.
where people invest a lot of time. So you have to import your library or you have to build your library. That's, I guess, at least one, two, or a couple of hours even of effort they have to put into just setting it up. So thinking about that, that's like the big insights that we've used to build this new homepage. And...
As you can see, we have a new headline, which is Booksmart. So the thing with this, and I hope, and I'm actually curious how people perceive it, is that we've been searching for a lot of ideas on how to present hardcover. So it's either find your life-changing book or find, or the reader's social network.
or track books and whatever the technical part of building the libraries. But we've been peddling all of these options and we wanted something that's short, nice, but also leaves a bit of the mystery. So we're not just saying we're a social network or we're a place where you can track your reading.
because we're all of that, or we're a place where you can discover new books by looking at other people's libraries or by asking jewels, or by whatever means, prompts, or through discussions that we're working on right now. We're all that, but we wanted something that would be punchy and, you know, make you think, okay, let's see what this is about. So kind of a hook.
Ste (11:23.98)
So this is the hook. Book smart. So book is actually like a verb here. So you book smart. So you actually do all that. But it's also a wordplay. So then there's the subheadline, which actually tells you what you can do. You can build your legacy library, share it with the world or not, because you cannot do that. And find your books through. Then we got these four boxes.
Then a new thing you're going to see, which is similar to how Leatherbox presents movies, the trending books on hardcover. And here we're going to have the top books of the, I put here the last three months, but what do you think, Adam? Should it be the last three months, or should it be more maybe the last month or the last week even?
Adam (12:25.542)
What if we keep it like this with three months, but then on the right hand side where it says popular books in the last three months, we have like three months is like a link and there's also a link for one year and all time and those could go to the trending pages for three months, one year and all time.
Either that or they could change what's here on the home page if we wanted to make it dynamic.
Ste (12:57.516)
Yeah, I think just to link would work great. That's a great idea. So we live three months here, but we also put the old time and the, was it the one month?
Adam (13:08.322)
the one year.
Ste (13:09.616)
One year. Okay, yeah. Yeah, because few months is like our like shortest timeline, right?
Adam (13:18.346)
Yeah, as we get more readers, I think it'll make sense to have a one month. But right now there's, it would be like jumbled up because there would be a lot of books that might have one save at one month. So three months is enough time to even like the hundredth one has a couple of saves.
Ste (13:36.98)
Yeah, and I love it that we actually have a book that I haven't seen anywhere else, which is Legends and Lattes, and I love that in the top. Is it, I think it's still number one?
Adam (13:51.214)
I think it got knocked down to number two, I don't know, three months on, just recently.
Ste (13:57.433)
OK. OK, competition. I love that. OK, then there's a missing image here, but you can actually see it's on the current home page. And there's this section which is presenting the core of what hardcover is. Then, I mean, by this point, people might think, OK, so I get what hardcover does, but I'm already building a library else.
where maybe it's on Goodreads, maybe it's on the Storegraph, maybe I build it on Notion or in a CSV. Can I import it? So we have a section here, it's Jules carrying books from another place that tells you, okay, you can actually import now, and this is a link to the signup page where you go through the onboarding. So I can import it. Then of course, something that's very important to us as our mission.
which is the thing that started this. I was doing a recap on Twitter and this is like part of hardcover lore, the moment that, you know, you Adam got so pissed off basically that Goodreads discontinued their API that you actually thought let's freaking do this. So yeah, talking about our mission and
Adam (15:23.918)
And I love the eye of Saruman Amazon. It's literary and it's on brand. It satisfies multiple use cases.
Ste (15:34.86)
Yeah, well, I put it there like really, really small so, you know, we don't get sued, hopefully. But yeah, I mean, hoping we don't get sued. If anybody notices this or listens to this, please don't like go Amazon, I guess. I mean, they wouldn't sue us on what grounds.
Adam (15:56.13)
Do you think somewhere in this mission, we'd want to include a link to our manifesto here rather than the Discord or?
Ste (16:06.276)
Oh yeah, definitely.
Adam (16:09.274)
I feel like it could go either way.
Ste (16:11.072)
Yeah, I'm gonna replace it because we have a Discord link further down next to our team. So yeah, it makes sense to have the manifesto here rather than the Discord link. So I'm gonna remember and replace that. Yeah, that's a good point. So now you see, you know, we're on a mission. You should join us on this mission. And then we have a little section that tells you, okay.
