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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 (00:01.416)
Hey, hey, stay. How's it going?
ste (00:03.89)
Ah yeah, good, good. How's it going? How's the weather in Salt Lake?
adam (00:10.276)
It's pretty warm. I finally started being able to wear like shorts when I walk to the gym and not be like freezing.
ste (00:18.27)
Okay, that's good. Yeah, is it springy?
adam (00:24.576)
It's not spring yet. Like there's no, uh, no, like buds on any of the trees, but we usually, we usually get spring by like the second week of April. It's kind of like when the cherry blossoms generally bloom. So.
ste (00:38.553)
Okay, that's yeah.
adam (00:42.118)
We're not sure if that's gonna happen this year because it's already seems like it should have been happening already, so we'll see.
ste (00:50.41)
Okay, that's late. I mean in London they're already full in full bloom.
adam (00:56.82)
Oh yeah.
ste (00:57.934)
Yeah.
adam (00:59.536)
Man, yeah, that would be nice. I'm looking forward to, yeah, a different season.
ste (01:07.773)
Yeah, I mean, it's been a long winter.
adam (01:13.289)
How's your last week been?
ste (01:15.83)
Pretty good, pretty good. Yeah, it's starting to finally get a bit hotter. Yeah went outside and Yeah, I've been working on stuff Good to finally be here on Harkover number seven. Is it our seventh one?
adam (01:36.637)
Let's see, eighth, eight.
ste (01:39.85)
Alright, oh wow, okay, that's nice. Hardcover number eight, nice. What do you have in plan for today? What should we chat about or what should we do with them to building?
adam (01:42.94)
Yeah.
adam (01:55.276)
So what I'm thinking would be good to chat about is around like book data organizational structures. So this is something I've been thinking about kind of since hardcover started is like where's our book data coming from? How do we enhance it with data from external providers? How do we enhance it with the community in a way that is gonna allow us
ste (02:06.612)
Mm-hmm
adam (02:25.356)
to have different types of book data from like widely publicized books to, you know, potentially if we decide we want to do like fan fiction or something like that or even, yeah, I'm not sure where the limit is like, would an article that someone posts on a website be something, I'm not really going that far down more like, so I think for the context of today,
published as an entity that call themselves a book in some form.
ste (03:02.15)
Okay, that sounds great. Yeah, it's a really interesting topic. And yeah, we've kind of approached it from several directions or like tangentially or however it's called, like we've taken steps at it. But yeah, it feels like we've never like dove deep into the subject. So yeah, that sounds exciting.
adam (03:24.376)
Yeah. So, uh, what I started trying to do this past week was kind of like start outlining what the next phase of our like book data is going to, going to look like, um, in terms of like what we, what we tackle for it. And let me kind of give you the, the pitch on what I'm thinking and you can kind of let me know what you think about this idea. So, uh,
ste (03:48.99)
Yeah. Yeah.
adam (03:55.116)
So right now on hardcover, the only things that you can do to create a book are, um, let us know like the Goodreads ID or the ISBN and we'll go and fetch that book from an external provider and add it to our system. Or you can just search for a book and we'll probably pull it in from Google books as part of that search. So there's like the two ways of adding new books. And I feel like that's kind of been working. Like I don't feel like, I don't feel like we need to start allowing people to add
books from other means just yet. Like, as I think if we have those two solid then being able to just like add a book without an ISBN is kind of putting us down a little bit more future path for us. So I'm good kind of limiting it to books with an ISBN for at least today.
ste (04:41.213)
Yeah.
ste (04:48.13)
Yeah, well that's a good threshold. I mean, you gotta have an ISBN. I've published magazines and you know, it's pretty easy to get one ISBN, so yeah, that should be a good, you know, yeah, try to go to, judge a book by its ISBN.
adam (04:50.404)
Yeah.
adam (05:09.036)
Yeah. So what I'm thinking we focus on next is how we kind of fill in the gaps of what information is available about each edition, because each ISBN is referring to like a specific edition of a book. And so for instance, you know, we have, um, you know, Hunger Games. That's, that's a book and there are many different editions of that book, each with its own ISBN, like the audio book has them and it has an ISBN, the hardcover book, the ebook.
And right now we have no way for readers to help like fill in the gaps about the data for each of those additions. So for instance, if we're missing the page count for one of those, there's no kind of clear way for people to help help us get that data into hardcover. So that's kind of like the problem that I feel like we're kind of solving with this phase is how we fill in the gaps in our book data with people from our
community.
ste (06:11.418)
Mm-hmm
adam (06:13.02)
And so kind of what I'm thinking and imagining is
adam (06:20.596)
Let me jump over to Figma here and I'll share my screen.
ste (06:27.45)
perfect. Just let me know what page you're on and I can actually file it. Okay, yeah, I got you.
adam (06:35.598)
screen.
adam (06:39.676)
Chrome tab, Figma, there you go.
adam (06:47.476)
Right, so this is a little bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a
adam (06:53.516)
This is kind of where I was like starting to figure out like what new pages we need on hardcover to support some kind of editing functionality. And then I'll get into like what that editing functionality could potentially look like. So these are like the things on hardcover that would need to be editable. And so, yeah, we need to edit books, authors, series,
ste (07:16.65)
Ok.
