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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 (00:01.513)
Hey, hey, stay and our guest Haley for the day. How are you all doing?
Ste (00:08.142)
Pretty good. Hi Hailey, hi Adam.
Hailey (00:08.162)
Good.
Adam (00:10.635)
Today we're joined by Haley Hughes who's a prolific YouTuber with more than 26 ,000 subscribers and 450 videos. yeah, we're just really excited to chat with you today.
Hailey (00:24.868)
Thanks so much for having me.
Adam (00:29.185)
And I know we found your channel when you posted a video about like comparing different Goodreads alternatives and mentioned hardcover. Yeah, do you remember like how you ended up finding hardcover in the first place?
Hailey (00:45.27)
Yeah, I had made a TikTok complaining about Goodreads, which, yeah, we just talked about before we started today. That's not new. I think we all have a little bit of a complaint with Goodreads. And I was just baffled why there wasn't a competitor that I had really heard about. I had switched over to Storygraph, but
doesn't have the same like community feel as Goodreads does. So I was looking for something with some more of that. When I got some comments and they were pointing me in a ton of different directions, one of them happened to be hardcover. And when I made my video, I was like, my God, this is the one. Like comparing them all back to back to back, I was like, this is it. So I'm super happy to have found you guys.
Ste (01:35.182)
Yeah, we're super happy that you actually found this because there's a ton of alternatives of all I mean you probably know all of them. I'm curious like what is like one thing that drew you to hardcover what was like that thing that made you think
Hailey (01:57.452)
think it was the balance of...
like a lot of sites like Fable really leans into like the branding of it. Story Graph really leans into the stats of it and Hardcover has like a really good balance of everything. It was so easy to navigate. I like that it's like a dark theme. That's just very much my preference is like the dark mode of all of my apps. So it was just pleasing to the eye without like bashing me over the head with branding
very balanced, very easy. It was just like, yeah, this seems like something that's like very well established and not something I'm having to work hard at or really learn in any way.
Adam (02:45.759)
Cool.
Ste (02:46.114)
That's good to hear. Nice. We're hoping we could first talk about a bit of your background, maybe give everyone a few info about who you are, what you do. And we know you're based in Austin, Texas right now. And I'm wondering if you actually grew up there or did you come to Austin later?
Hailey (03:10.55)
I didn't grow up here. I actually grew up in Houston, so just a couple hours away. Still a Texas girl. I've always been a Texas girl. I don't know if I'll leave. But I went to the University of Texas at Austin, and that's where I met my husband. So we just kind of stuck here, and we never wanted to leave. And I love Austin.
Adam (03:32.533)
Pretty cool. And speaking of leaving cities, mean, stay, you just left London and moved to Paris like last week. Like, how are you adjusting to that move?
Ste (03:43.278)
Yeah. Well, it's been crazy. The last week has been crazy. Now I'm like literally like live streaming from the Olympics, which are happening somewhere like right behind me. I saw the big like French flag thing and the airplane is drawing a little heart on the sky. It was over there, but it started raining. So it's quickly went away.
But it's been wild. been, mean, you both probably like had moves in your life. So you know what I'm talking about. But.
Adam (04:14.955)
But I don't think airlines went down during any of my moves.
Ste (04:19.134)
yeah, crap. Yes, that big crowd strike bug that happened. It happened like literally when, well, my wife was coming in with the cats and my son with the airplane and I was coming in with the train Eurostar the early. So yeah, that was a whole thing. But luckily, I don't know what like luck we ran into that nothing happened. So yeah.
pretty exciting I guess.
Adam (04:54.645)
Well, now you can get back to settling in.
Ste (04:58.698)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, well slowly slowly slowly
Hailey (05:02.498)
and
Adam (05:05.323)
Yeah, and yeah, we were mentioning before that, like, I've been to Austin once or twice and yeah, it's a beautiful city. it's one of those ones I want to go back and like just be a tourist
Hailey (05:20.394)
Yeah, I feel like I'm a tourist in Austin every day. Like there's so much to do, so many places to go, like too many restaurants. I will never eat at all the restaurants here before I die. There's no way.
Ste (05:20.706)
Yeah.
Adam (05:33.468)
And
Ste (05:34.934)
What's a good highlight for anyone like who hasn't visited Austin ever?
Hailey (05:41.122)
Gosh, there are so many good ones. I feel like we have such great Asian food here. Like there are a lot of people that were like world renowned in their specific culinary style that have moved over here.
A lot of great Korean food, a lot of great Japanese food, which is my favorite. So if you're ever in Austin, you gotta hit up Uchi. That is my favorite sushi on the planet. And if you're celebrating something, they will hook you up because...
When my husband and I got engaged, we went to Uchi afterwards. They heard about our engagement and they were like, you don't have to order. Don't worry. Like the chef will do it for you. So they made like all this off menu stuff. It was so incredible. Like the best experience ever. And you can only get it in Austin, Texas.
Ste (06:30.968)
God I love that. Yeah.
Adam (06:31.467)
That's awesome. Yeah, I love getting the omakase route at a sushi place. Yeah.
Hailey (06:37.065)
my god, yeah, love that.
Adam (06:40.571)
And, know for your, day job, when you're not posting on YouTube, you work in mental health and, I was looking at your top genres on for reading and they're like thriller and horror. So I was imagining like between mental health and those, it's a lot of emotionally powerful topics. I was wondering, do you like draw energy from those topics or do you like, does it like deplete you?
