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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 (00:01.05)
Hey, hey, stay. How's it going?
Ste (00:03.397)
Hiya, is going well enjoying an evening in London for Hardcover 11.
Adam (00:10.574)
Nice. Yeah. Um, I'm looking forward to tonight here in Salt Lake. There are some reports that there's like a, a solar storm over the United States. So there's a chance that we could see, uh, Aurora borealis here in Salt Lake tonight.
Ste (00:25.261)
Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, that's pretty rare. Wow. Does it go? Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty weird. I mean, is it... I mean, Salt Lake's pretty north, right? I mean, new standards, but...
Adam (00:28.286)
Yeah, I've never heard of it here.
Adam (00:42.122)
Yeah, I have a feeling we're like more south than London, but I don't know.
Ste (00:47.669)
Yeah, we had it, I mean, in the north of the UK a while ago, but yeah, nice. Well, you might be witnessing a very rare life event. That's cool.
Adam (01:04.373)
But yeah, other than that, just enjoying the cherry blossoms finally blooming here. And even though it's like 48 degrees out, trying to start getting back outside for spring.
Ste (01:17.309)
Well, yeah, that's cool. Yeah, it's been pretty rainy over here as well. And yeah, good time to visit restaurants and, you know, stay inside. Went to a really nice French Japanese bakery this weekend. And yeah, got one of those chocopan egg sandwiches. Good stuff. Yeah.
Adam (01:34.22)
Hmm.
Adam (01:42.318)
Hmm. Have you been watching a reluctant traveler with Eugene Levy on Apple? There's a, it's a good show. Yeah, he like goes to a different location in each episode. And one of the episodes he goes to Japan and he's like, my son, he said, you have to have an egg sandwich while you're in Japan. And so.
Ste (01:50.694)
Oh no! No! Okay. You good?
Ste (02:06.321)
Haha, nice. Haha, he was right. Hahaha. Oh yeah, I wrote that down. That sounds good. Yeah. I just watched Bodies, Bodies, Bodies over the weekends, which was like surprisingly like fun. Yeah. I mean, Pete Davidson, yeah. Nice.
Adam (02:10.05)
Yeah.
Adam (02:20.458)
Hmm...
Adam (02:25.794)
Yeah.
man. Yeah, I, I, I just love the guy. What's his name? Lee pace from pushing daisies and like, tons of other things like he was in Avengers. Yeah, the, the, yeah, like the older guy who was kind of like a himbo in that. Yeah.
Ste (02:43.861)
Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Ste (02:51.653)
Uh huh. Yeah. Well, I don't want to offer any spoilers, but yeah, it didn't last long.
Adam (02:58.57)
Yep. Yeah. We, uh, we saw a Spirited Away live show yesterday. Like they did for like Fathom events. They do this thing where they stream like the live performance where they did like a full stage show of Spirited Away. Like, you know, full with like a cast of like, you know, 30, 40 people orchestra and all that.
Ste (03:00.745)
Great.
Adam (03:27.018)
So they streamed it to theaters around the world. And yeah, it was really good. It was like a full three hours. They did every single scene, basically shot for shot from the movie. Definitely recommend it.
Ste (03:29.445)
Wow, okay.
Ste (03:36.797)
Wow. That's crazy, I have never seen one of those. Is it like, where was like the main show? Was it like somewhere? Like...
Adam (03:46.822)
Yeah, I think it was in Tokyo and I think it's like an actual one you can go and see. Not just a special event, but like a running show, kind of like a, you know, West End or Broadway kind of thing.
Ste (04:00.205)
Yeah, that sounds crazy. Yeah, it must have been really nice.
Adam (04:06.806)
Yeah. Other than that, what have you been up to hard cover wise lately?
Ste (04:08.411)
Nice.
Ste (04:12.621)
Well, I've been chipping away at the book page and I've been doing some research for an upcoming thing that we're all preparing as a team to basically find a way to onboard authors through the network, which has been like really cool. I found this subreddit where self-published authors share tips and tricks.
