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Each week Adam & Ste focus on a specific feature, idea or prototype in Hardcover and iterate on it together or with guests.
Adam (00:02.202)
Hey, hey, this week we have Stay and we have a special guest, Jeff, our lead librarian from the hardcover team on. Welcome, Jeff. Welcome, Stay.
Jeff (00:13.838)
Bye.
Ste (00:16.152)
Hey, welcome Jeff.
Adam (00:18.242)
Jeff, Jeff joined us as a librarian last year. We definitely realized it was like a missing piece in the team is like, we have so much book data. And so it's been, it's been great working with you so far. Can you, yeah, maybe introduce yourself and tell people a little bit about yourself.
Jeff (00:32.91)
for you.
Jeff (00:40.85)
Let's see. High level stuff. I live in the southeastern US, Jacksonville. Basically for international audience may not be familiar with US geography. Look at the southern peninsula on the US on the East Coast and right where it starts bending off to the east. That's basically where I live. I've been reading for years. In 2008
53 books was a pain to hit and Last year I hit 180 books trying to slow down This year I've started off the year I've already read five and I've got another 45 or so currently on my list to read Just so I can knock these out so that I can focus more on my hardcover duties We'll see how that goes
Ste (01:41.527)
Yeah.
Adam (01:41.564)
For those books. Oh yeah, go ahead.
Ste (01:44.332)
No, I was about to ask how? Like, five books? It's the 10th of January. I mean... Yeah. What's the method? Is there a catch? Is there...
Jeff (01:55.923)
Oh
Jeff (02:00.018)
I read a lot of them honestly with Amazon Fires text to speech, AI narration. So I'll be sitting here like doing hardcover work or doing something else, playing video games or whatever, listening to the audit, listening to a six, essentially an audio book at that point, even though it's text based in reality. That's a large part of our reading. One of the books that I actually finished.
earlier today was an actual audiobook that I'll sit there and listen to at work when I'm trying to do other work stuff and just trying to tune out everybody in Cubeland. Okay, I'll have an audiobook on. When I go to my parents house near Atlanta, Georgia, about 300 miles away next week, okay, well that's a 7 hour drive one way. Okay, that's easy audiobook time, especially since it'll be just me on the strip.
really I read wherever whenever I actually have an album on my Facebook page of reading while I'm traveling and I'm literally in some cases like sitting there on a beach in Mexico with my Kindle or standing there waiting for my wife who's in a line at Disney World just standing there with my Kindle reading.
Adam (03:27.018)
Man, for, uh, for audio books, are you one of those like, uh, who can do like crazy speeds or are you usually listening at like one X
Jeff (03:37.338)
closer to 2x or so. The last one was on 1.8. It really depends on the exact narrator and their own cadence and everything. Some of them talked so fast that if you're going much more than 1.25 or so you're gonna miss them anyway. Some of them draw so much that you can speed them up to probably 5 or 10 and not miss anything.
Adam (04:04.942)
Yeah, I've, I found that if, if I'm like really struggling to get through a book and I'm thinking about like DNFing it, sometimes I'll just crank up the speed to like two and a half X just to like, say I finished it and get through the story. So it's not a question mark, but yeah.
Jeff (04:20.61)
Well, the text speech that I use on the Kindle Fire, I actually listened to that at 4.0, and it works beautifully. But obviously with human narration, actual human narration, it's a bit different.
Ste (04:32.368)
Wow.
Adam (04:40.422)
Let's see. Yeah, I don't think I've tried the Amazon text to speech. The Kindle text to speech, yeah.
Jeff (04:48.654)
I've noticed that it only really works on the Fire series. I tried to do it on the e-readers and the text to speech tries to read the entire screen. It's basically a screen reader at that point versus for whatever reason, I don't claim to understand the tech at all. But inside the Fire, in Kindle Lab, it just reads the actual text of the book.
Hey, perfect.
Adam (05:22.722)
Well, one of the reasons why I'm excited to chat today is like you've kind of been a librarian on other sites as well and something that, you know, neither of us have really been on that side of the user interface of other sites. What kind of drew you to kind of joining up as a librarian on different sites, including hardcover?
Jeff (05:49.838)
Well the biggest thing, honestly, was 99% or so of our reading. And actually, just so I can tell you the exact number.
Jeff (06:06.922)
Okay, yeah, literally 93.8% of my reading since 2019 has been advanced reader copies. And some of these books I'm reading, like a couple of them that I have right now won't be published until August. And one case in particular, basically Labor Day, which for those, again, outside of the US, is basically the end of August.
Adam (06:32.89)
Thanks for watching.