Hailey (07:01.32)
Yes, for sure.
Hailey (07:10.774)
I guess it's like kind of a combination. I mean, I love my work with my clients. I opened my private practice for trauma therapy around three years ago now. So I've been going strong, working for myself for a few years. And the philosophy that I have is like the people who will click with my practice will find me. And when the people who are supposed to find me,
find me, it doesn't really feel like work. So it's not draining at all. It does take like, energy, because I do walk and talk sessions. So I'm not just like sitting in an office with my clients, actually like walk around a park and a lake. So when I have six sessions back to back, like it's six hours of walking, and that's very draining. But the energy part of it, like it feels very connected. So I don't think
I wouldn't call it draining at all unless it's a really bad therapeutic fit. But as far as thriller and horrors go, like I love those kind of books because it's heavy and real all day long in my sessions. So I like it to be fictional when I'm home and to kind of do this. I don't know how healthy this is, but do the thing of like, you know what?
as bad as it gets in a session, as much trauma as anyone I see has ever been through, they're not gonna be chased by a killer through the woods, probably. So I like to read horror for that reason too.
Adam (08:47.721)
Nice. That makes sense. But yeah, that's cool. Like a walking session. Yeah, I have a feeling you get a lot of steps in in that case.
Hailey (09:00.13)
yeah, like 40 ,000 in a day at least.
Adam (09:05.181)
Well,
Ste (09:05.198)
Where do you usually walk? Do you have like routes? Do the clients choose the routes or do you... Okay.
Hailey (09:08.544)
Yeah.
I actually I use it as like a part of the trauma intervention. A lot of people that I work with are survivors of sexual abuse. So they have trouble connecting to like agency and like feeling like they get to make choices about their body. So just making the choice about like, can we turn right or left here? I don't know. It's totally up to you. That like opens the door to exploring personal agency. And it's really beautiful, really healing work. I feel
very lucky to get to do
Ste (09:43.886)
Yeah, that sounds great.
Adam (09:50.102)
So, yeah, while one of the, like I was watching some of your videos kind of to catch up and prepare. And one thing you mentioned in your like a Q and A, like 25 ,000 subscribers Q and A video was around how you really liked character focused books. And I'm wondering like, has that always been the case? it that shift at all with the college courses
Hailey (10:20.46)
yeah, for sure. I feel like I was a very plot driven reader for the majority of my adolescence. I think it was a shift when I started noticing things about my own relationships in real life, especially like relationships with clients and you their experience with their own relationships. It became like a very important thing to me to spot.
quality people and like do the work of really thinking like does this relationship serve me? And I think that came into my reading taste a lot where if I'm reading a character that I don't feel connected with, I don't feel like they're teaching me anything or it's just not valuable to spend time with them and build a relationship. I guess that sounds like kind of weird because they're fictional. But I won't want to read the book anymore if they're not bringing anything to me.
So yeah, I feel like the number one way to get me to give a book five stars is have a character that I just want to know and turn into a real life person.
Ste (11:29.686)
Yeah, that sounds great. I mean, it would be great. That's a great DNF reason for like putting a book down. We don't have reasons for like DNFing a book, but this would be like a great one to add, just mentioning like which character you didn't like and vice versa. I'm mentioning that, you you really like the character and because of the character, a book has five stars.
Hailey (11:39.807)
Mm -hmm.
Hailey (11:59.168)
that I would actually love a way to like delineate on a reviewing platform whether it's plot driven, character driven, like the biggest driving force of the story that'd be really cool.
Ste (12:13.519)
That sounds good, mean, yeah, duly noted.
Adam (12:15.44)
Yeah. Yeah. We've been thinking about making some changes to the, the review process on hardcover where it's like, you know, a lot of people don't prefer to write entire reviews. just want to rate a book and maybe like track some metrics about it, like the dates they read it, but being able to say like, you know, here's what this book reminded me of. Here's this book's scary rating or spicy rating or plot driven rating and all of that
I feel like, yeah, there's people who would use that when making that decision about which books to read.
Adam (12:52.213)
How do you decide what books to read next?
Hailey (12:56.898)
Honestly, a lot of that is out of my control now. I used to be a big mood reader,
the folks on my Patreon really decide what I read. Like in our Discord chat, I will send a bunch of options and one of the benefits of joining my Patreon is they will get to vote for what I'm going to read next, what we're going to read for book club, what I'm going to put in vlogs. So they have a lot of input on my TBR. And sometimes I'm like, guys, I got to take a week and just mood read because y 'all are picking like dark stuff back to back or
like just a lot of long books, which I'm not like a long book reader. So yeah, I have moments of mood reading, but usually it's out of my control.
Ste (13:43.82)
Wow, that really sounds like a democratically driven, currently reading list. That sounds amazing.
Hailey (13:51.602)
yeah, and they know my tastes really well, so usually it serves me too that they're like, you gotta do this one. And I'm like, hey, my hands are tied. I must go buy the new release and I must read it.
Ste (14:04.91)
actually sounds great, yeah.
Adam (14:06.426)
For those, you, like how do you organize that poll on Discord?