And I think self-publish authors are a good source of telling us about what issues they'd want to solve on one end. So yeah, I asked a question there. I opened the thread. I got like a lot of responses. I mean, first I had to clarify which part of the publishing space we're actually trying to... Yeah.
help with because we're not doing like anything prepublishing anything you know related to how
Ste (05:21.185)
authors actually can get book deals or can get published or can publish on their own. But the other part where you actually have to find readers and sell your book with an agency, with an agent, that's pretty simple because if you have a talented agent, of course, you're going to sell the book through bookshops, you're going to sell the book through their network basically.
But with self-published authors, it's good because they're, I think they're like the baseline of, you know, they have a book they want to get out there, they have to find readers. So there's no agent doing that for them. So I don't think just like any network, I had like a lot of complaints about good reads about authors publishing through Kindle, the Kindle publishing platform and
That's a huge mess. So yeah, I got a lot of insights from that.
Adam (06:24.446)
Nice. Yeah, that any, uh, any takeaways on things that they like, didn't like from Goodreads or like, what were, what were some of like the takeaways from it?
Ste (06:35.821)
Well, yeah, that was like, there were some really clear things that crystallized from that, those whole discussions. And I think one of the main things is that Discovery doesn't even happen for their books because one, there's a tagging system and
overall organizational pattern that doesn't allow books that aren't pushed by the algorithm to be discovered. So that's that. I mean, they said that readers who wanted to find their books couldn't do so because it's just so hard to actually find them, to go through all the tags. So if you have a list of 500 books...
If you're 501, you're not gonna get a lot of, yeah, get a lot of lies on your book, which is a pity because there are so many good books, I think that if they were properly tagged and they were surfaced more, so that at least the curve equalizes, so you don't have the popular books getting the most fame and...
the less popular books getting no exposure at all. If that curve was slightly equalized, it would be way better. And I think we can do that through the feed. And just by tagging, allowing authors to sign up and tagging, letting them tag their books according to their genre, their themes, their tropes, their... Yeah.
uh whatever yeah they they associate with the book and then finding ways to put it in front of readers who are into those tags so if you're a fan of fantasy that's tagged with some sort of some certain tags with some certain moods with some certain keywords
Ste (09:00.633)
uh, we'd match that. I don't think that happens a lot on Goodreads. So yeah, that was one thing. And there was another.
Adam (09:08.85)
Yeah. Yeah, discovery. Yeah. I can see how book discovery would be the number one issue, especially on Goodreads. It's a problem we have, too. It's hard to highlight books because there's just so, so many. Our library is 400,000 books and growing every day.
Ste (09:32.857)
Yeah, exactly. I mean, putting yourself in the shoes of an author who, let's say, self-fumpishes and, you know, they're really trying to get it out there. They shouldn't, like, fight for exposure with other self-published authors outside their genre, but it kind of feels that way. So, there are certain niches of readers who...
I don't think are reaching those books. And they don't have a mechanism. There is no mechanism for those books to make it, I guess. So we could do lots in that area. And there was another thing, which I think it might be even simpler to solve.
Ste (10:30.093)
Authors that are self-published in the authors, they really want good reviewers for their books. So people that they can send pre-release copy to, I think they even had like a string for that or an acronym it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So finding people who are actually relevant is...
Adam (10:46.045)
Yeah, ARC copies, advanced review, copies.
Ste (10:59.429)
a big issue. I had at least, I think, four or five people mention it in that thread. And the prestige or let's say the track record of the actual reviewer would matter a lot. There's no place where you could... You can see reviews, but you can see... I had someone...
Adam (11:07.256)
Yeah.
Ste (11:26.665)
tell me they'd want to find someone who had been reviewing werewolf fantasy. And they'd want to find that person and be able to send them a request and maybe send them an advanced copy and have a review before the book comes out. And the book being on their author page, you know, it could be like a big...
thing to, yeah. And that's, yeah. Yeah, I was thinking that would match the thing we're doing with reviews in general, like the reader badges. So if you reviewed a lot of fantasy books or you've read a lot of fantasy books, you'd get that fantasy badge. I'm wondering.
Adam (11:56.67)
Yeah. And that's a good one.
Adam (12:08.514)
Thank you.
Adam (12:12.814)
Thank you.
Ste (12:23.561)
how it could be done so that you could actually find like these niches, like werewolf fantasy. Is that fantasy? Yeah. It's, yeah.