We actually need to keep the lights on. So what you can do is, if you wanna help us build hardcover, you can become a supporter. And this is the new supporter section, which is a bit shorter and it has the things you're gonna get here. This should be a link to the supporter page. And I also made a nice graph of jewels in a rocket to, you know, signify the heights.
you will take as a supporter, which is mainly about the power of the book stats and the ability to create prompts and edit books and all the other features we're planning to include in this plan. So yeah, short to the point about what they can get. Then there's a blog with the latest free posts.
Ste (17:40.396)
This is our blog, basically. And yeah. Then you have two sections where you can see the other things you can do on hardcover. Because we have some nifty tools that people can use, like Booko or AskJewels, which is our open-air powered book finding companion.
Adam (17:45.067)
Yeah, that looks good.
Ste (18:08.292)
And over here, I was thinking this little rectangle. We could put the actual book of latest cover pixelated in here. It's actually a div. So yeah, where is it? Yeah, it's, where the hell is it? Other stuff you can do.
Adam (18:21.408)
Ah, yeah.
Adam (18:27.462)
Nice.
Ste (18:37.344)
Yeah, I didn't delete the previous ones. That's why I'm having a hard job finding them. But yeah, well, you'll have to trust me, I guess. It's a div. So yeah, I was thinking this could go there and the Ask Jules, so I actually have to. So this is the dark mode. I have to remember to change the color on the open AI logo.
Yeah. And then there's the current team and the join us on Discord link.
Ste (19:20.161)
And then a few numbers. So you can see the top genres on hardcover and the number of books associated with each one. And these would basically be the ones that you can also see in the explore genres. Sorry, it's working a little bit slow, but yeah, just have a little glimpse of what.
Adam (19:42.446)
Make sense.
Ste (19:47.258)
you can actually like dig into.
Yeah, and I was thinking that could be it because, you know, I'm guessing by this point, you've learned about what hardcover is, why hardcover was born, who's building it and...
by this point, you would know, do I want to sign up or not? Maybe we should put, well, you have the login button in the header. Do you think that's enough or should we create another CTA at the end of the page? What do you think?
Adam (20:29.298)
Yeah, I was thinking that the bottom one, the newsletter one, what if we replaced that whole section with more of a, like a, a called action to join. And then that would just pull up the modal right, right here on this page. Because I'm thinking, I'm thinking that for the newsletter, uh, one of the things that we've kind of started to realize is that we want to send people,
Ste (20:45.603)
Yeah.
Adam (20:56.83)
We want to send people the newsletter. Well, I guess it's a lot of the times I find myself when I'm writing the newsletter, wanting to use things that are only for subscribers. And right now we have subscribers and non-subscribers in that newsletter. So we kind of have to like split the newsletter and do some, some things just for users on the newsletter and some things for guests on the newsletter. So I feel like if we kind of move towards the direction that everyone on the newsletter has an account.
it would make things easier long term.
Ste (21:29.76)
Yeah, yeah, fully on board with that. So definitely gonna replace this with a CTA because you're right. I mean, if you want to get subscribed to the newsletter, you can always create an account.
Adam (21:46.61)
Yeah. And yeah. And when you do create an account, it automatically subscribes you and then you can unsubscribe right away if you don't want it.
Ste (21:47.908)
Bye!
Ste (21:55.148)
Yeah, exactly. Well, yeah, that makes sense. And I had a question for non-onboarding users. So if you create an account but aren't onboarded, you still receive the newsletter, right?
Adam (22:09.258)
Right now, yes, yeah. And we'll have full control over that in loops to decide what we want to do.
Ste (22:10.91)
Okay.
Ste (22:15.872)
Nice. Yeah, well, this sounds good. Do you see any other section going here? Did you feel like anything was missing?
Adam (22:27.031)
Hmm.
Let me think.
Adam (22:37.243)
I do kind of like one section from our homepage, but I feel like it might be overkill now. Like something that includes like match percentage. Because I feel like that's one thing we're not like hitting on as much.
Ste (22:50.312)
Mm, yep.
Ste (22:53.748)
Mm-hmm. I could definitely create one of these and let's see. So right now, this is our app. And if we go here, we have match percentage here and we have match percentage there a little bit. Well, it's not match percentage, but oh, yeah, we actually have it here with the...
rocket that I use for the supporter plan. But definitely, yeah, let's create another one of these sections for mesh percentage.