Hailey (14:12.49)
It's very casual. Usually I'll just send a message like this or this. If you want this book, respond with this emoji. If you want this book, respond with this emoji and I'll do a little count or I'll do like an actual poll on the Patreon page for something that's a little bit more official, like our book club poll for August actually just posted it before I jumped on this stream. So I'm patiently waiting the results.
Adam (14:39.499)
Pretty cool.
Ste (14:40.624)
Is there any book that you like needed to put down or which wasn't like a great recommendation or are all of them like very good? Yeah, okay.
Hailey (14:46.85)
yeah. Usually if I don't connect with a character, I'm like, I'm done. I'm out. And sometimes I have to force myself to finish a book because of some like weird thing in my mind. Like if I get more than 20 % in, I'm probably not going to DNF it, especially if I can like make content out of it. I just feel like it's a waste. So sometimes I force myself to finish and I'm like, wow, if I wasn't filming a video.
I wouldn't DNF that sucker.
Adam (15:20.255)
Yeah, that's, yeah, that's interesting. Like we, we do something simpler, similar on a local, like Salt Lake City book club I'm in. Like it's just voting through emojis on Discord as well. Yeah, it's yeah. I feel like that, that process of choosing a book for a book club is still very like community focused instead of any platforms really taking control over
Hailey (15:44.692)
Yeah, yeah, I like when it feels more of like a conversation and very casual and less like structured. The last thing I want to do is like commercialize something that's supposed to feel like connection, especially, you know, in our, I could get into the way that the internet breaks connection and FaceTime and things like that. But yeah, it feels good to just like be with a group of people and it's all about a book and it's not for anything other than enjoying.
Ste (16:14.196)
Yeah, you mentioned breaking connection with people. Maybe we can quickly dig a bit more into that because that's the thing we've been trying to do at Hardcover. Why do you feel like something breaks a connection and something doesn't?
Hailey (16:29.664)
I feel like a lot of times on maybe not all social media, but what I see in like book land on socials, things can feel like very overly structured very quickly. Like you can kind of tell, or at least I can tell when a book creator gets into a formula. I can tell in a reading vlog, I can tell in a Patreon community. And that just kind of
doesn't really sit right with me. The whole reason why I started my channel was in the midst of COVID. I just felt like very disconnected. And all I was doing all the time was reading. And I was like, can someone please just talk to me about this book? Like, I just need to. And the only thing that I could do was literally finish a book and then narrate the entire plot to my husband, because he was not going to read it. So I just had to like sit there for eight hours and tell him everything.
And I'm like, there's got to be other people out there that have read this book. So I started posting my videos and I always wanted to keep that like, genuine connection that I started with no matter how big my channel got. I think it's really easy just for like convenience sake or for business to start to commercialize things or put things into a little bit more defined of a routine. But I just think that takes a little bit of
genuineness out of the equation.
Adam (17:59.765)
And kind of since starting then to now, what do you feel has changed in how you approach all that? Or has anything changed?
Hailey (18:10.402)
I try to stay very, very true to when I first started. think things can start to shift parasocially really easy. Like when I first started, there was a group of 50 people that were subscribed to me. So it's fairly easy to respond to 50 people and get to know them a little bit. And they get to know you a little bit. And it's a very small community, but with like 27 ,000 people.
There's no way that I can know everyone and they can know me, but because they watch hours of my content, a lot of times people feel like they do know me. So the parasocial aspect was very difficult for me to navigate, especially when you have a platform like Patreon, where someone feels like they are putting money down to a lot of times to build a closer relationship with a creator, when in reality that closeness is very one -sided.
I don't really know much more about someone on my Patreon than I do on my YouTube, but they might know a little bit more about me. They don't know me at the end of the day. So keeping the balance between like genuinely connecting over a book versus knowing who I am and knowing pieces of my life that I would want to keep private. That's kind of a tricky line that I've had to navigate. But at the end of the day, I really do try to go back to
This is about books. We're connecting over books and we can connect there as long as we have boundaries around everything else.
Adam (19:47.635)
Yeah, that reminds me, like I used to do like a lot of blogging and I remember those parasocial relationships with readers, although to a smaller extent probably, especially being a man versus a woman in the space. It's a very different feel.
Hailey (20:07.18)
my god, yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot. the speculations that people will throw out there. They're like, well, she didn't like this book and this book has this in it. So she must not like to do this in her daily life. And I'm like, wow, that's just a massive jump. But okay, sure.
Adam (20:26.325)
Yeah.
Ste (20:30.978)
wondering because we talked moments ago about how tough it is to edit the content, getting down to the technical aspects of things. We know how much time consuming it is. And we greatly respect whoever can, especially because you do so much, have time for that. How did you get
started with that and how did you make it manageable at first? Yeah.
Hailey (21:06.882)
Honestly, I don't even know if I would call it manageable on the editing side. About 90 % of my content, I would say, is edited between 1 a and 5 a Like, it is definitely a procrastination cycle that I get into with editing. It's my least favorite part of the process. I can literally sit in front of the camera and talk about books for hours, and I would never shut up. You could not get me to stop yapping about my favorite books and my least
Ste (21:10.894)
Okay, that's good.
Hailey (21:36.936)
books. But the editing part, my god, I hate the thought of being perceived and perceiving myself. So hearing my voice and seeing my face on the screen, I'm like, please kill me. I don't want to do this anymore. So I'll usually put it off until the middle of the night and pop a little gummy and try to get through it.