adam (07:25.358)
And pretty much like all of these ones like books, authors series, they would also have the ability to like see the, the history. So kind of what I was envisioning when I was like thinking about this is like,
Who should be able to edit something on hardcover? Like is it, is it admins? Is it librarians with a specific role that we've like, um, granted access to this? Or should it be just like anyone who is using hardcover?
ste (07:48.394)
Mm-hmm.
ste (08:03.55)
Yeah, that's really interesting. Goodreads has a 100,000 reader army of librarians, which is kind of weird because they're offering free work to basically the Bezos Empire. But at the same time, this is because there's no source of real good book data out there. So you kind of have to go there to, you know, keep your favorite book or edition updated.
ste (08:36.411)
And that's only available to librarian. So in our last hardcover, in hardcover number seven, actually, yeah, we're talking about actually having it's available Wikipedia style to everyone who is on the platform. And I still thought, you know, a weekend, that's pretty interesting. I mean, yeah, it sounded scandalous in a good way.
when you set it first, but having one week for it to settle, I think it's actually a really good approach. What do you think about that one week in?
adam (09:18.436)
Yeah, I'm even more excited about it. Now, the more I think about it, I think the easy part is making everything editable by everyone. Like if everyone's a good person and people only make positive edits, then it's like the easiest problem in the world to solve. We just make everything editable. But yeah, getting it to the point where we're preventing against spam,
ste (09:29.974)
Okay.
adam (09:50.077)
people who are intentionally putting bad information or maybe intentionally putting or unintentionally putting bad information and they don't even realize that they're putting in something that's not standard or not good. And how we handle those cases, I think it is going to be kind of the, the most difficult part. Because Wikipedia has kind of like good rates they have an army of editors and moderators who are going through and.
checking what has been most recently edited and verifying that it's, it's good or not. Um, so how we figure, how we solve that problem without having a huge editorial team is I think going to be our biggest kind of thing to solve in this setup.
ste (10:39.53)
Yeah, that sounds great. I mean, it's a great problem to solve. And like you said, the hurdle is how are we going to do that without having that number of editors verifying everything so that it's also something that happens frequently, or as frequently as possible, for each book that has missing info. And my question would be, like,
Like, do you think it's a matter of, like, how many people are actually, you know, having eyes on that certain book? Because obviously our assumption here is that each book has enough fans that can, who can spot things that are inaccurate with it?
Right?
adam (11:42.296)
Yeah. Yeah, having like someone look over it.
ste (11:48.17)
Yeah. At the same time, it's good that our information is verifiable. So we only, apart from the description, which is obviously subjective, because you can focus on certain things. The info we have here is pretty, you know, undebatable, I guess. So, but it is the page count, the ISBN, they're not things, you know,
adam (12:13.618)
Yeah.
adam (12:18.159)
Right.
ste (12:18.611)
which are up for debate. So that's kind of like an advantage in our court, I guess.
adam (12:26.356)
Yeah, that kind of made me think that there are going to be fields that are maybe like locked and not editable and certain fields, or maybe they're only editable by like admins or like a higher up role like a librarian, like because like you might have a book with two ISBNs like an
adam (12:56.536)
And you realize that the ISBN 13 from this first book should be on the second book. So it's like, it's not so much that the data is wrong. It's that it needs to be moved from like one place to another. And those kinds of situations are kind of like, uh,
kind of on that gray area where we probably don't want to even allow it to be edited most of the time, but we need it to be editable for those specific cases.
ste (13:25.07)
Okay, that's good. I mean, we're uncovering a key aspect to it. How about, I mean, why wouldn't that be at the buzz? Is it like a technical thing that's going on? Does it have to do with the way we associate it with an ID or something?
adam (13:41.856)
I think one thing that comes to mind for me is that if we have an association of an addition to its Google Book record, then we're able to know this edition has this ISBN. That's like a fact in our system. But maybe if we don't have a tie to some external data about the book, then the ISBN would be editable.
ste (14:11.932)
Okay.
adam (14:12.098)
So it's like, so if it's like not verified, then we can allow it to be editable. And maybe we do that for like all the fields, like we do that for page count. Like if, if we know the page count from Google books, then we don't allow it to be editable.
ste (14:16.691)
No, it's okay.
ste (14:27.45)
Okay, that sounds good. So you're saying that if it's on Google Books, we're getting it. And that's the truth. That's unless Google Books has it completely wrong, we're not allowing anyone to edit because they might mess things up.
adam (14:47.756)
Yeah. Yeah, something like that.
ste (14:51.571)
Okay, that sounds good.
adam (14:57.596)
See, I started thinking of... Oh, sorry, go ahead.
ste (14:57.97)
What the? No, go ahead, go ahead. Yeah, I'll save that question.