Adam (12:31.71)
Yeah, I think that would be a genre or like a pair of genres, like if it's tagged with werewolf and fantasy. But then again, like if something is tagged with werewolf, would it always be tagged with fantasy? But I don't know. Maybe not. Yeah.
Ste (12:39.649)
Mmm. Yeah.
Ste (12:48.345)
I mean, at least you could like, yeah, you'd find the, I mean, if you had people reviewing werewolf fantasy, I'm really hoping it's called werewolf fantasy and it's not like another genre, but yeah, let's call it werewolf fantasy. If people have, readers have been reviewing books, tagged and tagging books with that, yeah, I think it's, I mean, it could be werewolf sci-fi or werewolf nonfiction or...
werewolf, something else, but at least you'd see like the people who are...
Adam (13:22.228)
Yeah.
Ste (13:27.785)
have the biggest prestige in werewolves, the biggest expertise.
Adam (13:35.154)
Yeah, yeah, that whole side of like, uh, uh, being a, a marketplace for authors to be able to find reviewers. That one, that one sounds like it definitely has potential. I've looked at a couple of their platforms that do like that kind of pairing and it's, and it's effectively like, yeah, it's, it's paying people to review a book and give them a free copy. So it's a way for, um,
readers to usually make a little extra money or get free books, usually both, and authors to, you know, get there. But normally the places I've seen, like part of the contract is that they post their reviews to multiple places. Like you need a poster of you to Amazon and to Goodreads and to somewhere else. I worry that if we did that and it was just posting the review on hard cover, that might not have as much, um,
Ste (14:23.368)
Mmm.
Adam (14:33.058)
like benefit to the author as like an independent platform that's trying to get that review posted to Goodreads.
Ste (14:41.661)
Yeah, that's true. Yeah, so the thing is now you'd want that posted to Goodreads, but at the same time, I think what's important is actually establishing a connection with the reviewer because I'm guessing then you could ask them to do that. I mean, they would need... You would need some kind of like...
intermediation. I asked one of the authors who replied, how would they send that advanced copy? Would that be an ebook? And they said that they would want to use their own links, so nothing self-hosted by us or anything like that. So just the link that they can send the user and have some sort of agreement to post that review somewhere. I'm guessing...
it could be that, or at least the intermediation, because they're gonna see the reviewer's email and then, I mean, just facilitating that through hardcover, even if the review ends up in some other places, I think might be important. So just like, yeah, being able to, even through our search, I mean, we don't have to like something really like custom built for authors.
But at least build the search in a way that if they search for people who are reviewers, maybe we can make the reader search show top reviewers in a genre first or something like that.
Adam (16:27.526)
Oh yeah, all of those author features, definitely. There's so much we can do.
Ste (16:34.137)
Yeah, yeah, and this would mean repurposing a bit of our reader search and bam, we've already got like a big incentives for authors to just search for readers. We don't like promise any contracts. We don't promise any like reviews, but just like find people who are willing to do that without maybe having to like pay for a service to do that.
because that's a bit, I mean, for an indie author, I think it's pretty daunting to have to, yeah, pay for a service. They paid for everything up to that point. If they pay for, like, yeah, there's other things that are more important.
Adam (17:21.566)
Yeah, there's, I have a feeling like, uh, like the more we learn about authors, we'll, we'll find like a lot of like different, uh, problems and issues they have and yeah, I'm curious where this one's going to fall in like the, the, all of the problems that we find out about authors that they want.
Ste (17:40.081)
Yeah, yeah. And I guess the big one for everyone that's mentioned that they want something is having access to readers. So access to more users on the platform. Goodreads, I mean, for better or for worse, has like 100 million users and moderators. Yeah.
They've got lots of problems. Kindle publishing, yeah, some said that the moderators there are like abusive, like actually abusive. They can like shut down your book if they don't like something. And they don't have like any rules that tell you what you have done wrong. So it's just...
Adam (18:12.462)
can.
Ste (18:32.997)
don't publish your stuff.
Adam (18:35.706)
Yeah, yeah, I think, yeah, this quarter will be a lot of author research. I want to feel like I fully understand every single problem an author faces from the moment they make a decision or have an idea to write a book to one year after they've published. What are the highs and lows of that journey? What are the problem issues that they can't solve with other sites right now?
Ste (19:03.994)
Mm-hmm.