Ste (22:02.79)
That's great. We should do that. That's a good tip. Yeah.
Adam (22:08.299)
A decent amount of hardcover has been created on gummies, so I understand.
Hailey (22:11.442)
I love that. I very much support that.
Ste (22:11.922)
Here we go! That's great!
Adam (22:20.491)
Yeah, that, yeah, I was kind of imagining that editing would probably be the hard task. you know, creating the ideas, brainstorming, like interacting with the community, those all seem like the fun ones, but then the actual editing that takes like 10 times the length of the video, that seems like real work is, aside from marketing, but those two seem like big ones. But
Hailey (22:35.861)
yeah.
Hailey (22:47.39)
Yeah, especially when people like make you very aware of how you should be editing things out. Like I've never been so aware of how people would like me to speak than just leaving things unedited. Like I'll leave a section of just like a little vlog update like I'm not gonna edit that clip, it's fine. And then I'll get a ton of comments like.
my gosh, you can tell she didn't edit that clip because she smacks her lips so much. You got to edit all that out. And I'm like, my God, y 'all literally nothing gets past you.
Adam (23:26.921)
Yeah. And yeah. So now that you've been doing this a couple of years, if you were starting on YouTube today, what would you focus on? I know we have a lot of people that, like we've talked to a lot of people on hardcover who are like thinking about, like they'd like to, you know, do content and like book influencing in some way, but they might be, aren't sure where to start and don't know what they're getting into yet.
Hailey (23:55.456)
Yeah, and it's a lot to think about getting into. I mean, the community can be overwhelming with love or overwhelming with hate. I think my biggest advice to anyone wanting to get into it is stay with what you're passionate about.
I do not let the trends dictate the kind of content that I make because I want to keep that genuine component. And I found that if you speak clearly and you take a firm stance on something that you're passionate about, people can tell the difference between that and someone just following the trends. whatever
taking a stance on will find the right people and then boom, like that's your audience. They will all form a little group around you and it can be really, really fun and really good and boundaries are important. But yeah, it all starts with like where you're passionate and really drawn to rather than just like trying to look at the numbers game because that is never gonna work out for you.
Ste (25:03.724)
That sounds great. And speaking of like the boundaries, how did you set those up with your community? Because yeah, we're kind of like at the spot where we're pretty small, but you know, as we grow, we also, you know, need to manage that. I'm curious how it went for
Hailey (25:21.29)
It was really hard for me. That was probably the hardest part of being on social media in general, to be honest. I was such a people pleaser when I first started. I felt horrible guilt if someone commented and said, can you make a video about this? And I didn't do it. It would haunt me for weeks. So learning to...
let people down or say like this is just not reasonable for me was really hard but once I could do that it was like I have my life back I'm not like wracked by guilt from people I don't know and I made a whole post on Patreon I think that's like the hardest place to set boundaries and I was like these are my new rules I did it at the end of 2023 so just earlier this year
Adam (25:55.24)
Yeah.
Hailey (26:12.385)
And I see a massive difference of interactions in 2024 versus 2023 on my Patreon where I just blatantly laid out like, y 'all, I'm not your friend. You do not know me. I know it sounds really harsh, but we have to have these boundaries. Like this is social media and we have to be real about it. And that it was
my heart was hurting hitting posts but now that it's there I feel like I'm so much more protected and the community is so much more focused on books and less about me and you know other people trying to get to know each other or trauma dumping in the chat which is literally wild but yeah.
Adam (26:55.681)
Well, it's good that they feel comfortable and safe enough to do that. That's, it seems like a good community that you've built from it.
Hailey (27:00.778)
Yeah, yeah.
Hailey (27:05.1)
Totally, and that's why at first it was so hard to set the boundaries, because I'm like, my God, these people are safe and we can actually have conversations about hard things. It's just so hard to draw the line.
Adam (27:24.167)
for other content you create. I know you were talking about pick the area that you're most passionate about. And then within that, do you set specific content goals for number of videos a week? Do you kind of play it by ear or are you very type A? Like I'm gonna get this many videos this month and nothing's gonna stop me, even sleep.
Hailey (27:51.418)
Definitely not type A. No way. I will usually work on a video within three days of it being posted and I don't like to set out the topics of my videos because I want to be talking about what I'm passionate about in the moment or I think I'll look like a corpse on camera. I cannot force myself to get excited about something that I'm genuinely not excited about.
Ste (27:54.125)
Hahaha
Hailey (28:18.652)
I like to do everything in the moment, but I do really value consistency. I try to post videos every three or four days, and I only really take a break from that if I'm out of town. So the only thing that's really a goal is keeping to that schedule. As far as the type of content or where it's being posted, I just kind of play it by ear, which is probably not the best advice, but that's just real.
Ste (28:45.966)
Well, you got very far with that. this is very interesting to find out for us and for people who are getting into this field, especially the boundaries. Would you say that the network itself, the way it's set up influences that? mean, does any network help you set boundaries in the way it's built?