adam (15:03.916)
So I was thinking about like where we where we start with all this. And it seems like editions is kind of the best place to start because that's, I mean, more, more impactful than authors or series like editions is will allow us to get better covers, better book data. And we show, we show the, the data from one of the editions on the book page. So like, for instance, if you're,
the addition for audiobook and adding the audiobook length, we would potentially show that audiobook length on the book page. So by completing more addition data, we're also improving the top level book page. So it made me think like this listing of additions page and like these edit pages for additions would probably be some of the first pages to really start with.
ste (16:03.83)
Yeah, that sounds good. I mean, the book page is in focus, so everything stems from that.
adam (16:10.716)
Yeah. So I started thinking about like, what should the additions page even have? Like, I know you've been doing like the book page and the different tabs. So this would effectively be like the, that tab under the books page and what we show on that page. And, and I was still using kind of the old layout here, but this would, uh, this would, the overall layout would kind of change. So I'm thinking about it more of just like,
this little bit of content that shows up in the tabs, kind of the important part.
ste (16:45.33)
Yeah, that's perfect. I mean, we can definitely swap this to the new layout. That's not important, but it will allow us to have. So basically, over here is what we list in a similar way to what we do in the new book drawer when you're able to set the edition that you're reading. So the edition card, okay, perfect.
adam (17:11.899)
Exactly.
ste (17:15.29)
I'm just gonna bring him.
adam (17:15.496)
Probably with like a, probably with like a more elaborate card because it won't need to be as small as the drawer, but similar concept and similar data or similar, similarly we're showing all the additions here.
ste (17:30.75)
Yeah, that's perfect.
I like your notebook by the way. I like this really pointed out.
adam (17:39.976)
It has a, it's a, I really like this, these moleskins with like the fabric cover.
ste (17:46.351)
Okay, it's a move. Okay, yeah. Oh yeah, that makes sense.
adam (17:50.356)
Yeah, and yeah, I've switched to the dot ones instead of the the lined ones because they're they feel less busy.
ste (17:57.375)
Yeah.
ste (18:00.87)
They do. And they're perfect for layouts.
adam (18:05.439)
Yeah.
ste (18:11.23)
Okay, so this would be the addition. Perfect.
adam (18:14.781)
Yeah, I know in our book drawer, we're focusing on
adam (18:26.716)
like the ability to change the format. So, you know, reading, audio or ebook, because that's kind of the quickest way to filter on the, like the book button drawer for like, you know, currently reading and yeah, exactly.
ste (18:45.75)
just wanted to bring this in for context for everybody who's watching. Yeah, this is what we're working on for the new book drawer. Okay, so yeah, go ahead.
adam (18:50.42)
Yeah.
adam (18:56.476)
So I'm thinking like, um, when it comes to filtering the entire list of editions, I was trying to narrow it down to like what, what are, what's our hypothesis on how, what people, how are people going to filter this list of additions? Like what's going to be the most important ways of filtering it? Cause I feel like this, this one with the, the format, I feel like that's the most important way of filtering when you're, decide when you're marking like what book you read.
I wonder if on this page it might be different, because there might be a different goal in mind when you're browsing this editions page.
ste (19:37.23)
Yeah, definitely. I like that it has like multiple dimensions to it. So the language one is pretty important because we have books that have a lot of languages associated with them, especially the more popular books. So finding the one that you're actually reading. Yeah, that would be way better in this in this setup.
adam (20:10.676)
Yeah, I was trying to think if there were any other like data about the addition that would be most useful to like filter by here.
or have like, yeah.
ste (20:25.17)
I was thinking, yeah, maybe, well, it's a pretty tricky one, I guess, but filtering the additions by the amount of info they have, but I'm not really sure how to, yeah, actually filter that. So if an addition misses a lot of info, to be able to select the additions or to sort them by,
how complete they are. So I'm guessing sort by completeness would be one, but I'm not sure if that's important. Maybe it's not. Maybe we can just find a way to Yeah highlight the information that's missing. I'm guessing that would be useful for Whoever wants to edit the info so that it stands out, but yeah, okay.
adam (21:21.236)
That's true. Like if we if you were wanting if you were sorting by completeness and then you were sorting by completeness reversed you were saying like what are the additions that need the most help? Like what are the most incomplete additions?
ste (21:34.67)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. That could happen because I'm guessing if you're the incentive to edit it as one of the readers on hardcover would be I'm reading this edition, I really want it to, you know, appear as complete as possible in my library. So I'd search for it
ste (22:04.81)
data and I want to do a service through the world of books by, you know, basically, yeah, contributing to the book data of this edition for other readers. So I'm guessing they would find their edition anyway. So maybe if it's, I'm thinking, you know, from a technical perspective, it might be tough to implement this filter. But yeah.
adam (22:36.238)
We already have that actually. We have something called Score, which is a score of each edition for how much data we have about it. And right now we use the edition with the highest score as the one that we show on the book page for that book. Or for the book page.
ste (22:38.691)
Oh, okay. There you go.
ste (22:58.31)
Yeah, I forgot about that. Now that you mentioned it, yeah, we do have that. Hehehe.
adam (23:03.376)
Yeah, all, uh, and yeah. And that kind of makes me think. Another thing here is, uh, technically different additions have different ratings. Like, you know, like people are rating the book, but they're also kind of rating the addition that they read of the book. Like, so the audio book, for instance, might have a much higher rating than the ebook, but or vice versa. I'm not sure how
that actually is though. It feels more like just an interesting fact rather than a, like I'm gonna base my decision on what I read based on this rating. It feels like most people are gonna listen to the audiobook if they're audiobook listeners. They're gonna read the ebook if they're ebook listeners. But
ste (23:53.01)
Yeah, but that's an important point because you might have audiobooks where you hate the or you really love the way it's narrated. And let's say a specific audiobook with a specific narrator would be highly ranked because of that.