Jeff (06:36.638)
Um, okay. Well, in some cases, those aren't on book sites, especially, um, smaller sites, newer sites, whatever that maybe don't have the data. Okay. Well, if I'm reading this book and I review everything that I read, especially as an ARC, then I need the book to be on the site that I'm using. Therefore I need the ability to add that book since in a lot of cases, I'm the only one reading it.
Adam (06:37.676)
And we're in January now.
Jeff (07:05.822)
Literally I put up a review a couple of days ago and this book releases at the end of the month. It's called The War Below by Ernest Stater. I was the first reviewer on Goodreads for this book and it releases on January 30th.
Adam (07:26.31)
Yeah, I'm guessing that, so for something like that, when you get like an art copy of a book, what data is usually available on like Google Books or like externally, like is there an ISBN? Like is there a working title or is it like the actual final title usually or always?
Jeff (07:49.91)
Most of the time it tends to be the final actual data. Sometimes the description gets tweaked. I've actually had one case that I remember where the title was actively changed between the time I picked the book up and publication date. And in that particular case.
I agreed with the author more than the publisher about what the title should be, but hey, that's one of those decisions that sometimes the publisher gets to make regardless.
Ste (08:29.628)
Yeah, this is amazing. I'm wondering, are there any risks to having info and reviews about ARCs published so far ahead of the actual release date? I've always wondered if there's a certain unwritten rule, when are you supposed to publish it, or is it whatever the publisher or the author
Jeff (08:59.17)
There is no real unwritten rule that I'm familiar with. And I mean, I've been doing this for a few years across. I work with St. Martin's and Harlequin and even some with Berkeley, although not on their blog tour program as much, all the way down to individual authors and small independent publishers. If there is a unofficial rule about it, I've never uncovered that.
Some publishers will explicitly say, hey, we don't want anything about this book to be released until two weeks before publication or 30 days before publication. Usually that seems to be more on a book-by-book basis than even a publisher basis, in my experience, but I'm sure there are certain publishers out there that know we do this for every book. Okay, I just haven't read enough of your books to see, notice that.
No.
Ste (10:01.652)
Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. I was wondering because you mentioned the title. I was wondering if a publisher might like see the book data somewhere and go, Oh, okay, crap. We just changed that title. We got to like reach out to, I see this happening. I on maybe it even happened on Goodreads. I mean, I know some authors are very mad that data is getting leaked about their, their books. So yeah.
Adam (10:29.518)
Yeah, that, uh,
Jeff (10:29.774)
Well, that's one thing that I try to be very careful about. This is actually a discussion I've been having on threads a little bit today as well, with apparently some news that has come out today about one of the books that's releasing in a couple of weeks. That's book three, I think it's Sarah J Maas, I think. Well, her and the publisher have released some details about the ending of book two, trying to hype up book three.
and there's a lot of discussion on threads, okay, should authors spoil their own books, when is, when are spoiler discussions appropriate, etc, etc. My own rule that I use personally, that I don't really enforce against anybody too much, is that if it's not in the description of the book, and it's not obvious from the, from the genre, so for example,
the couple in a romance is going to end up together. That's a given, right? But if it doesn't meet one of those two things, it's a spoiler, period. So I don't care if it's the name of a tech or if it's something that you think is so minor, for me, if it's not there, I can't directly mention it in my review, period.
Adam (11:33.094)
If it's not a tragedy. Ha ha.
Adam (11:54.565)
Yeah.
Yeah, I guess, yeah, if you're doing like an advanced review, it's potentially a different style of review than if you're reviewing it after it's launched because you might want, you want people to read it and get hyped up about the book while after it can almost be like a journal review where you're saying like spoilers and marking those as spoilers. So it sounds like you tend to not.
Jeff (12:22.702)
Thank you.
Adam (12:24.299)
mentioned spoilers or do you kind of do that and still mark them as spoilers?
Jeff (12:28.918)
Well, I hint at things and I will try to come up with similar things like in, for example, in my review of Deep Freeze by Michael Kremley that actually released yesterday. I wrote the review last week because I didn't read the review until last week, or didn't read the book until last week. It was my first book this year actually.
I mentioned that, okay, there are passages of this book that remind me of Afterlife by Mark Asaki, or even a particular X-Men character, although I didn't reveal the actual, the exact X-Men character because that this character's power would reveal what the exact illusion was in the book. And that
Again, wasn't in the description, therefore it would be a spoiler. So I just said, okay, there's an X-Men character that reminds me of something that happened in this book.