Ste (23:33.708)
Yeah, that makes sense. I was also going to say, maybe we can import, you know, in the designs we have our featured prompts as well. And it doesn't include, it just includes the covers. But I don't know how difficult or if we actually, like, want that on the homepage.
Adam (23:34.542)
Okay.
Adam (23:59.402)
Yeah, I mean, I like that. And yeah, we could just use the same format that we show prompts on other pages because we have that in the components. That one's really easy to add.
Ste (24:12.712)
Okay, yeah, maybe then just add that in as well. Makes a little bit maybe in between here or in between here because the sections are boxed. And yeah, I kind of feel the need to add something in here. And it's not too long, which is good. I was looking at other homepages. So let's actually look at loops or actually look at linear.
And I wanted to see like how further down they go. So how much you have to scroll to, yeah, basically get an idea of what the app is about. And yeah, for linear, the for loops is actually like quite, yeah, quite short and to the point. And yeah, I feel like we got there. We don't offer any unnecessary details because yeah, those can also hurt, you know.
has to be focused and I feel like it's going there.
Adam (25:17.33)
Yeah, I feel like if we wanted to include a link to anything, we could include a link to... We have this Goodreads versus Hardcover thing in our blog, and that one might be neat to kind of include somewhere, but I'm not sure where we would include that link.
Ste (25:43.2)
Yeah, it could be either as part of a blog, like sticky posts. Like we have these, which are the latest posts. And then we also have a few sticky posts, so maybe two or three. So we have these three and maybe the Goodreads one, either in another column or like a
underneath, treat separately, what do you think?
Adam (26:18.258)
Yeah, I might be able to include it just the title too, not like the full card.
Ste (26:24.372)
Yeah, that's true. Yeah, we could do that kind of view. And I think it might make sense to have it next to the higher covered blog. And we should definitely do more of those, maybe even in a special format to compare to other alternatives out there. But yeah, Goodreads is a big one. That's the one we should be, I guess, digging into.
Adam (26:53.782)
maybe the part where it says import your library and there we could have a link to like how is hardcover different from Goodreads or something. And that would take you.
Ste (27:01.744)
Oh, yeah. Yeah, actually. Yeah, a piece of content here. So hardcover versus good reads would be nice.
Adam (27:12.114)
Yeah. And then that just, yeah, it just goes to the blog post and they can, yeah. It's kind of like people that get to that point and just want to see the differences. They could jump there.
Ste (27:23.756)
Yeah, exactly. I'm wondering how that post looks like. Mainly wondering if we can add a CTA at the end of that post so they can sign up from there. I'm guessing we can do that, right?
Adam (27:39.881)
Yeah, yeah, we could.
Ste (27:42.264)
Here we go, ah, I have to restart everything. Sometimes that's what, just stop sharing.
Adam (27:51.454)
Yeah. So yeah, it's a, right now this post currently has.
Adam (28:03.682)
This is kind of the end of it right now.
Where it's like a...
you know, basically just the link to sign up, which actually this link needs to be changed.
Adam (28:19.906)
So yeah.
It kind of goes over the full breakdown between our two sites. I'll have to remember to open and update this.
Ste (28:34.808)
Oh yeah, this is looking good. Yeah. I think there are people who are actually going to look at that.
Adam (28:35.078)
I think we have a lot more new things.
Ste (28:45.784)
Here we go. Yeah, I think it's pretty much set and I'm pretty excited, you know, that it's a way more coherent vision of what we're doing, which we haven't worked on in a while. We focused on the stuff in the app, but not how we present it and yeah, that's, I guess, equally important.
Adam (29:10.986)
Yeah, I'm always like so hesitant to update homepages because it's, I feel like for one, I don't do a good job of like doing like tracking to understand like what's good and what's bad about the current page. So a lot of it's based on gut feeling and what we hear from people rather than actual analytics.
Ste (29:31.394)
Yeah.
Ste (29:37.384)
Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, I think this is an issue with, or a hurdle, let's say, because it's also like on the challenge side with all startups. And I guess the instinct of knowing what you want to present and being like sharp in that presentation is one, something you like build over time. So I think us just looking at our current homepage.
we kind of like realized, you know, maybe this isn't clear enough or this isn't like to the point where this isn't like representing what we actually want to say. So yeah, there's always like space for improvement. And it helps to, I guess, like homepage optimizing is one of those things that's...