It might also, yeah, make things complicated in terms of how we judge the rating of that and what rating we show. But we're showing an average rating anyway, so yeah, if you wouldn't like another book, I guess. Just seeing that the rating for that...
So on the ratings page, the reader rated the audiobook and not the hardcover would be important, right? So yeah, actually I'm getting, yeah, it would function because we show an aggregate, like an average rating, but if you want to really go deep into seeing, should I listen to this audiobook or, you know, you'd be
adam (25:25.216)
Yeah, it's kind of like, we don't want to show this rating if there's only like one of them for an addition. It kind of doesn't make sense to say like the average rating, there needs to be some threshold where we need some number of people to have rated it. Otherwise, it's too heavily skewed by one person.
ste (25:45.51)
Yeah, true, true. But yeah.
adam (25:47.456)
I don't know what this number is.
ste (25:50.45)
Uh-huh, that should cover it, I guess. I mean, you'll find any edition that way. I'm wondering what's the book with the most editions on hardcover? Just trying to figure out how many editions do we have to deal with. I mean, most books probably have just a couple, let's say, two, three, four, but I'm guessing there are books that have,
adam (26:16.681)
I
ste (26:20.45)
number 50.
adam (26:22.436)
I know I saw that the Hobbit has a lot of editions. There are 280 editions of the Hobbit. Let me see. 1984 has 262 editions. Yeah.
ste (26:42.37)
Hey, well done the habit, winning. Wow. Okay. So that's about 230 more than my estimate. Nice. We definitely need those filters.
adam (26:57.196)
Yeah. Let's see. Are there any other like sort or sort filters or like things that come into your mind that we would want to consider at this point?
ste (27:14.33)
I think that pretty much covers it. So the idea is to find your addition without having to browse 280 editions. So that would, I guess, cover it, because you're going to find it in less than one minute with those filters, no matter how many editions. So for the majority of cases, I'm guessing those filters wouldn't even be needed because you're just going to have the list of, you know,
know five editions you'll see your edition you'll click on it and you'll go there but for yeah books like the Hobbit that's when the word comes in handy and you know we're building it for the most
ste (28:01.99)
complex reading habits and the most complex readers. So yeah, that's a really good... Yeah, it covers everything pretty much.
adam (28:17.516)
Yeah, I think, uh, I think, yeah, this is a good starting point. Like if we realize we need something else, like a full text search or something, then
Like that that can also kind of already be solved by like language or, you know, audio book.
ste (28:36.192)
Yeah.
ste (28:39.43)
You won't search too much for an addition with these filters.
adam (28:43.136)
Yeah, unless it's like, yeah, though, though in your in the worst case, you might have to go to like page two. Cool.
ste (28:49.83)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And that's still good. Yeah.
adam (28:56.596)
See, I was thinking like what this page could have on it. Like I hadn't really thought about much more than like just a whole bunch of these edition cards with some pagination. It's kind of keeping it simple, not really thinking about it like we do for the air lists where we have like multiple formats of the card. Just like keeping it simple
ste (29:10.998)
Mm-hmm.
ste (29:22.137)
Thank you.
Oh yeah.
adam (29:26.676)
card and it just shows like
ste (29:28.29)
Yeah, it should just be that single component that we reuse everywhere to, yeah. Basically, you have an addition show the same throughout the site. So you kind of know that you're dealing with an addition, just that addition card.
adam (29:34.902)
Yeah.
adam (29:48.281)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, I like that.
And what we show on this card versus what we show on like the standalone edition page, I think is we'll have to figure out like what do people want to see at the high level versus what do people want to see at the the detailed level because I'm thinking like for this card, if you were to click on like the title of it, it would take you to the full edition page,
URL right here.
ste (30:27.317)
Mm-hmm
adam (30:29.416)
Um, and so that's the one that would be like, you know, if this was the Spanish Spanish edition of a book, it would have the full Spanish title. And that'll also be good for SEO because we'll have a page that has the full Spanish title of the book and a page that has the full Portuguese title of the book and a page that has, you know, all of them.
ste (30:50.75)
Yeah, it does get them play out really well.
ste (30:59.77)
That card looks good. I mean, I think it has all of the things it needs. So we have the switch to addition button would basically switch the addition that you're reading to this one. The version history is the editing history, right? Or is it something else?
adam (31:22.896)
Yeah, it's the editing history. I was seeing it as kind of like this over here.
ste (31:35.593)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
adam (31:37.096)
This is kind of Wikipedia-like, but we can kind of figure out how to make this our own. But yes, it's how to see all the edits for this edition and be able to roll back to previous edits very easily.