Adam (13:41.619)
I love how intentional you are about preventing people from seeing spoilers and going in kind of as blind as possible. Because that's something I like, like there was a, there was a chart. It was like a, it was like one of those like a, like a college football or college basketball like tournament chart when it was like tropes or things that annoy you. And one of them on there was spoilers.
And the other, you know, there was a, there were a whole lot of other things that annoyed people. And spoilers was the one that won for me as the most annoying thing someone could do. Like if someone spoils a movie or a book that I am really anticipating, I would like shut off the call or leave right then.
Ste (14:19.798)
Yeah
Jeff (14:22.062)
And especially as, especially again, as somebody that primarily reads advanced reader copies. And like Jeremy Robinson, I don't know how visible my shirt is. But I've been doing it for him for years. And in a couple of cases recently, I've had the opportunity to read major, major books that are highly anticipated from this guy.
Adam (14:22.875)
So thank you for that.
Jeff (14:50.634)
And I've read them months before anybody, even in his own Facebook group, much less anybody in the public. Um, for example, singularity released, I want to say like the end of 2022. I had read it almost at the beginning of the year. Um, kingdom releases in March. I read it back in the middle of December. Um, both of these are finales to major events that have taken years of reading and writing for him.
And I read them almost six months to a year before anybody else. So, okay. I, I cannot as excited as I am about these books and as phenomenal as these books were, I have to build up the hype even within his own fan base without giving away any details that his fans and no way even more details that I remember will pick up on.
Adam (15:27.046)
It's pretty fun.
Jeff (15:51.434)
So I have to be able to hint at things and make outside connections that hint at things without actually giving anything away, which is a challenge.
Adam (16:08.815)
Yeah.
I have not gotten into that advanced review copy kind of sector of books, but yeah, that's a lot to consider when getting into it.
Jeff (16:23.162)
And to be fair, on the flip side, there are times that, okay, the book wasn't that great for me for whatever reason. And usually for me, it happens more with nonfiction to where, okay, I have what I try to have as objective-ish standards. One of the biggest ones being lack of bibliography or what in Christian nonfiction is called
Ste (16:23.32)
Yeah, I actually want to...
Jeff (16:52.118)
defense of your point that may be out of context or whatever, right? Those are automatic star deductions for me, period. But sometimes there'll be more major issues, whatever. I've literally done even advanced review copies as a one star. And then I have to go in detail, these are the problems that I encountered, again, without being so hyper specific that it gives things away.
in too much detail. So like I will try to warn people okay this guy come like for example with the war balloon hey this guy comes in from hey climate change is real the entire basically the entire point of the book is we need these minerals but they're buried in some cases under Native American
sacred grounds, or they're buried under this location that this one particular flower, this is the only place on earth that this particular flower grows, and yet we need this mineral. So the entire point of the book is basically examining in various scenarios, how do we balance global needs to combat climate change for these rare earth minerals?
versus this hyper local, hey, this is literally the only plant, this is literally the only place on earth this plant grows.
Ste (18:32.748)
Yeah, that's a fine path. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I actually, my question was about that. If there's a book you really don't like, you mentioned, you know, uh, you're, you're doing a lot of hyping for the community. If there's like a book you don't like, there's that fine path to spread. I mean, what would really like make you, is there anything that would make you like not recommended or.
Adam (18:33.139)
Avatar, Ferncoly.
Jeff (18:35.983)
Yes.
Ste (19:00.024)
Does that go outside the arc review? Yeah.
Jeff (19:00.354)
Basically, if it becomes, some of the big things for me is that if it becomes hyper preachy from any given perspective, I don't care the perspective that you're coming from, I'm an objective-ish enough reader, wide enough reader that, okay, I can accept whatever premise you're coming from, but if you're going to make strong claims,
give me strong evidence. That's one of the reasons for my bibliography issue in particular. Okay, if you wanna claim that the sky is actually green and that we all perceive it wrong, okay, well if you have a bibliography that's 5% of your text, dude, come on. But if you have a bibliography that's say 30 or 40% of your text supporting all your claims, at minimum I can come in and say, hey, the dude is wrong, he's hyper preachy.
He's got all these things going on, but at minimum, it's a well-documented examination of what he's claiming.
Adam (20:10.73)
So I'd like to move over to some librarian tools questions and discussions.
Jeff (20:18.773)
Yes.
Adam (20:23.126)
So what can librarians do today on hardcover?