Hailey (29:16.018)
Yeah, I mean, I think it varies by platform for sure. Like YouTube's community guidelines are pretty good. But once you start getting into like moving things across platforms, that's when it gets like a little bit blurry, especially on something like Goodreads. Like there are absolutely no boundaries at all whatsoever. Like I
I did not know that. I thought I could just, you know, be honest about what I thought about books because that's what I do on YouTube. And if there's anyone crazy, YouTube will shut it down for me. But I very quickly learned, no, people with way more power than me can comment directly back to me on Goodreads. So that was something that I was like, okay, this feels like a boundary that I shouldn't have to hold. And the platform is kind of failing me at this point.
Adam (30:14.352)
And kind of speaking of that, I know you very publicly left Goodreads not too long ago after a very bad experience with both Goodreads and an author. Can you speak more about that experience and how Goodreads handled
Hailey (30:32.93)
Yeah, so there's a lot of lore here. I'll try to be as brief as I can with the recap. Basically in 2022, so this is two years ago in July of 2022, I had read a book and given it one star and just moved on with my life. I have a lot of books that I read and I don't like and I give one star and didn't think anything of it. Unbeknownst to me, the author
saw that review and had begun to craft another book with a main character based upon myself that was absolutely disgusting. And he actually did mention my full government name in the dedication with a whole page about how I'm horrible and what he would like to happen to me and calling me names. Yeah, very misogynistic, disgusting.
names. He also referred to me as a Nazi, which is just defamation point link period. So I didn't know that this was going on or this existed until I had spoken up publicly about the misogyny that I had experienced in the horror genre and this guy started bragging on book pages like, yeah, this is so rich coming from the girl that I wrote a book
and my followers like glommed onto it immediately and they started sending me these posts like, girl, this is going on. So I read the dedication and I was like, okay, well, this is disgusting. Took to Goodreads because I knew that was a platform where I could get that information out quickly to a lot of people who actually would care and would want to know rather than somewhere
Instagram and TikTok where people aren't going for book content. I went to Goodreads thinking it was a safe place and I gave the book about me one star and I disclosed in the review I have not read this other than the dedication but it's about me and it's gross so don't read
Hailey (32:49.484)
From there, yeah, right? I thought so. I was viciously attacked in the comments. I had the biggest amount of death threats that I got across any platform was on Goodreads. It was not moderated at all whatsoever. People were messaging me in my Goodreads DMs telling me
Adam (32:49.722)
Seems fair.
Hailey (33:13.586)
want to know what my insights taste like and they want to turn me inside out. Like it was absolutely foul. Goodreads did nothing and I basically went to bat on TikTok saying like this man is crazy. So I did find support there but Goodreads was just a shit show and continued to be a shit show. Things kind of died down and earlier this year I think in February
Goodreads finally followed up. nearly a year later, they sent me an email and I saw the subject line that it was referring to the book that was about me. And I thought, thank the Lord. Like they're gonna get this book taken off the site. I'm gonna make some headway here. No, the email was to inform me.
that my review was false because I had reviewed a book that I had not read. So they were going to be deleting my reviews and the reviews that were deemed suspicious because they were negative reviews that came in around the time that I posted my review. And they were keeping the book live and raising the rating. And I was appalled. To be totally honest, I literally just sat in my car and cried because I was like, no one cares. No
at the Goodreads team cares at all about misogyny, about the violence that was in my DMs. Like that was completely disregarded. So I was like, I'm done, completely and utterly done. I filmed a video, I think a week later or no, it was a month later because I did try to solve it with them privately first. I emailed them back saying
well, this feels like really tone deaf. I don't know if you guys like don't have all the information or what, but I'm happy to provide context that was blatantly ignored. So a month later, I sat down and filmed a video called delete your Goodreads account. And that's where everything fired off. And I started getting a lot of comments from my audience saying like, Goodreads is not the end all be all there are other options out there. And so I branched out and
Hailey (35:32.544)
don't have to use Goodreads anymore, but yeah, just kind of sickening that the most popular platform would treat a reviewer that
Adam (35:43.167)
Yeah, that's a lot. so all like the, trying to figure out which one of those awful things to start with, like all the, it seems like the bullying from the community was happening in the comments of the review and in your DMs on Goodreads.
Hailey (36:03.24)
Yes, majority of it, the most disgusting ones, yeah, happened on Goodreads. Instagram was really great about filtering things out. I could, I had an option that was just like, these DMs seem harmful. Do you want to delete them? And I was like, period. Yep, delete it. Same thing happened on TikTok. YouTube filtered out all of my comments. The only place where I had two directly with my eyeballs,
read death threats and horrible misogynistic things about myself was on
Ste (36:37.295)
Yeah, that's quite the story. like, yeah, sorry. It sounds like also traumatic and so like horrible from like start to end and that's like, yeah, it's awful.
Hailey (36:56.15)
Yeah, I had no idea what was happening. Like once it started, I kind of got this feeling I was like, this is not just gonna be me posting something. This is beyond. And I don't know if it would have gone to the extent beyond that it went if Goodreads or someone with more power than me stepped in
Adam (36:56.351)
Yeah, so.
Hailey (37:21.93)
and took a stand because it really felt like I was just fighting the wave by myself.