You can do it on the data side, but even when you have the data, it gets tricky. It's like the same situation when you're asking about product feedback. People will just tell you, well, this doesn't work, I love this, but you have to kind of dig into why. So yeah.
Adam (30:54.071)
the
Adam (31:01.962)
Yeah. I was, I was talking with another book startup founder, I think like a year or two ago, and he was saying that one of the things that they did before their launch, which was also really helpful, is that they added, I can't remember if it was like, one of the things that allows you to like chat with a support rep. So like you chat with the people like right away.
on their homepage and then they got like random questions and things like that. Um, which could be neat for, for this. I, uh, I've never like put one of those on the site before, so I don't have a strong opinion on it, but do you have any thoughts on that?
Ste (31:51.26)
I was actually thinking that could actually work as... I first started thinking what if we put like a feedback thing, like a floating element that people can just tap and they can send feedback directly to us or join the Discord or like, yeah, offer any suggestions. So kind of like we do with the roadmap, but without having to...
go on their own app site, create an account, submit a thing just like in the app itself. I haven't thought about like actually chatting to us. So that would be neat, especially, you know, we're on both time zones and yeah, we've, I mean, we could cover it. So.
Adam (32:22.359)
Hmm.
Ste (32:42.1)
Maybe or maybe not. The thing is, it adds like, we're not trying to sell. So for a software as a service site, I think it might make more sense because people wanna know, you know, are you covering this feature or are you covering this feature? I think for us, it might be more of a...
Adam (32:59.52)
Yeah.
Ste (33:10.904)
different ask and you know.
Adam (33:15.818)
Yeah, it's like, I'm trying to think of another social network where I'm like, Oh yeah, I want to, I want to message the founder and ask them a question. Like most of the time I just want to try it out. And you know, if I click with it, I click with it. If I don't, then I leave. So I feel like, like having that connection to chat isn't going to really be a make or break thing, unless someone runs into like a big like error or something like that.
Ste (33:30.892)
Yeah.
Ste (33:41.089)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, that's true. I think as long as we leave the link on the discord, because they can, we have a very active discord and they can like chat directly with us on the discord. I think that should be enough. Else it would be like going on letterbox then it's yeah, chatting with the founders.
Adam (34:00.005)
And.
Ste (34:07.291)
Nah, yeah. Or on Spotify, or somewhere.
Adam (34:07.51)
Yeah. We can, we can leave that up.
Ste (34:12.788)
We could, yeah, what we could do though is on the about page, because I think at some point, maybe even after this, we could show more on the about page, talk about our values, talk about our structure, talk about the things we do, and hardcover as not just the app, but the whole thing.
And there we could put links, like scheduling links, so people can schedule time with us. So not directly chat, but maybe schedule 15 minutes with us in case they want to talk with us. That might be pretty neat. We could just put like a cal.com link or a cal.com link. And I've seen this on the about pages of bigger companies.
which wanted to be more transparent and open source. And at least, you know, we don't have like a ton of people who are on the homepage who might just ask random things. Like, I don't know, you have half stars or stuff like that. That's what I would be expecting if you put that chat thing on the homepage. Yeah.
Adam (35:36.151)
Yeah.
Ste (35:38.56)
As long as we make it easy for them to discover the Discord and chat with us, I think we'll be okay. Yeah. Especially, you know, if we plan to open source the front end, because many of the questions are related to that.
Adam (35:58.09)
Yeah. Yeah, I think, I think that's enough.
Ste (35:59.704)
like you should. Yeah. Yes.
Adam (36:05.624)
And maybe over time we add a frequently asked questions page or something like that, which, yeah.
Ste (36:10.92)
Yeah, yeah, that definitely could go in a separate page, especially as we're building hardcover out. I mean, I'm hoping that at some point it will be self-explanatory. We're lucky that people know what Goodreads is. Unlucky because it's a thing that does everything and being an everything app means we do everything.
Adam (36:41.062)
And yeah.
Ste (36:43.092)
But yeah, I think we're getting closer to that sharpness in describing ourselves. Yeah.