Jeff (20:31.434)
Um, let's see, they can definitely, um, add the description and cover, um, for books that are missing, um, on her, on her cover, we allow anybody to import a book that may not be in our database at all. Um, librarians can then go in and edit the cover, edit the, um, description of the book. I think you pretty sure.
and even the title and author if necessary. So the librarians have a lot more power than just a normal user. At a hardcover, we're a little bit different. We actually do allow even normal users to input missing data, which for example, some of our other competitors don't allow at all. Couple of them do. So yeah.
really comes down to how much editing do you want to be able to do.
Adam (21:36.97)
Yeah, that sounds about right. It's like right now we're kind of limited to editing editions and books, but uh yeah librarians kind of have that full power to manage all those.
Adam (21:52.29)
And I know we've talked about kind of the next thing we're, we're definitely doing is kind of the ability to add a book and add an edition and potentially have that like marked as a user added and then have a librarian need to like verify that it's an actual book. So I feel like that's something we've already kind of decided on as like a next an easy next win for librarian tools. But.
Jeff (22:16.766)
And that'll bring us more in line with one of the sites that we get compared to a lot, which I don't particularly want to name them here, but everybody knows who we're talking about. So.
Adam (22:30.458)
Hey, we can say their names. Yeah, we're probably talking about Story Graph and maybe even Goodreads, I don't know.
Jeff (22:37.206)
Well, in particular, Story Graph, with the user added and the librarians going in and approving the edits.
Adam (22:37.766)
uh
Adam (22:49.146)
That seems like a good, a good process. We just have to make sure we, we just have to figure out how to like cue that up so that the librarians know how to create, create good tools for the librarians to be able to control that user added tag, it sounds like.
Ste (23:03.884)
Yeah. What would be like some cave caveats to like this? I mean, what can go wrong if we're allowing people to add random books? I think this is like a question that could, yeah, signal some of the things that we can do. What do you think, Jeff?
Jeff (23:05.43)
and.
Jeff (23:29.11)
Well, it's actually no different than what we already do though with the, um, anybody can import anything with the ISBN or a good retry. Um, that's already produced a lot of issues and Adam can, Adam can agree here where, and really anybody can see it just looking at some of the more popular books and the data we have, we have in some cases hundreds of different additions for a given book.
Or in some cases, we still run across dozens of duplicate books even that hopefully our users can use the flag button and report as a duplicate. And Adam and I can handle it that way right now. So, I mean, it's just, that's all of it. That's the only major problem is that, okay, you might get duplicate book data. Okay. Well, we've already got mechanisms to handle that.
Adam (24:30.806)
Yeah. One of the concerns I have is around people adding just like a book that doesn't exist, that's just like curse words for the title. And then they choose the authors as like the top 10 authors on the site. And then that book.
Jeff (24:45.57)
And in that case, yeah, in that case, it'll be very obvious, hopefully. And the librarian can just reject that. Or, hey, at any point, anybody can flag a book for you and I to look at, wait a second, this doesn't look right. Um, so just to make that crystal clear for everybody listening at any point, if you think something looks weird on the data for a book,
Ste (24:46.232)
That'd be bad.
Jeff (25:15.33)
flag it at minimum, Adam and I can look at it.
Adam (25:21.814)
Yeah. And that kind of makes me think of something that we want to figure out, which is like how we scale up, like the two of us and make some things kind of more community based. And so what I was thinking is like, how do we...
Adam (25:47.35)
How do we do that? Right now, we have some of these decisions that are core to the site. Are these two books the same? If someone marks Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and Chamber of Secrets as the same book, we don't want someone to say, yeah, they're the same book and merge those together and then potentially have our intermixed data disaster where it's hard to unwind. But...
We should allow someone to say that they're the same book. We just have to not do the next action on it. But how might we do that in a way that scales?
Jeff (26:21.698)
Right.
Jeff (26:26.114)
Um, and I'll again, looking at the other places that I'm a librarian at the, um, ticketing system that you just built in for you and I, um, and the, the various feeds on the admin page that we already have, um, those are actually core features of how some of these other systems work. They just, instead of just you and I, it's the entire librarian core. And that will also provide a button.
that, okay, hey, Sally has, Sally is working on this ticket on the admin screen and doesn't really know how to resolve it. Well, she can either release it, which is a feature that you've already coded in there, or she can send it to the staff person, whoever that may be. In our case, it would be me. And it would then.
hop directly onto my queue and say, hey, I need to look at this.
Jeff (27:31.23)
And that way the librarian core, however big it grows, Hey, they can be doing most things and then when they encounter something that, Hey, this looks a little tricky. I'm not sure what to do here. That's when they toss it over to get my attention. And obviously if I, even if I can't even figure it out, I toss it over to Adam.