ste (31:52.53)
Yeah, that looks great. And what else does it have? I like that it has contributors. There will list like all the usernames and of all the readers who contributed, right?
adam (32:05.196)
Exactly. And it would make it really easy to like compare one version with another or to roll back to a version.
ste (32:07.411)
That's going to be nice.
adam (32:15.24)
Yeah.
ste (32:17.35)
That sounds great because one of the perks of doing this and helping with addition, I guess, would be mentioned on this page. And we can figure out what else we can do if we implement stuff like badges or something that is recognition in the hardcover, network of what you did
adam (32:44.676)
Yeah.
ste (32:47.45)
edition. It can even like... Yeah, yeah. I'm thinking also for stats, you know, you could be the top editor of an edition and maybe even have a ranking. We could do this. I'm guessing it's a nice game to play to, you know, improve the knowledge we have for
adam (32:49.896)
Yeah, I really like the idea of badges.
ste (33:15.43)
for books and make it actually. If there was one competition that I would join, it would be that. I mean, that would be for a really good purpose to improve the
ste (33:34.41)
knowledge and the actual truth or the info about a book.
adam (33:42.436)
Yeah. Yeah, I like figuring out how to like reward people for doing that, even if they're only doing it to help like their own library. Like that's, that's, I mean, that's the most important part for, for like people, it's that they're getting something out of doing it. So yeah, how we, how we reward that's important.
ste (33:49.032)
Mm-hmm.
ste (33:55.691)
Yeah.
ste (34:00.53)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, they're also helping others. I mean, there's bound to be some person at some point and we all know how, you know,
really bad
There's a lot of stuff that's missing in the book, the data out there. I mean, there's still not a good source of accurate and complete information about all the books in general. Yeah, and the editions.
adam (34:34.436)
Yeah. So, yeah, after people are, oh yeah, so yeah, this switch to addition button. So, yeah, kind of like you mentioned, like, when we have, we have like this idea of the user, we just call it a user book, it represents the reader's interaction with a book.
added it to their want to read list. It contains when they first read that book, when they most recently read that book, their rating, their review, all of that we associate with the book and with a specific edition of that book. And so one of the, I think, design decisions we've made with hardcover is that you wouldn't be able to add multiple editions of the same book to your
want to read list or to your red list or anything like that. So this switch edition is, is a, yeah, switching the addition that you're, you're associated with on the platform to be this specific edition. Do you think that makes sense? Like, I think.
ste (35:53.55)
Well, yeah, that definitely makes sense. And there are cases in which readers read the audiobook and the hardcover of a book. And those are two different experiences, I guess. So there should be one edition, because else it would involve too much complexity. But then again, we have the reads, which are associated with an edition. So.
adam (36:22.758)
Right.
ste (36:25.251)
The actual edition that they're shown is the edition of their choice. So anyone could switch to an edition. My question here is, when they click on switch to edition, that just changes the edition that we're showing to that specific reader, right? It doesn't change the edition on.
one of their reads or does it?
adam (36:58.076)
uh it doesn't yeah you're right it wouldn't change the one on their reads at all. I'm thinking maybe it like if they if they uh if they haven't started reading the book yet and it's just on their want to read list then when they start reading that book it would use this edition but if they've already started using started reading a book or they've already read it then
reads.
ste (37:29.45)
Okay, that sounds good because each read, we made so that to cover your cases when, you know, you might read the book in different edition, each book has an edition, each read has an edition associated with it.
ste (37:52.65)
Now, is that a good decision? I'm guessing yes.
adam (37:58.236)
Cool, cool. Just, just making sure we're on the same page. It is, it is limiting it so that people that want to rate the book in multiple formats won't be able to. But I think that's such an edge case that I've, I've only seen it mentioned in like a couple of Reddit comments. It's never something that's come up in any of the user interviews that I've had with people. So I think we're okay making a decision not to do that, at least for now. We can always change it later.
ste (38:22.038)
Mm-hmm
ste (38:27.05)
Yeah, it can be your favorite edition because obviously, you know, if you read a book in, let's say you read it in, I have books that I've read in Romanian and in English, and I have favorite editions, probably the English one. So yeah, that's, I guess, one of those
adam (38:28.409)
Yeah.
adam (38:47.439)
Yeah.
ste (38:57.05)
Completely okay, setting one addition, that's my favorite, four book.
adam (39:01.616)
And at least like if you do read it multiple times in different languages, you're still going to get credit towards your goals for each of those additions because each of those is still a different read through. So I think I think that like if we weren't doing that goal side, then I think people would have an issue with that. But.
ste (39:13.57)
That's what it is.
ste (39:21.79)
Yeah, definitely. But we're saving multiple reads and reads have an addition associated with it. So yeah, that should be, I think the way it's shown versus the way you read it are two different things. So we're providing support for each of those, I guess, through the multiple reads. By the way, does good reads have multiple reads available? I didn't check.
adam (39:28.183)
Yeah.
adam (39:52.917)
They do. For them, since all of the books on Goodreads are in addition, if you read the audiobook and the physical book, you're effectively just reading two separate, completely different books that have their own ratings. They both have a parent book that's the same, but they're in two separate spots. You can review them separately. Or you could review them the same. It's kind of confusing.
ste (40:12.192)
Yeah.
adam (40:21.436)
There are like so many editions that have like reviews that are similar to another book that has the exact same reviews. It's, yeah, it's a lot. I think this organizational structure will be easier for people to find what they're looking for.
ste (40:32.912)
Yeah.