Adam (36:51.506)
Yeah. I also feel like there's some kind of like hesitancy for people to embrace another Goodreads alternative because they've been almost like hurt by it in the past by, you know, different startups who, you know, built something really cool, but maybe it still wasn't quite meeting their needs. So they, you know, maybe that startup closed down and they went back to Goodreads.
Ste (37:14.282)
Mm-hmm.
Adam (37:19.746)
So I feel like there's a hesitancy to like jump to something that isn't going to be there in a year or two.
Ste (37:27.076)
Yeah, that's a big one. Do you think that, I mean, other than appearing like a solid product that's here to stay, we could do something to address that directly, or is it something that should be implied more? I'm guessing, did we mention the export on the homepage, because I had someone recently asking me about...
the import from a CSV and we ended up chatting about the export as well, which is important, you know, not to get locked in into that platform. I think that's like very, that's a trust issue that if we allow exports can be addressed this way. Do you feel like we should, you know, talk more about it?
in general.
Adam (38:29.258)
Maybe, maybe not yet. Um, cause right now the only export is like, it's basically a JSON dump of all of your data. And it's not, it's not in a format that you can just import into Goodreads or import into another platform. It's kind of like, it's kind of like, if you were to request a GDPR copy of your data from hardcover, this is what we would give you. It's, it's kind of the whole kitchen sink of your data. Um,
But I feel like there is almost like a cleaned up nice version, which you can import into a spreadsheet, which we would also want to provide at some point. And maybe once we do that, then we can, um, let people know about it somewhere else.
Ste (39:14.668)
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, that sounds good. And yeah, that's one huge problem. And you're right, there is this kind of like Stockholm syndrome for Goodreads or whatever you'd call it, I guess, for people who like, I mean, they rather like just sit on Goodreads instead of, yeah, going on a network that they don't have like a certainty will be there in a couple of years.
Adam (39:44.21)
Um, I, one of the supporter features, which I, I really want to implement, cause I think it would be just a really cool supporter feature is the ability to sync your library with either air table or Google, like a Google sheet and have it like automatically sync your library to their, like just as you're using hardcover, so you don't have to, you don't have to do an export, you don't have to worry about hardcover disappearing.
You always have a copy of your data and it's always up to date. And if you wanted to, you know, use that in some way, like, you know, if you wanted to create your own graphs on it, if you wanted to, you know, inject it into your blog or obsidian or something, you'd be able to remix it in a way and have it fed by hardcover automatically. I think that's a neat one.
Ste (40:35.4)
Yeah, that sounds great. I mean, when we'll have that, definitely we should have a dedicated section because people with big libraries and people who really like give them about building their whole like reading experience, they're bound to look at that and appreciate that. And I guess it's key to, yeah, us really challenging.
Good reads. I think right now people trust that we're gonna be here and we're gonna be here. What's good about us is that right now we're a team that basically has infinite runway. And yeah, that's the main trust point, I guess.
There are teams like some of our competitors that might not be in that situation. So building a library there might be at risk of, they run out of funding, what's gonna happen when you have a 50 plus person team? That's kind of like an issue, but yeah, that's, I guess, a thing we should use to our advantage.
Adam (42:05.345)
Yeah.
Ste (42:07.016)
and at the right points, like talk about it. When we've got like good strong, like the strongest set of features. I'm wondering like what other apps allow exports that you can...
I'll look into it. Yeah. But... I'll look into it.
Adam (42:23.68)
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm not sure. Aside from Goodreads and Storygraph, which both offer a CSV export. Yeah.
Ste (42:33.708)
Yeah. Nice. And the book data. The book data. If we build a book, I mean, that's our like treasure chest, I guess book data. So being able to like feed it into other people's blogs or sites or apps, that's also going to be pretty major.
Adam (42:35.659)
Hehehe
Adam (43:01.622)
Yeah, I, uh, just for fun on my own blog last weekend, I did, uh, I decided to use the public API and just, uh, added like this reading section. And it just like, you know, it just hits the heart of the API and shows my recently read books, you know, just a list of the last hundred and then, you know,
See the rest on Hardgiver.
Ste (43:32.468)
Wow. Yeah. I know you talked about that embed mechanism. And yeah, I guess we should totally do that and maybe make a page with embeds where you can embed different things into your website. I'm wondering, can we actually do that? So I would do like the latest book.
books, reds embed, latest books with a review embed, or like latest reviews embed, I think you have the latest books and books with review embedded, right, in your site, as far as I could tell.