Adam (27:56.54)
And then I'll mark it as don't fix. No. But, but, yeah. So, yeah. For. So for those ones that like, let's say we have a system where kind of anyone can. Anyone that's a librarian could like merge things together.
Ste (27:59.152)
Hahaha
Jeff (27:59.847)
Yes.
or choking, to be clear.
Jeff (28:22.542)
There are warnings everywhere. Be very careful. Like seriously on every page that I've seen that, on every site that I've seen this on that I've been a part of, it's almost like above and below, like where you merge things, like all over the place, big bold letters. Be very careful. Make sure you know what you're doing here.
Adam (28:23.174)
kind of... ..
Adam (28:45.465)
Hehehe
Gotcha.
Jeff (28:48.438)
But then there's still no safeguards to when they actually do it.
Ste (28:53.84)
Yeah. What if they undo it? I mean, the possibility of undoing it could save us a lot of trouble. If we can do like undoing really easily, at least we'd know if we have a faith of these things were merged and you know, Jeff as a head librarian, yeah.
Jeff (29:11.926)
Well, and that very well could be that even when a librarian does it, it still has to come to Adam or I to approve it. That may be one safe card that we can build in. And granted, that means more work on our end, but at least then, okay, if it is one of these ultra critical, hey, this could really screw things up. Okay. At least we have to look at it first.
Ste (29:21.55)
Mm-hmm.
Adam (29:30.714)
Mmm.
Adam (29:40.186)
That's neat. It's almost like if the merging or splitting, whatever the action is that a librarian is doing, if it has an impact greater than a certain threshold, then the action doesn't happen immediately. It gets sent to one of us, but it's already like pre approved by a librarian. So it's, we're just saying like, yes, execute or no, don't execute.
Jeff (29:40.427)
Maybe.
Jeff (30:05.918)
Exactly it and our level it would exactly be do it or don't period They've already done the work to hey, this is what we think should happen blah Yes, it should awesome done and we click a button that just happens done
Adam (30:23.81)
Yeah, and that could probably even filter down to the site itself. Like if a librarian marks two books as duplicates, it doesn't need to go to a duplicate queue on the admin, it should just merge them. Or if, you know, it has a above the threshold, then we need to check it.
Jeff (30:40.191)
Right.
Jeff (30:44.523)
Yeah, exactly.
Adam (30:48.868)
I'm taking some notes here.
Ste (30:49.232)
Do you see a scenario where these roles that we'd have as admins would be passed to either a level of librarians that's half in the middle of the admins and the normal librarians, or like
Uh, confirmed in some other way. I'm thinking of, you know, stuff that happens on Wikipedia. I'm wondering like how their system works. And, uh, if the decision has a high impact. Do you see like an intermediary level that could handle that instead of it being pushed all the way up to one of you.
Jeff (31:33.346)
Well, Goodreads in particular actually has a concept of a super librarian. That sounds fairly similar to what you're talking about there, Steve. To where they're not staff. They're not like full on actual admins that have full power the way Adam and I do, but they're also not just a normal, normal librarian that they do have elevated powers and they can handle.
Ste (31:42.782)
Mm-hmm
Jeff (32:03.278)
tricky situations.
Adam (32:07.046)
I see. That seems similar to how we have our librarian roles. We have a concept of a, so we have four different roles for librarians. We have a pender, which means that they can add data to missing fields. Like if there's a description missing, they can add that data, but they can't change any data. Then there's editor, which is someone who can
edit any data. There's librarian, which is you can edit any data, plus you can edit some very specific serious fields like the URL slug that might break links to that book. And then we have admin, which right now is just Jeff and I, which there's not really any usage for it other than those users also have access to our Rails admin reporting system. So those are the four we have
Sounds kind of similar to what you were describing for the super admin on Goodreads.
Jeff (33:11.699)
And by the way, we do need to look if we're going to allow the appenders to add missing descriptions. I don't think that actually works right now. We need to look at that.
Adam (33:21.465)
Okay.
Jeff (33:24.066)
because we've had some discussion on the discord that some people would like to add missing descriptions and couldn't
Adam (33:32.516)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I think along those lines, we realize that if someone adds a book to hardcover, they should probably be able to edit that book as well. Because if you add it and then you can't edit anything, then you're like, OK, now someone else needs to edit this. But I'm here. I want to do it.
Jeff (33:54.53)
Yeah, I think especially on that initial import, like okay, I've gone into the import screen and I've added this book from Goodreads or ISPN. Clearly I know the exact book I'm looking for. I probably have the, at least most of the information about it readily at hand. Yes, whoever that user is, even if they've just joined hardcover, okay, at least that very first time.
maybe within a certain timeframe of adding that book. Yes please if you have that information please add it in.