Adam (19:04.35)
and what are the ones that they have solutions for but they're not great. And yeah, I think as we talk to more authors, we'll find other parts of that journey. Some of them, while they're building that audience before they've even launched it, some of it after they've launched it and they're growing it.
Ste (19:22.866)
Yeah.
Ste (19:27.801)
Yeah, that's really cool. I'm wondering what are your instincts as to what... Because we've obviously talked to a lot of people who might have been authors, I think, in our user research. What's your instinct related to what would be useful to them, just on the product side?
Adam (19:55.762)
I kind of like the idea that they have a.
they have a strong connection to their reader audience and figuring out how to make that, like to build that relationship in a way that readers are coming back to hear from the author and authors are able to basically have a microphone to their audience in a way that you can't on Twitter or you can't on, you know, Facebook or something. And that could include both like,
like status updates on books, it could include like, like bits of writing or like, you know, hidden bits of like things that are working on to keep people interested. It could be a merch store that encourages people to buy from like a merch store that the author runs, which could be offsite. Could be like Q and A's, it could be video Q and A's or discussion Q and A's.
Just like how do we make that relationship between the author and the user? And yeah, it could start before they've written a word and it can go until after they've published, but it's all about focusing that relationship between those two.
Ste (21:05.719)
Yeah.
Ste (21:17.593)
Yeah, that's really great. That's really good. I'm wondering what do you think would incentivize, let's say, authors that have a little bit of clout to pick us as a platform to provide updates on.
Adam (21:42.046)
Yeah, I have like a couple of hypotheses on it, but I really need to, well, need to talk to a lot of authors to figure that out for sure. Like I think a couple of things are like, like right now, if you're using like Goodreads, you don't own your audience. Like people can follow you on Goodreads, but if you stop using Goodreads, you lose that audience. So how do we let people build an audience that's not just on hardcover, but-
is like an audience for them. That could mean like allowing them to actually sign up for that author's mailing list, like outside of hardcover, or maybe have like a follow button on the author that doesn't just follow them a hardcover, but it follows them on their actual mailing list.
Ste (22:18.371)
Mm-hmm.
Ste (22:27.957)
Nice. Okay, so actually linking their mailing list, email to their mailing list so they can, you know, actually use that, those emails.
Adam (22:29.347)
Bye.
Adam (22:37.502)
Yeah. And then like, uh, like stats about readers that you can't get from just having an email signup. Like we can know, let's say like age demographics of who's following you or who's reading your book. We can know the most popular authors and books that your audience is reading. We can know, um, the, uh, pronouns that the people that read your book, uh, use. And we can know locations of people. Um, so we could.
Like if we can package that up in a group anonymized way that lets authors feel like they know their audience in a way that you wouldn't be able to get from just a Goodreads or from just having an email list, I think those insights into their audience could also be useful, or at least just interesting. I'm trying to figure out how they go from interesting to useful.
Ste (23:29.819)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, that's really good. Yeah, those are really good things. I mean, for authors that don't have an audience, I mean, it's clear what we can bring. It's that audience and building it.
like full hardcover, but let's say you have an author that has already like, they're selling like 50,000 copies a year. And I mean, maybe even more. And at a certain level, you wouldn't be incentivized to join a platform. Even, I mean, if we're promising, you know, 50K readers more, I mean, yeah, whatever, for some authors that's yeah.
Uh, so, yeah, I think that insight into the community and, uh, keeping close to it definitely is going to be like a lot. Uh, yeah, it's going to be really good. I also, uh, I mean, uh,
Adam (24:16.726)
Yeah.
Ste (24:36.897)
hypothesis I have related to this would be like making the place where they share updates like really nice visually I guess.
I think, again, Letterboxd does a really good job with onboarding platforms like Mobi, or they did the HQ account for these platforms. And maybe that's pretty similar, because platforms can offer updates on Letterboxd.
And I'm guessing they sign up, of course, because Leatherbox has 3 million users, maybe even more. I don't know. I think they were close to four right now. I mean, they've gotten huge. But yeah, it's, hmm.