Adam (44:12.454)
Yeah, or just recently read. Yeah.
Ste (44:14.896)
Oh, just recent period. Okay. Yeah. I'm guessing we could do that with stats as well. I mean, have a nice little window with some of your stats. And I do a page like chiropractor slash your profile slash embeds where you could copy the code for all the snippets. I know you said you can do it via a link, right? So we can actually remove the header.
Adam (44:18.913)
Yes.
Ste (44:44.556)
But I'm wondering if, yeah, basically that would be it, right? So it would just be an iframe or something similar.
Adam (44:52.65)
Yeah, yeah, doing it as an iframe would for sure be the easiest way. And it would, it would at least give people something to show. Like if we showed, um, one way we could do it is like, we're talking about for the, the feed page having like widgets on the side, what if we made each of those widgets embeddable into an external blog or on your homepage on hardcover? So it's like, you know,
Ste (45:12.388)
Mm-hmm.
Adam (45:21.17)
Here's what you're currently reading. Here's what you recently read. You know, we could use that same architecture.
Ste (45:25.412)
That'd be great. Yeah, and that would mean actually putting every widget as a component on a page that doesn't have a header or a footer and it's just like that component, right?
Adam (45:39.928)
Right.
Ste (45:42.124)
Well, that'll work.
Adam (45:46.555)
Yeah, maybe when we refresh that feed page, we can talk about making them embeddable at that time as well.
Ste (45:55.337)
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, that would be a good time to do it. I'm guessing we'll do that after we implement discussions because discussions are tied to the feed. And while we're working on the feed, I'm guessing we'll have to integrate the widgets as well.
Adam (46:12.022)
Yeah, I think that makes sense. Um, yeah, I think now that loops is integrated, I think there's only like some bugs I want to fix and then it'll be jumping into discussions. So that'll be, it'll probably be the next, the next big thing, unless we want to like do anything else before that, but besides cleanup.
Ste (46:38.464)
Yeah, I'd jump into it because there are a couple of other apps. I think even Bookworm had discussions implemented recently. Or was it just, I think they had discussions as well. Fable has discussions. So I'm really like eager to get our take on discussions because yeah, it's really different than.
really interesting way of looking at it. Especially, you know, I'm waiting to see those connections that are made on a book that people are reading at the same time, you know, just on that page, sharing your progress and seeing others reading that same book and sharing their progress. I think that's going to be like really interesting.
if we can facilitate that first connection of two people reading the same book in different parts of the world and they just like happen to find themselves talking about the same thing at the same time, that's gonna be like, yeah, what this is like, what we planned.
Adam (47:49.975)
Hehehe
Adam (47:57.694)
That'd be really cool. Yeah.
Ste (47:59.06)
Yeah, that's gonna be nice. Yeah, but first, gotta get, yeah.
Adam (48:06.052)
One, one smaller thing that I'm thinking about kind of slipping in as well is on Discord. In January this year, they launched something called Linked Roles, where you can authenticate your Discord account with hardcover. So you would click on a link in Discord. It would bring you over to hardcover. You would log in and say like,
I allow Discord to have access to some data. You hit approve and it sends you back to Discord, you know, on OAuth. And then on Discord, we would be able to store some data about the user. Like, are they a supporter? How many books do they have in their library? What are their top genres? And then we could automatically assign Flare to people on Discord based on that. So we could have automatically synced library in Flare.
Ste (48:35.895)
Yeah.
Adam (49:00.35)
automatically sync supporter flare and things like that.
Ste (49:04.544)
That's going to be amazing, especially with the head librarian role that's coming into practice. I'm really excited about that as well. So there's like a huge boost on the book data front. Yeah, definitely. That's, I mean, if it's not such a like huge thing, we can definitely, that sounds great. I'm wondering.
You know how when you play something or when you, some music or a game, it updates your Discord status? I'm wondering if we can actually do that with books. So if you're reading something, you can actually show it on your profile if you want. Would that be interesting?