Ste (34:31.608)
Yeah, that'd be amazing, especially for covers. I have my concern with covers that are imported, I think from either Open Library or Google Books in a pretty low resolution. So yeah, they're very small and there's nothing we can do apart from uploading covers, which I'm doing for some books, especially the ones that have good covers. But it would be...
Jeff (34:43.054)
They're always so small. Yeah.
Ste (35:01.148)
Could it be possible to also have like some roles by default for certain books, for instance, if you had the book, you are an editor, but only for that book? Or would that be considered to fine grains for our purposes and maybe mess things up down the line?
Adam (35:14.694)
Thanks for watching!
Jeff (35:24.694)
That would be a database level. Programmatically, I can see ways to make that work, but as a small development team with the three of us, basically, do we want to put in that level? Is that something that makes sense for what we're doing overall? And will that make sense? OK, it makes sense when we have 5,000 users.
Adam (35:25.83)
I'll be curious to switch.
Jeff (35:50.774)
Will that make sense when you have 50,000, 500,000, 500 million, etc.
Adam (35:59.89)
I have a feeling we'll be able to get pretty far by having the person who initially created it edit it plus the librarians plus supporters, which we haven't even mentioned yet is that supporters also get the ability to edit books the same as librarians. It's kind of the paid way to edit books. And we could still, I like I would still absolutely ban a supporter if they were not, you know,
coming up to the librarian standards that we have, or at least maybe remove their ability to edit books.
Jeff (36:35.838)
Yeah, and that's, fortunately we haven't had that problem yet. I mean, obviously the library and core, the shush is still very small for us. I mean, we're, we're still a fairly small site in terms of our overall users. Um, but as we grow, let's face it, that will happen at some point.
Ste (36:56.876)
Yeah. What do you think are the challenges to like building impeccable book data, Jeff? Because we know there are some paid sources where you can get data, but what do you think are like the upsides of having a librarian program and how, you know, you can, can you actually reach like that level of impeccable book data through this kind of program?
Jeff (37:25.282)
Well, I mean, A, you absolutely can. Again, Goodreads and Storygraph have shown, they have solid data for the most part. But what gets interesting, and I actually just saw this on one of the books that I'm writing a review of here in a few minutes, sometimes even Goodreads or even Storygraph or even WorldCat in some cases,
doesn't have the book data for a book that you have in your hand. Um okay what do I do here?
Ste (38:04.448)
What then?
Jeff (38:10.086)
So in that case, and the manuals in both Goodreads and Sori Ref will tell you, hey, if you have the book in your hand, use that data, period. It is clearly out there. That is clearly good data because it's not something you're making up. You're actually staring at it right here in front of you. Good enough.
Adam (38:32.582)
Thanks for watching!
Adam (38:38.79)
for a, this is kind of a broad question, but aside from being able to add books and add additions, what would you see as the most urgent thing that we need in the librarian, the schist right now? And that could be either a tool or a system or a process, but what comes to mind for you?
Jeff (39:05.382)
One of the biggest things is not even adding books right now is adding genres to the books and moods and content warnings and tags that we have a lot of book data. We have a lot of book data that is missing even basic fiction versus nonfiction genre tags. And that is one of the things that.
I'm trying to correct even within my own library on the site is, hey, as I go in to update a given book or as I go in to even so much as look at a book, I'm putting in these tags because like I said, so many of them are missing.
Jeff (39:54.49)
Other than that, we've actually got a couple of librarians already that are hardcore into the graphic novels and manga and comic books, which admittedly is not something that I read very much and that I'm not overly familiar with even their conventions of publishing. So I am very glad that they're already there and already actively working in that space. And they're doing a great job.
Uh, they really are there. They're reporting things that, okay. Admittedly, I'm not even sure how to handle, please. Um, when you report these, tell me exactly what I need to do to me. But otherwise they're like, they're actually reporting. Hey, books 15 through 20 don't exist except well, they actually do, but they report that as an addition of book too.
Adam (40:50.609)
Yeah. I've definitely come into that before.
Jeff (40:51.842)
I mean, we've had several of those reports already.
Jeff (40:57.686)
So, and in those situations, because I know one of the things with comic books in particular is that they will have annual editions that have like all the books that came out that year bound in one volume. I know that much about the convention there. For those people that are working in that space, we do have the compilation button on the edit screen to where you can say,
this volume is a compilation of these other individual books. Please use that when appropriate.