Adam (25:18.722)
Hmm
Ste (25:31.441)
It's another thing to take into consideration, providing that space where it's nice. I mean, I see authors showing updates probably by their team. And we're talking about authors that can actually afford a team on Goodreads. And yeah, I don't have a feeling that it feels special to those authors to share anything over there. Like have...
nice accounts where they can also share bits of, let's say, personal information and maybe like finding the privacy as well so that some info is only available to readers that are like at a certain level with the author. Let's say they read like all the books and they reviewed all the books in a series.
Adam (26:27.307)
Hmm.
Ste (26:29.673)
and then they get something extra like fandom bits or
Adam (26:34.723)
Yeah, it's like, yeah, that would be an interesting one to talk with authors about. It's like, it's almost like having tears of like a fan club.
Ste (26:43.313)
Oh yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Adam (26:46.23)
like, you know, and maybe like at different tiers of a fan club, you get different access to different things. And yeah, to be determined for sure.
Ste (26:56.373)
Yeah, yeah, there's a lot like that we can do for this like part of things. But the answering that question is going to be important. I don't really know like authors, what authors, what their behavior is like.
Or if they rather like share something on their official account, but also have a personal hardcover account, that would be great. I mean, uh, interacting even through an anonymous accounts, like having authors. I think the best case in my mind would be like having authors have some like semi anonymous, like, uh, okay, we don't know if this author is really behind that account, but we suspect they are.
uh, post on hardcover and engage with, uh, with, uh, readers. And that's like also in the realm of discussions, like heavily, like how would they relate to, to readers, like having that network.
Adam (28:06.674)
Well, let's see. Aside from author stuff, I've started on the ability to edit books and editions. I think it's gotten to a good spot. I'm curious to get your thoughts on where it is for now. See? Okay, I can share my screen here and I can talk through how it's working.
Ste (28:26.465)
Yeah, let's go for it. Yeah.
Ste (28:37.513)
Thanks.
Adam (28:41.138)
Okay. So can you see my screen okay? Cool. So we have this flag button where we already had like flag is duplicate and report a problem. So I added this like edit book and I'll probably change this from flag to like controls or something.
Ste (28:45.777)
Yep. Here we go.
Ste (28:58.752)
Okay.
Ste (29:09.064)
Controls is kind of... Yeah, maybe...
Adam (29:09.55)
but I'm not sure.
Ste (29:17.477)
Yeah, that's a tricky one because Edit can definitely be in there, but we've got to find the name that's relevant for that button so people would know how they can actually access that. Well, I'm guessing it's the first one.
like discovery thing, they would just have to click that button to see that edit is in there. But just to make it obvious that that is the reporting and the editing. Yeah, but that's cool. Okay.
Adam (29:56.706)
Yeah.
Adam (30:00.014)
And so this is kind of a very basic form for a book. For a book right now, the only things you can edit are like what edition we consider to be the default edition to use and what audio book we consider to be the audio book to use for it. So this is.
the bare minimum for starters. And then later on, we'll probably have ability to set this series here as well, because the series will be the same across all editions. Like this is the first book in this series.
Ste (30:38.893)
Okay
and for the other additions how would you be able to edit those? Okay.
Adam (30:52.894)
Yeah, so there's two ways. You can either go over here to the additions page, which will list out all the additions, and then under here you can edit from here, or click edit from here. So, you can see that I've got the edit from here. So, I can go ahead and click edit from here.
Ste (31:09.18)
Okay.
Nice. Okay.
Adam (31:18.994)
and these would go to...
Adam (31:28.202)
and I kind of put a really big box to make sure people know like you're editing an edition of this book. You're not editing like whatever book you happen to have of this book. Like if you, you know, if you're looking at your shelf and you're like, oh, I have that book, I'm going to add some data for it. It's trying to make it clear to people that it's specific to this edition because I feel like that connection between edition and book are
Ste (31:41.596)
Yeah.
Ste (31:53.398)
Okay.
Adam (31:58.146)
gonna cause some people to be confused when they're using this.
Ste (32:05.237)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's really good. Maybe also include the ISBN over there because this is how I would Maybe even in a box so they know, you know ISBN label so they know to double check the ISBN maybe even we can tell them if you really want to Be sure they won't edit another SBN just double check the ISBN or something like
Adam (32:28.716)
Yeah.
Ste (32:32.413)
to make sure, yeah, they're not editing something else. Okay. Oh, this is looking good.