Ste (37:28.522)
Yeah, a platform should have like protections, especially a platform of their size. And it's like causing so much harm and so much like literal trauma. mean, it's not just some DMs. It's like, I mean, it's tough stuff. Like, I think it's one of the things we have a lot to learn from this, this whole story, because, know, at some point we might get into a situation where we need
protect people against these kinds of things. What would you have felt would have been a good outcome in that case? Or actually like the best outcome you'd expect from a platform to offer to
Hailey (38:18.484)
think the number one thing I was looking for was some kind of stance, some kind of like statement to be made. Because I really felt like this is me against the world and I'm literally just a girl at the end of the day. People don't know me, I don't have a verified account.
I'm literally just someone fighting. And if a verified account came out and said like, stop, this is wrong. I think the wave would have just been like shut down. Their answer was to delete my responses. And before they did that, actually at the time that everything was happening, they deleted the comments on my review. all of the
bullying comments from the author himself were removed, but they kind of hurt my case at that point because I wasn't able to get screenshots of the things that he said. And when I reached out asking for the evidence, they also didn't respond to me. So there were just a lot of things mishandled and they still haven't publicly said anything or acknowledged it in any way.
Even though I had a TikTok that it's over a million views at this point and people are daily tagging Goodreads in the comments saying like, what are you going to do? Are you ever going to address this? They
Adam (39:49.117)
Wow. And that's this much time passed and still no reaction.
Hailey (39:56.33)
Yeah, and maybe it'll happen in a year. That seems like their typical response time.
Ste (40:00.942)
What, I mean, do you have a theory of on why a platform ends up like this? Is it the community? it like, I mean, it seems to converge on some platforms more than others to that point where it's just plain abuse all the time. What do you think are the things to watch out for like the red flags that happened while
Hailey (40:23.458)
For me, I mean, I don't know. So this is all like my opinion. This is all alleged, but it feels to me as someone who's used multiple platforms that it's about the values. Like we all know that Goodreads is owned by Amazon and Amazon does not have the best values. That's just facts. So.
it lets me know who's behind the, who's on the team, who's curating the, hiring the people to be on the Goodreads team. And Amazon's values are not anything I would put my faith in. So I would much rather go with someone that's a little bit more humanistic or empathetic in any way where it felt like there were real people.
on the support team rather than just like, I don't know, Amazon drones or maybe it's AI or maybe it's outsourced and people are not really understanding what I'm saying to the fullest extent. Like I have no idea ultimately, but that's my theory is that it's all based on values.
Ste (41:30.572)
That's a good one.
Adam (41:31.019)
Yeah, it's, it seems like they're like support and the, the, the money behind it is going towards authors and publishers and tools for those. So it feels like the reader side, would be very hard to get in touch with someone to get like any kind of feedback or, I mean, I know they, one of the reasons we started hardcover was because they were discontinuing their API back in 2020 and they said they were going
start a new one. So I emailed them like, could you tell me more about this new API you're going to build? And I mean, it's been four years and I haven't heard back from them on that either.
Ste (42:09.53)
Yeah, they're borderline between toxic or ignorant at this point. you know, I guess it's really good, you know, people like all of us are doing this and this kind of story should be like the poster story for, you know, this is where we got to, this is why what's coming up will happen.
Hailey (42:16.324)
yeah.
Ste (42:34.783)
because it's got like all the ingredients and yeah it's just like a crazy crazy story
Adam (42:41.983)
Yeah, there's this a really good, post by a Corey Doctorow not too long ago about the in -shitification of social media networks. And his kind of thesis for the article was basically like, you know, these platforms start supporting their largest user base. And then as time goes on, they skew more and more towards wherever the money's coming from until they are focusing so much on that, that they're not even listening to the feedback from their normal users.
And that we see that that cycle over and over again in social media platforms. And it feels like this is an example of that exact same thing happening on Goodreads where something serious was just kind of missed by them altogether and somehow is still missed by them.
Hailey (43:31.54)
Yeah, I think you hit it right on the head. Like, they know that they can get away with not addressing it, so they're not going to because it doesn't hurt their bottom line. Like, even in the comments of my
It's really nice to see the majority of people saying like, I just deleted it, I just deleted it, I just deleted my Goodreads. I'm like, my God, there are thousands of those comments I can scroll through and I love it. But at the end of the day, I don't think that's what affects their financials is how many accounts they have. So there are some people in the comments that are
I don't care what you say, nothing can tear me away from my Goodreads. So they have some people at least with brand loyalty. I don't know why you would be so loyal to Amazon, but to each their own.
Ste (44:22.574)
Yeah.
Ste (44:26.382)
Exactly. Well, yeah.
Adam (44:30.837)
I, so kind of in the book, social media networks in general, I know you've tried out like a bunch of them, both in that video and just in general, as a user of these platforms, are there, like, if you could have like a magic wand and like create a feature on hardcover or story graph, is there anything that comes to mind as like, I would love for you to do this one thing or these couple things.
Hailey (45:01.238)
was actually just talking about this. had a friend that I met on book social media in town staying with me this past weekend. And one thing that we wish we could do so bad.
was have a platform and kind of do like a like a you can do a blend on Spotify where we could blend both of our profiles and compare like how similar our reading tastes could we get stats on that could we see like where we overlap and where we don't because we would have loved to make some kind of content like that but just going through the numbers ourselves felt like way too big of a task and just impossible and then we also were
a video going book shopping, and it was so hard to delineate like, where is this book available? What are the prices? Da da. And I knew that Fable had listed some
book prices or like where you can buy books on their platform. So I went over there. And unfortunately, everything is just linked to Amazon, just similar to Goodreads. So I would also love to see some kind of feature like where this book is available in my area, where is it the cheapest? Is it at this bookstore? Is it available on Kindle Unlimited? Is it on Hoopla or Libby? Can I just get it from my library? Like availability, that would be a really cool feature.
that I don't think anyone really has yet.