That's it.
ste (40:41.81)
Yeah, it's the same book. If you listen to it, it's not gonna be like a whole different book. It's gonna be a different reading experience, but it's not gonna be a different book.
adam (40:53.176)
There was one other thing that came up while I was doing this that I was imagining that I would personally be interested in on this, either on this edition card or on the edition page. And it was like the idea, and I saw this on your book prototype as well, it was like, could we mark this as owned in some way? Because this is the point where you would want to be able to mark it as owned
ste (41:17.979)
Yeah.
adam (41:23.557)
level, but you might also want to just do it at the book level if you don't care about the addition specifically.
ste (41:31.95)
true, both could be valid. I mean, you are right. That's why I actually took it out of the prototype that you got to mark your specific edition as owned. At the book level, it could work in the way that you're marking the main edition. So you'd be marking the most popular edition that we're showing as owned. And in case you
adam (41:32.342)
So that's its own.
ste (42:01.97)
have a different edition that you own. When you go to editions, if you mark a different edition as owned, that edition appears in your owned library. So the default, I'm guessing would be the best edition, the one with the best score. So the one we show, if you haven't switched to any of the other editions,
on this page, if you mark it as red, maybe it could switch to that. So we could have it on the main book page and on this card as well. If that makes sense.
adam (42:48.036)
Yeah, yeah, having it, having it in both places makes sense. One, one thing that came to mind was something almost, not to add this to the book button, but to like if the owned button on a book page effectively was saying like, what versions of this book do you own? But that might be,
ste (42:54.892)
So, yeah.
ste (43:17.91)
Okay, so this is in case you're multiple editions, right?
adam (43:18.196)
too much.
adam (43:24.576)
Yeah, or even just to select the edition that you do own from the book page.
ste (43:30.99)
Well, that sounds good. It could work like that. I'm guessing most of the times people would just mark the most popular edition because that would be wildly more popular. But yeah, then again, I've read lots of translated books that are, yeah, they're definitely not the main edition. So that could work. We could have it as
ste (44:01.53)
Or you could take it to a different page and you'd just like mark your edition. Yeah, either way, this could be like a fast way of doing it. But then again, for if you want to replicate what you own, I think you're happy to spend a bit of time. So just going to the book page and then browsing the editions and marking your edition as
adam (44:09.937)
Yeah.
ste (44:31.05)
that doesn't seem like really, let's say, arduous baskets. It should be pretty fast, I'm guessing. But yeah, if we can do it so that it works on mobile, that's my only thing, it has to work on mobile. This would ideally be like a thing, you know, when in the drawer, when you tap something and we're doing that nice interaction,
adam (44:43.478)
Yeah.
adam (44:49.379)
Yeah.
ste (45:01.09)
when it moves to the side and then you get this. So it's basically like this two-panel interaction, but on mobile you just see one panel and then it animates to the next one. If we can make it like that for mobile, may it may be, I mean, that's a good interaction to make as a component. So if something has like different levels to it, on desktop, it could be like multiple panels, but on mobile it would have to
adam (45:11.116)
Right, yeah.
ste (45:30.85)
between panels because you're seeing just like slither of the screen you'd see on desktop. So yeah, if we could make that interaction into a component and use it here as well, I'm guessing that would work.
adam (45:51.756)
Yeah, I can see that. And I'm thinking like, what, uh, what stands out as like the information that would be relevant here? Like, you know, yes, no on if they own, own each edition. I feel like there's also the potential that people would want to know, like other information about it. Like.
how many copies when, when, where, like there's there's so many data points we could use there but I feel like just the yes no is like the 95% case that solves like the Pareto 8020
ste (46:28.025)
What?
ste (46:40.913)
Yeah, let's at least do it like that and then we can V2 other options in there, I'd say.
adam (46:50.496)
Yeah, or like, have I loaned this copy out to someone who...
ste (46:55.61)
Oh yeah, I mean, loaned out could be like a separate field, I guess, even on the book page. If you loan it, well, you could create a list of loaned out books on second thought. So it would work like that. Yeah, I'm thinking the owned, if you check an edition or a book as owned, it could appear
adam (47:11.517)
That's true.
ste (47:25.75)
like the currently reading or want to read books appear in an air books list there could be like a known list that when you check this it either if you check it on the book page it puts the main edition in that list or if you check it at an edition level it puts that edition in that list would that make sense
adam (47:51.477)
Yeah. Yeah, that wouldn't be too hard. Like, especially if the ownership flag is on the book itself, because then, like, you could, you could, we could have a list that's, it's not like a status list, it's more of like just an owned books list. And it's your books across all. But right now, every, every,
ste (48:02.976)
Oh yeah.