Adam (32:39.978)
And so this can, you can change the book this associates with. So for instance, instead of Hyperion, let's say it was this Hyperion. And it's, what it's doing is saying, like when you submit this, it's gonna request a change to this one for the book. And that doesn't change it immediately. What that'll do is behind the scenes, it'll...
Ste (33:02.633)
Okay.
Adam (33:10.154)
add something to our like admin queue to see should we change this or not.
Ste (33:16.777)
Okay. But usually you won't need to change this, I'm guessing, because if you're like, uh, editing an edition, I mean, the first thing I would do is make sure I have that ISBN and for that ISBN, yeah, the cover, uh, I wouldn't, uh, so this is basically, uh, that addition I want to associate with another book, like high level book, that's, that's the idea. Right. Okay.
Adam (33:44.266)
Yeah, yeah, like one of the things I found a lot, especially for comics and like manga, is that we'll have like one book called like Paper Girls, and we'll have lots of editions that all refer back to Paper Girls, but then some of those editions are issue one, some of those editions are issue two or issue three, so they should be associated with like book two or book three.
Ste (33:54.193)
Mm-hmm
Ste (34:08.311)
Okay.
Adam (34:13.282)
but instead they're all pointing to the same book.
Ste (34:13.642)
Okay, I gotcha. Okay, yeah, that's a nice, that's a nice solve for this.
Adam (34:20.574)
And the other option is like, you say, no book exists where it's like, hey, whatever this edition is, it doesn't have a corresponding book and hardcover. So create it.
Ste (34:33.398)
Okay.
Adam (34:38.162)
can reset that. Then covers are, it's pretty basic. It's like, here are the covers that we currently have for this book. And it shows the dimensions of them and whether or not we think that's a good cover or you can unset it or upload a new cover.
Ste (34:49.165)
Mm-hmm. Nice.
Ste (34:59.833)
Yeah, that's a great time, but I'm gonna begin doing that for some of the books in my library as soon as that's live.
Adam (35:09.698)
And you can upload it or get in a new tab, which will just open the cover in a new tab to view it.
Ste (35:18.366)
Mmm, nice.
Adam (35:20.128)
then
This is also just like audio books. You can say like this is a 16 hour, four minute and nine second book. Or if you have the total seconds, you can just set those.
Ste (35:22.629)
Okay.
Ste (35:30.549)
Okay, here we go. Oh, said that.
Ste (35:36.777)
Nice. Okay. Are there any other formats other than physical book or for physical book? Do we have like the sub classifications?
Adam (35:50.378)
We do, like we have a free text field called addition information, which could be like mass market paperback, hardcover. It's kind of an open string. And so we try to map that string into one of these three, but we still have that in the background.
Ste (36:02.882)
Okay, yeah
Ste (36:08.645)
Mm-hmm.
Okay, that's good. Yeah, for people who especially who own like first editions and that kind of stuff, it might be nice to have that.
Adam (36:21.163)
Yeah.
Adam (36:24.602)
Yeah, I think, yeah, one of the next steps on this form will be deciding what, what other fields to show. Because like, that one, like addition information, and like release date, are like two of the big ones I'll probably add before releasing this. But, and like language and country, probably.
Ste (36:49.975)
Mmm, yeah.
Ste (36:53.905)
Yeah, this is looking really good. I mean...
Adam (37:03.026)
Any other thoughts on things you'd want to see or things missing to you for this experience so far?
Ste (37:12.497)
No, this one looks great. I'm wondering about the actual high level book description and those fields. I'm guessing those would be edited in the previous step where we would edit the high level book information, right? But only if, you know.
We decide to allow that at least for supporters at first, right?
Adam (37:44.166)
Yeah, I think that would be here because different editions might have different descriptions. Whatever the book that was the default edition, we would show that edition's description on the book page. I was hesitant to add that here yet, mostly because I wanted to get like a...
Ste (37:49.534)
Oh yeah, exactly.
Ste (38:01.474)
description. Okay.
Adam (38:12.206)
the descriptions from OpenAI first in, and then have those as kind of the starting point for descriptions.
Ste (38:19.865)
Yeah, that sounds great. I mean, I definitely prefer that. If we can get the descriptions with OpenAI, the description and that like small blurb that we put on the book page, that's going to be great. If that works out, I mean, that's like, this becomes way, way secondary. So that's good.