Adam (46:33.995)
That'd be really cool. yeah. And I think that's come up in some of our interviews with readers where it's like, I want to sort my want to read list by what's available at my public library right now. And to say like, I could read any of these things right now. Or I can buy any of these within 10 miles.
Hailey (46:46.316)
Yes, that'd be awesome.
Hailey (46:51.266)
That would be so cool. And I mean, I don't know anything about the tech side, but like, I would imagine there's a way you could see like what books are available on Hoopla or Libby and then connect it to your profile. Like that would be the ideal.
Ste (47:08.34)
Yeah, I mean, lots of work, but definitely I think we're going to like, we'll strive to have this on hardcover and the costats. That's a very, that's a great idea because we're just going to like literally work on stats. I think after we get the bug bash on hardcover done for next month. So having you and your friends costats, that sounds amazing. And the way you described it, that's spot on. We might have some followup questions, you know, once we dig into
Hailey (47:37.676)
yeah.
Ste (47:38.375)
But yeah, that's a great idea. mean, thanks for mentioning it. That's amazing.
Adam (47:44.393)
Yeah.
Hailey (47:44.5)
And that was just like organic in the moment. Like we literally just wished if we could wave the wand that we had our little blend of our profiles.
Adam (47:54.335)
I can see that being so much fun too. Like, you know, you both pull up your profiles and you're like, we both love this. We both hate this. And like, you love that one.
Ste (48:00.694)
Yeah.
Hailey (48:03.166)
Yeah, exactly, like I wanted like a Spotify wrapped of how our tastes compared.
Adam (48:09.894)
Mm -hmm.
Ste (48:11.426)
That's nice.
Hailey (48:12.202)
I would do a whole video on that, totally.
Ste (48:15.658)
That's good. Yeah, that's a good dimension that because, know, it's literally is like one of the next steps. And speaking of like, how would you as an influencer use a network? We know usually like book networks are readers and authors. And you have to use these other networks like Booktalk or BookTube to sort of like direct those crowds into the
actual book platforms. Something we'd like to help with hardcover is influencers connecting to their audience. Is there anything like off the top of your head that would like make that easier for you or something you'd always, you know, why you've always wanted to happen?
Hailey (49:03.584)
Yeah, actually this came up when I made the exploring alternatives video. I was looking at Scoob, which they're not available for majority of English speaking countries. I don't think it's like mainly for Spanish speaking countries and literature, but they had a whole tab and it was called BookTube.
And I was like, wait, this is crazy. Like you can sort through the genre of books you like. And then all of these booktube videos came up and it was from big creators, small creators, Spanish speaking, English speaking creators, like.
totally diverse and connected to the platform so you didn't have to navigate away. You wouldn't just like get on hardcover and say like, I wonder what books I'm going to add to my want to read. You could click on the booktube video, watch it, and then immediately add it to your TBR or whatever list you wanted to add as you were watching on the platform.
Adam (50:10.187)
Interesting. I think one of our earliest things we created on hardcover was lists could have a YouTube video or a TikTok video, or views could have a YouTube video linked in some kind of external resource. But we haven't found a good way to incorporate that content to make it feel like it's part of hardcover. So that sounds really interesting to me.
Ste (50:11.392)
Yeah, that does sound cool.
Adam (50:40.285)
how do you bring all this content that's being created everywhere else in the world about these books and distill it down into like, here's your for you feed based on the books that you like.
Hailey (50:54.594)
love that. Even like, if you had like someone's profile who had read a bunch of books on a specific list, you could recommend this list and say like, you already read five of these and rated them five stars. Why don't you watch this person's like top 12 video and check out the other seven and maybe subscribe to them.
Adam (51:14.571)
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Whenever I see a video and I've read a couple of them on it, I'm like, yeah, now I'm going to watch all of it.
Hailey (51:25.448)
same, yeah, that's how I found so many of my creator friends is like, ooh, what are you reading? Hi, do I like those books? Have you already put them in a recommendation video? Yeah, we're gonna be friends.
Ste (51:38.306)
Nice. Yeah, that seems like a good way too.
Ste (51:45.207)
I saw a TikTok lets you tag books and I'm wondering because, know, we have our theory is that making a book specific network will actually benefit as a social network, the reading community as a whole and bringing this content is part of it. I'm guessing, you know, just like linking those books with the videos would be like the first step.
to do that. Are there like any other things that, you know, as an influencer you'd feel you'd want more from like a network or, yeah.
Hailey (52:29.6)
It's interesting. I recently joined the YouTube shopping network. So like if you mention a book on TikTok and you link the book, you get a kickback of commission if people buy the book.
But to me, TikTok shop ethically, I don't know if it really aligns with what I'm doing. So I would much rather use the feature through YouTube, but a lot less people use the YouTube shopping tab. So I've been linking the books.