ste (48:13.17)
Yeah, exactly.
adam (48:19.476)
user book needs a status, which is where that becomes a little tricky because
ste (48:26.91)
Yeah, well if you own it, you would add lists, so if you click owned, it would automatically maybe check the one to read at least. Let's say you wouldn't want to own any books that you wouldn't want to read or haven't read yet. Right?
adam (48:28.118)
Yeah.
adam (48:53.703)
Yeah, unless you're a library or a collector.
ste (48:59.291)
True, but even then, I mean, as a librarian, you'd want to read those. So, right? Ideally, you'd want to read any book in your library. So I'm guessing, yeah, what would be like a way to avoid that? Because yeah, if it gets on the list, yeah, we could have it so that you can add the books with no status if you just own them. But I'm thinking that might be a bit weird.
adam (49:06.477)
Yeah. Yeah.
ste (49:28.501)
So...
adam (49:29.756)
Yeah, I guess, yeah, I guess it's kind of like with lists, like you can add books to lists, even though you've never read the book. I guess the easiest way to do this would be to create a list called owned that everyone has. And then, and then.
ste (49:40.692)
best.
ste (49:47.35)
Yeah, exactly. And it could be hidden or not appear in lists. I mean, it could be on the same, yeah, what could it be? So it could either be on the same level as currently reading, or it can just show up on your lists page. And maybe if you want, you can disable it or hide it. You just hide it.
adam (50:09.74)
Yeah.
adam (50:16.26)
Yeah.
ste (50:21.71)
That will solve it. And the ownership was mentioned a couple of times when I talked to some of the readers using high coverage. So it would be nice to have that on the list.
adam (50:43.296)
Yeah, it kind of brings me back to the idea we had a while ago of like smart lists, which were like lists that were effectively like saved searches, where you know you you select some filters, and then you hit save and it saves that list to your account. And then anytime you pull it up. It's like it's it's querying all of the books you've ever interacted with. For whatever the query is in this case that query would be like.
and true or owned copies greater than zero or something like that.
ste (51:14.655)
Yeah.
ste (51:18.51)
Yeah, that could work.
adam (51:20.476)
be another way. But yeah, anyways, I feel like we're, uh, that was a, that was a fun tangent, but yeah, it'll need, need more, more research. Yeah.
ste (51:27.592)
Yeah.
ste (51:31.03)
Yeah, I guess, I mean, it could be on the edition level at least. And we could add it to a list of own books and then decide where to show it, maybe, just to have it on the back end, because then it's going to be easy to, yeah, actually decide where to show it. But that wouldn't mean you have to go back to the
adam (51:38.38)
Yeah.
adam (51:55.636)
Yeah. Yeah, that.
ste (52:00.85)
sa editing the book data structure for that.
adam (52:05.976)
Yeah. Yeah, the easiest way would be to make it so that there's a button with an addition. And when you click that button, effectively in the background, we find or create a new list called owned books. And for that list, we add this edition of this book to that list. And to the user, it just looks like they've, they, they manually created the list and added a book
But from an interaction standpoint, they just clicked a button saying, I own this.
ste (52:41.61)
Yeah, I mean that could work. It would be.
adam (52:44.096)
Yeah, that would be that would be really easy. Like I could implement that today. Like that's how easy that is. Yeah.
ste (52:49.25)
Okay, well I'm guessing let's put it there because Ount is definitely something readers have asked for. So we could just throw it in there. I can fetch it from, where was it? The book page, single book page.
adam (52:57.46)
Yeah.
adam (53:05.456)
Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. You think you think it's going to be better than my my mock up here? I mean, it's gonna
ste (53:13.21)
Definitely not. Definitely not, but you know. What do you know? It isn't. It really isn't.
adam (53:23.631)
There we go.
ste (53:28.075)
Okay, let's just make this like this and...
adam (53:29.524)
Yeah.
adam (53:33.196)
And, and what's kind of nice about this is that when it is added to that list, um, lists also have a, uh, a reason for every book. So they could put whatever they want about their ownership of that book in that list. Like they could say, like, I own this book. I loaned it out to this person. I bought it at this, this place, whatever, whatever arbitrary data they want to store.
ste (54:00.387)
Yeah
adam (54:03.719)
as part of the ownership of their book, they could do it.
ste (54:06.69)
Yeah, that's perfect. And you have like a management of all the books. And you track them like differently than the books you've read in general.
adam (54:17.556)
Yeah, and it would be an air list so they would be able to, you know, do anything you're able to do with an air list already.
ste (54:23.212)
Yeah, nice. Yeah, that'd be cool. Yeah, I think people are gonna use that.
adam (54:26.676)
Well, yeah. Yeah, I think we came up with a smart way to leverage the work we've already done. Yeah. Yeah.
ste (54:36.03)
Yeah, exactly. Well, it's about time, you know, that's our efforts in keeping it organized pay off, I guess.
adam (54:45.818)
Cool.
ste (54:46.172)
Yeah, that's perfect.