Adam (41:41.57)
Yeah, and right now I don't think we're showing those compilation books in the book page, which is one thing that I'd like to do. So like, you know, if you mark a book as being like, this book is a compilation of these other three books, we could show those other three books on the book page, which that's an easy one. But yeah, for the genres, moods and tags that you mentioned, yeah, right now, you know,
All of those are user voted, so it's anyone on the site can just mark a genre, a mood, or a tag, and that we use the five most popular genres, moods, and tags on the book page, and as like the official tags for that book. I'm wondering, like, that was kind of a quick proof of concept way of doing it, to just get a lot of book data in from users.
What do you see as like the next step for that?
Jeff (42:45.078)
Well, and I don't know how much we can import because I know for a fact that the Goodrease export file doesn't list their data. So I know that's a no go. I haven't checked the story graph export file. I'm less familiar with like the open library API what we can get from there. But maybe there's ways to grab from some of these external sources that were already connected to, maybe.
If not, hey, brute force works. The more librarians we get, the more users we get adding this stuff. We'll eventually get it all.
Adam (43:30.498)
Yeah. I think one kind of lingering question in my mind is whether or not we end up like, um, just going off of what's popular on terms of tags, which is kind of the Goodreads approach or we like, we formalize it and like have the librarians say like, these are the tags that need to show up for this book.
Jeff (43:55.062)
That would actually be similar to like the user added tag that we're going to add on these books as users add them that could very well be hey, these are what users have said and then librarians can actually go in and approve and Those would be the official ones Other other things just thinking off the top of my head, I'm not even sure how if or how these could be done
But potentially with web scraping technology in particular, maybe we could go not necessarily to the other competitors. That may get iffy, but certainly the publishers or even authors on websites in particular. Okay, hey, if we can find this book listed on its publisher's website and the publisher lists the genres that the publisher says this book.
is in. Okay, hey that's at least a authority on that book. I mean it's the publisher.
Adam (44:57.24)
Mm-hmm.
Adam (45:05.562)
Yeah.
Yeah, genres in particular are one of those ones that I've read a lot of like different categorizations about for like flat level genres, hierarchical genres, um, ordered by popularity, ordered by, uh, professionals or admins. There's just so many ways of doing it. I feel like we'll, we'll probably end up shifting like 10 times.
Jeff (45:32.575)
Yeah, and then there's the whole onyx classification level, which is an entirely different beast that I know another site, Bookhype, actively uses over there, which has some intriguing implications and the developer over there actually uses it quite well within her system.
looking at the potential the possibility of bringing that over to the hardcover as well again just to have a more objective standard-ish but there again like he said okay who's objective standard
Ste (46:23.172)
It's gotta be someone's At the end of the day Jeff you yeah
Jeff (46:26.659)
Exactly. At some point, it really does come down to, okay, which standard are we as hard covered going to say this is the one we're going to.
Adam (46:40.294)
Yeah.
Ste (46:40.332)
Yeah. And since you mentioned authors and publishers, I was wondering what librarian tools would impact most authors and publishers because we are planning some updates in this area. And I'm wondering how, how do you see this happening and what do you think helps authors most even from this perspective, like an author has a book their data, like how.
they can impact it or work with it in some way.
Jeff (47:16.09)
one thing for authors in particular, and especially with so many authors having so, in some cases, several different pen names, is the ability and responsibility of making sure that we're putting the appropriate author on the appropriate book, which is something that even Goodreads has problems with at times. Because, for example,
author that I've been working with for years. His name is David Wood. Well, there's another author named David Wood that is almost as prolific, but the books they write are nothing at all alike. Or like a more generic like a John Smith. Okay, well there may be thousands of John Smiths. How do we know which is this John Smith for these books?
And that's one of the things I've heard authors complaining about the most, again, even on even on a Goodreads is they didn't, they put my name on the wrong book or they didn't put, they didn't put my book with my author profile. Okay. We need to try to do what we can to make sure we get that right.
Ste (48:38.34)
Yeah. Would you see an author like claiming their profile and immediately being able to do those edits? Or is there any other way you'd see it happening?
Jeff (48:52.358)
Um, yeah, the, the concept of a claimed profile, especially on Goodreads does allow them to go in and do some of that. But even there, the librarians over there have to get involved with at least some of that process as well. Um, and I'm not actually a Goodreads librarian, so I'm not as familiar with their exact internal processes there. Um.
But I know even on hardcover, because I've gone and been editing some of this data myself, there will be authors that, OK, it's like Michael W. Smith versus Michael W. Smith, or whatever the case may be.
Okay, this is actually one thing that Adam, we can do on the back end that again, BookHype has actually done very well with. Okay, list some of the books by this particular author, like when you're adding the author, and that way, okay, if the author is already within the system, that helps guide you as to which Michael W. Smith you're looking at.