The commission rates are so weird and so inconsistent. It's like, well, you can link these four books that you're recommending from walmart .com and get a 10 % kickback, but who's really buying from walmart .com? I don't know. And you can link these two from Barnes and Noble and get a 2%. And I'm like, okay, if there was some kind of consistency where I could link.
all the books to be shopped from a certain place or all the books on a certain site and get some kind of kickback as a creator. I mean, I can see that really taking off. I wouldn't even need to do partnerships with brands that are less relevant to books if I had some kind of reliable system like that.
Adam (53:45.653)
Yeah. I feel like those, those two things that you mentioned combined could create like a really neat, like end product, like the, the book Pricer tool combined with influencers being able to add their affiliate codes. Like, you know, add those two things together and you have incentive for influencers to share their, their reads and get people inspired to read them. Yeah.
Ste (53:45.73)
That sounds really interesting.
Hailey (54:12.308)
You got it. There it is.
Ste (54:12.32)
Yeah, there's something left. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll do some digging. A lot of digging actually into this. There's a lot going on here that we can solve. Nice. Well, since we've got five minutes left, should we jump off to the hot seat questions? OK. OK, I can do the first one. So, Haley, what book got you into reading?
Adam (54:28.327)
Yeah. Do you want to start? Start.
Hailey (54:37.398)
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. I know it's so basic, but that was the one.
Ste (54:43.863)
It's a good one,
Adam (54:43.986)
I've only seen the movie. I haven't read the book yet.
Hailey (54:48.166)
the book is incredible. Like you think the cool girl monologue hits in the movie, wait till you read it. It's so good.
Adam (54:56.215)
Okay, might have to add that one to my want to read list. And what's the book you recommend to people the most often?
Hailey (55:07.49)
Pretty Girls by Karen Slaughter. My book club is named after Pretty Girls. It's on all of my merch. It's a very intense, very dark thriller, so look up trigger warnings if you're interested. yeah, Pretty Girls is probably the rec that I'm known for. I used to have, in the start of my channel, a running list of over 200 people that had read the book because of me.
Adam (55:32.66)
That's awesome.
Ste (55:34.817)
Nice.
Adam (55:36.229)
And yeah, so last question. So let's say you have a date to read, you have nothing else planned, nothing scheduled. You just know that you're going to be reading that day. What does that day look like? Where's the physical location you're reading? What's the surrounding environment look
Hailey (55:56.522)
I just love the idea of this. think I definitely would have to be near a body of water. So a pool, a river, something like that. I would want sunny, like bright sunny day. I'm definitely gonna be reading on a Kindle or an e -reader so I don't have to deal with pages in the wind. Music, like perfect music that matches the vibe of my book.
and a little drink in my hand. think that would be a perfect day.
Adam (56:29.683)
I mean, that sounds lovely.
Ste (56:32.214)
Yeah, doesn't sound too bad. That's perfect. Yeah. Nice, nice answers to the hot seat questions. And I guess finally, can you like tell people like where they can find you and where they can subscribe to your channels and yeah, maybe like what you've got like in store for them next. Just little sneak peek.
Hailey (56:57.416)
Yeah, my YouTube is just Hayley Hughes. It's just my name and linked in the description of every single one of my YouTube videos. You can find the rest of my social media. I'm super active on Instagram, not as active on TikTok, but occasionally. And if you want to join my pretty girl book club, we have that hosted over on Patreon. It's also linked in all my videos. And actually next weekend we're doing a, these are a few of my favorite
read -a -thon. So for 24 straight hours we're just gonna be reading all of our favorite things in books, whether it's like favorite trope, favorite genre, favorite setting, and just trying to find like a bunch of five -star reads as we can in 24 hours. So should be really fun.
Adam (57:44.597)
That sounds like fun. Yeah. I'm going to be curious to see how that goes.
Hailey (57:49.767)
I'll be vlogging it and blasting it all over the internet, so it'll be easily findable, I'm sure.
Ste (57:53.418)
haha
Adam (57:56.5)
Awesome, I can't wait.
Ste (57:57.225)
That's perfect
Adam (57:59.647)
Yeah. Well, thanks to you so much, Hailey, for chatting with us today. This has been a lot of fun.
Hailey (58:04.768)
Yeah, thank you so much for having me and valuing the opinions of our viewers. That is so cool. No other platform has done that, has reached out. Even like, I was writing really hard for Storygraph and they didn't even acknowledge me. So I really appreciate you guys.
Ste (58:21.726)
Yeah, anytime. It's been really helpful hearing all the stuff that you had to say and we'll definitely, I mean, we've been taking notes and we're all like, our goal is to make the book industry a little bit better because at times it's shitty. yeah, it's good, I guess, that we're doing this.
Adam (58:42.879)
Yeah, these are pretty much from when we started hardcover. We were always like interviewing readers, but we haven't had a chance to interview many like content creators. So yeah, we're hoping to do a lot more of this and see what themes pop up over and over again. And I have a feeling distaste and annoyance of the editing process is one that's just gonna come up every time.
Ste (59:05.691)
Probably. Nice. Whoa.
Hailey (59:06.325)
yeah, for sure.
Adam (59:10.961)
Well, yeah, guess, yeah, have a good rest of your Friday and yeah, we'll talk to you later.
Ste (59:18.187)
Yeah, thanks Hailey, thanks Adam, thanks everybody for watching. See you next time. Bye bye.
Adam (59:22.709)
Bye.