Adam (49:51.882)
We might be able to do that because I know, I know like the API, you can kind of define our arbitrary fields and then you can define arbitrary rules on what a role is made up of. So you can say in order to have this role, you have to have this, this Boolean as a yes. So you have to have like the supporter Boolean as a yes. But I don't know how the currently playing, currently reading.
currently watching works. But that would be really neat if like, you know, they were on another Discord server and it said, currently reading because that's what they've set they wanted to show. So that would be really neat.
Ste (50:35.04)
Yeah. Yeah, let's look into that. Maybe it's a status we can just like a string or something, hopefully. I know whenever, yeah, I mean, yeah, that'd be great. I think it's tied with Steam maybe because I've seen, I think I've even seen when you're playing like Stardew Valley or stuff like that, I think it's like sinking.
Adam (50:46.969)
He could even show the cover.
Ste (51:04.32)
So I was wondering how that's possible. And yeah, maybe it's through Steam or some other service, but it definitely can be done. I'm wondering if you have to be something like an official partner or something like that to do it. But let's look into it. It might be interesting if we're doing the whole syncing of, yeah, Flares.
Adam (51:39.17)
So it was kind of just a fun thing. I started researching yesterday and it ended up being surprisingly possible. So yeah.
Ste (51:49.324)
Nice. Yeah. I love these APIs and how easy it is to integrate them. I mean, yeah, I guess we should like... Our ideal version is us being that for books.
Adam (52:04.446)
Yeah. And I like, I like the idea that we don't have to do the real time stuff. Like what, what happens on hardcover is kind of like the, the etched in wood version of your history. You can change it, but it's, it's there while discord is like the ephemeral discussions that might, you know, they come and go, but you wouldn't refer back to them. They're for the people that are there in that moment while the ones on hardcover are like, you know,
you could start a discussion about a book and that discussion could span years of new readers finding that discussion and engaging with it. Well, you don't really get that on Discord.
Ste (52:37.312)
Yeah, exactly.
Ste (52:41.379)
Yeah.
No, never. It's about the architecture. I mean, it's not meant for that. So our pivotal point is like the book page, because yeah, I mean, book discussions work in many places, like book talk or bookstagram, or I mean, authors are being made like from nothing and book influencers are like being born every, but...
Now comes and goes if I want to like hear about they don't have like that book point of reference and that's like everything. So yeah.
Makes sense.
Yeah, that sounds great. Yeah, well, we've been over a lot. Maybe on that note, we can wrap up this.
Ste (53:42.326)
session.
Adam (53:43.702)
Sounds good. Hope go a, we film IT. We just got a new Bokksu, which is like the Japanese treat of the month box.
Ste (53:54.468)
Okay, oh wow, okay. That's nice. I'm willing to get some chai, like proper chai to make a chai latte because I got the espresso machine. And yeah, that sounds great. What kinds do you have? Or is it like, yeah.
Adam (54:11.622)
Oh, it's kind of like a new box of treats every month. It usually has some chips and salty things, some sweet things, some, but they're all like from a theme. So like one theme might've been melon, another theme was like Sakura. This theme's more like fireworks and things like that. So it's more conceptual and then they all, all the edibles are based around that.
Ste (54:33.952)
I love them.
Adam (54:40.35)
Yeah, it's been fun.
Ste (54:41.365)
Well, that sounds fun. Yeah, I never got one of those surprise boxes, but yeah, this one seems like the most fun I've ever heard of. Yeah, and yeah.
Adam (54:51.998)
Yeah, we usually don't even finish them in the month.
Ste (54:57.036)
Really? Okay, so it's a big box. Okay, yeah, I know. I mean, the thing is they have stuff to put in there. I know, you know, I was amazed when I went to Tokyo and I saw the amount of like different flavors of KitKat bars that they have. And I was like, oh man, we're missing out. We are missing out. That's like, yeah. We only have chocolate and chocolate with...
Adam (54:59.393)
Yeah.
Ste (55:26.985)
something.
Adam (55:28.702)
Yeah. Well.
Ste (55:29.976)
they have that flavors like fireworks and, well, okay. Yeah.
Adam (55:36.364)
Yeah, the melon KitKats are my favorite.
Ste (55:38.704)
Okay, I haven't tried those. I'm gonna actually search for them. Yeah, great. Well, I'm gonna let you enjoy the box. I'm off to check on the baby and yeah, talk soon. Bye, bye-bye then. Bye.
Adam (55:51.882)
Sounds good. Talk to you later. Bye.