Adam (50:10.63)
and
Adam (50:15.094)
Well, getting into the last couple minutes, so I have some rapid fire questions for you. So the kind of thing of this is like a new segment at the end of Hardcover Live for guests. This is kind of the first time trying it. So we might change these questions later, but I'm curious. They're kind of general ones that I think will apply to any type of guest that comes on. So start off, what book
Got you into reading.
Jeff (50:50.598)
Honestly, the earliest ones that I remember reading were like the boxcar children or like the young students learning library. Like literally I had a entire set of young students learning library encyclopedias back when I was a small kid, back in the late 80s, early 90s. And back then kids would make fun of me because I would literally sit there and read the encyclopedia just for fun.
Adam (51:18.854)
Man, I don't know if that's allowed in Florida anymore.
Ste (51:25.363)
Is it that bad?
Jeff (51:26.211)
I'm not even sure if that, I'm not even sure if like the younger readers like the like my nieces and nephews are like in middle school now if they even understand what the concept of a printed encyclopedia is anymore
Adam (51:28.46)
Hehehehe
Ste (51:42.036)
Yeah, might be one of those things like the rotary phone or something or even the cassette
Adam (51:49.574)
It's like if you printed out Wikipedia.
Jeff (51:53.003)
I don't know.
Ste (51:53.373)
Oh yeah, see? You sold it!
Adam (51:57.267)
Okay, second question. What's the book you find yourself recommending the most often?
Jeff (52:08.222)
I don't think I have a set book I do have a set author and that's Jeremy obviously Basically anytime anybody mentions. Hey, I want to read a sci-fi book, which I mean, let's face it happens a lot Hey, have you met Jeremy yet?
Ste (52:27.021)
I'm going to go to bed.
Jeff (52:27.838)
Um, but as far as a particular book, I really do try to, if somebody says, Hey, I want a book about blah, I've probably read enough that I can probably find something relatively close. And it really depends on what's at the top of my head in that section at that moment.
Adam (52:28.038)
What?
Adam (52:49.394)
What a, like I've never read a Jeremy Robinson book. So if you were to recommend one for me as a sci-fi reader, what's a good entrance point?
Jeff (53:00.958)
Well, in some, in some cases, I would say the hunger, the hunger, the complete trilogy, which was just released last spring, that's actually, this is the killed me shirt. Um, he wrote a book called hunger years ago that I actually create. He actually featured me in the chapter one. I saw the world hunger and caused the apocalypse in the process.
Well, for years I was begging him, like he wrote the sequel, um, feast. And then for years and years and years, I was begging him, begging him, begging him. You've got to kill me off. You got to finish this trilogy. I need to know what happens. And then when he released the complete trilogy last spring, he finally included famine, the last book. And yes, he finally killed me off in glorious fashion. It was awesome.
Ste (53:58.879)
Amazing.
Adam (54:02.15)
That's awesome. I added it to my once a read list. And to wrap up, so let's say you have a day off or maybe you could even go anywhere in the world. You have any setting you want to read a book. Describe your like ideal atmosphere. What would that look like? Where are you? What does it look like? What does it feel like?
Jeff (54:28.162)
I've read it from a really different place.
Jeff (54:32.866)
In all honesty, if I could go anywhere and just chill out with a good book. I've never seen the Pacific Ocean. Um, and that's absolutely one of the things on my bucket list. So for me, Hey, give me some Island in South Pacific, Bora Bora, even Hawaii. I don't care. Something out there where I can just find a beach, find a beach share. I've got my Kindle, maybe a drink, maybe a good cigar.
I'm good. Let's go. I've done that all over the Caribbean. It'd be awesome to do it in the Pacific.
Adam (55:10.394)
sounds very nice. I could see myself doing that with the strawberry daiquiri.
Ste (55:10.854)
best.
Jeff (55:19.111)
Exactly.
Adam (55:22.047)
Well, thanks so much for chatting today, Jeff. I took a bunch of notes about some things and I have a feeling in the next steps going to be like prototyping out some of these things and chatting with you about them. So yeah, I'm excited to go to that next step next.
Ste (55:39.864)
Yeah, it was fun.
Jeff (55:40.322)
It's been great. Thanks guys.
Adam (55:42.766)
Yeah, thanks. Have a good one.
Ste (55:44.228)
Thanks everybody in the audience as well and yeah, see you next time.
Adam (55:48.074)
Yeah, see y'all next time.
Jeff (55:48.673)
Yeah, thanks.