ste (54:51.21)
Well, this looks good. Yeah. I'm really liking, you know, the way it's shaping up to allow for that complexity. This is, I think, the most complex part of the whole thing. You know, the book editions are, yeah.
adam (54:51.296)
Well, I think.
ste (55:22.277)
a huge endeavor.
ste (55:26.81)
And this would cover finally all of the things that make a book. You know, where is?
adam (55:37.976)
Yeah.
ste (55:41.793)
I'm liking this. And for the editing, maybe we can cover this in the next week's show.
adam (55:43.804)
all.
ste (55:56.73)
I'm guessing it should follow the same structure and just be like a really easy thing you can do on your phone and yeah, just...
ste (56:09.79)
have it, if we have it at the addition level, and maybe, I'm guessing for the description, that's one of the parts that will live to, the algorithm maybe, like if we get the open AI API to work with the description, that would be great.
adam (56:36.551)
Yeah.
adam (56:39.876)
Yeah, I like that too. Cool. Um, so yeah, I was, I was thinking I'd probably start like implementing this, this page as like something functional, even if it's not like pretty yet, just to get it.
ste (56:39.95)
But yeah, looking good. Yeah.
Great.
ste (56:59.61)
Well, we have the designs for the, yeah, it can follow roughly the designs of that or I think, yeah, I can start having it in design as well because it's going to be a tab that should be there. I got, if you go to the books page, just to the single book page, just to give everyone an update. Yeah.
ste (57:30.89)
This is how it looks currently with the header as well. And it's pretty exciting. So we got the ratings in. We've got the friends who read this, which is gonna be really, really interesting. And it shows what friends left to review and what friends
how many stars that review has, where it's available from, and it also shows maybe, this is like a work in progress, but it could show similar books on the next level, and then what books, friends that read this book also liked, which are similar to this book. And then maybe some words and mentions and characters, and I actually got those from the Open API, yeah.
adam (58:31.176)
So yeah.
ste (58:31.37)
from the chat GPT actually. Yeah, I just asked for a JSON file of all the characters in this book. And I think they're good. I have to double check them, but I think they might be okay. But again, this is another thing where we can get the first like pass at the data. And then, yeah, see if
allow readers to edit it just to have that first data for a book.
adam (59:10.696)
Yeah. And I think characters and awards are both going to be two-dimensional tags, kind of similar to genres, moods, content warnings. Like, you know, Cornelius Snow is basically a tag that we can apply to any book. And that way, when we click on Cornelius Snow, we'll be able to go to that character and see all the books that are tagged with that character. Yeah.
ste (59:38.19)
Yeah, and the mentions in discussion. So maybe someone wants to tag the characters in the book and I'm thinking that could also be, yeah, in the grand scheme of things, another thing that can show up on that page. So that's cool, yeah. Perfect.
adam (59:53.876)
Yeah. Yeah, I'm really liking this. And this little rating widget at the top is really cool. Like it's, it feels very clear, like what's going on.
ste (01:00:05.83)
Yeah, your rating is marked, yeah.
adam (01:00:07.117)
I wonder...
adam (01:00:11.056)
I wonder about one other thing here is like if we want to show the average rating of the book.
ste (01:00:20.015)
Yes, I actually, I think this was supposed to be the average rate.
ste (01:00:27.311)
and your rating would be...
ste (01:00:32.35)
in yellow here. So let's put the point 4.3 like average rating and yours would be a 4.5. And yeah, yeah, I forgot to change that. And you could have, I mean, we could actually put it underneath, but yeah, maybe just like that. Keep it simple.
adam (01:00:32.758)
Like the...
adam (01:00:39.882)
Yeah.
That makes sense, yeah.
adam (01:01:00.256)
Yeah, I think that works.
ste (01:01:03.57)
Nice. Yeah.
adam (01:01:04.316)
Wow, it is raining very hard here now.
ste (01:01:08.41)
Yeah, I was hearing something, oh wow, that's rain, I would sleep like hell on that sound.
adam (01:01:14.107)
Oh, it's great.
ste (01:01:15.63)
Yeah, I bet. Ha ha ha.
adam (01:01:19.305)
But cool.
ste (01:01:20.93)
Yeah, good progress on this. I mean, I can't wait to get this action out there. And yeah, see it live.
adam (01:01:32.859)
Very cool. I'll, uh, I'll probably start on some of the addition pages this week and maybe trying to get that ownership feature in. Cause I mean, while I'm doing the addition pages, might as well add it.
ste (01:01:44.47)
Yeah, of course, that sounds good. I mean, some people will be really happy to see that. And yeah, it also gives us like a thing we can say to libraries, I actually wanted to visit some independent libraries I've been passing by, and see what they think about us. See, you know, if they'd be willing to create an account and yeah, actually use this. So this is like a great feature to kick off that discussion since, you know, we're doing it.
adam (01:01:49.576)
Yeah.
ste (01:02:14.69)
So that's good. Perfect. Well, then until next time for hackabler number nine.
adam (01:02:15.383)
Yeah.
Sweet.
adam (01:02:23.577)
Cool. Have a good week's day. Talk to you later. Bye.
ste (01:02:26.31)
Great, have a good one. Bye.