Adam (38:30.668)
Yeah.
Ste (38:43.257)
Okay, yeah, this is looking really good. I mean, those are like the main things, you know, the cover, the cover, if you can upload new covers, that's gonna be great.
Adam (38:48.329)
and
Adam (38:53.898)
And this is now all containerized. So like for instance, we can just like change the hardcover UI theme and like have it impact how this looks. So for instance, if I remove the border, I can like pretty quickly change it if we don't want those for instance.
Ste (39:23.993)
I mean, visually it's looking great. I mean, I don't have like any, any comments. It's functional. It's nice. It's clean. It's a good editing experience. I don't think like anyone has. Plus it's going to be mostly mobile. I mean, it works on mostly desktop, I guess for editing. So I'm guessing it's. It's going to happen on mobile as well, but I'm guessing it's like.
Adam (39:28.767)
Okay, cool.
Ste (39:52.049)
I do it on desktop, so we'll see how much traffic to this page comes from where, but I suspect if we nail it for desktop, I mean it looks good on mobile as well.
Adam (39:57.998)
Thanks for watching!
Adam (40:05.398)
Yeah, and just this is also using a narrower width rather than the full width.
Ste (40:12.773)
Yeah, that, okay, okay. Should we, this was one of my questions and I started doing all the pages for the book page on that narrower width. Like kind of like my pal makes to like make the whole site on that width, even if it's gonna be a bit, a thing that's.
Adam (40:21.922)
Thanks for watching!
Ste (40:39.097)
some of our readers are going to have to get used to. I kind of like it more compact. And like you said, there are oftentimes when we don't have a lot of space for columns. And that would help with this as well.
Adam (40:53.25)
Yeah. And one thing we could potentially do is keep it narrow. But then if there is something that needs to be like full with, whether that's full container or full, like a hundred percent, we could, we could have those still be, still show up as a hundred percent, like for instance, if we had. Um, a list of books, you know, one thing is to show them just within the
Ste (41:19.025)
Mm-hmm
Adam (41:22.39)
the container, another thing is to show them slightly wider in the wide container or to show them full width 100%. So we would have other options if we wanted to have certain parts of the page be wider than this narrow area. That's what we currently do on the blog. Our text width is a certain width, but our image width is wider. That way images stand out a little bit more.
Ste (41:40.281)
Yeah, it looks good and yeah.
Ste (41:51.865)
Yeah, yeah, that's gonna be really helpful. And if we have like the narrower content and then the full width content, it's gonna work. I mean, it works in design. I did it like for the book lists and they're gonna look really good on scroll. So yeah, that's gonna be, I think it centers the experience and I felt it was a little bit.
Adam (42:05.707)
Nice.
Ste (42:15.597)
wider. That's why some people said it looked better on actual smaller resolutions and iPads. So if we just have the header, and even the header can be not full width, but it can be in a larger container because we have the search there, it looks good. And it's sort of a trend, I guess, to center the content.
Adam (42:23.214)
Thanks for watching!
Adam (42:32.927)
Hmm
Ste (42:44.729)
I was also thinking to do it like the other box does on desktop to have some stuff which is sticky like kind of like we do it now, but that's trickier and you also get like pages. I mean, it's not universal. And I'd rather have like something that works for the whole site. So yeah, I think.
we could go for it.
Adam (43:16.254)
I'd be down for it. And I feel like it makes it, I feel like it makes it just like, yeah, like it just makes it cleaner. Like we don't have to make it wide just for the fact of making it wide. Like I feel like if at some point in the future we could grow into that, then great. But for now, we're good.
Ste (43:17.899)
Okay, that's good.
Ste (43:38.709)
Yeah, yeah, and you know, maybe it's not I mean scrolling is a natural behavior so
it's not something we should stay away from. Just to try to cram as much content in a wider container doesn't make a lot of sense. I think even with books, the pages are pretty narrow, usually. So it doesn't... Your eyes are centered. It doesn't have to go side to side a lot. And I think it would help especially
for the stuff we have coming up. So for instance, if you're reading a long review, if it's like screen-wide, it's gonna be, yeah, not such a good experience. So it kind of takes away from the hardcover format a bit because that's like the actual narrowness of a page with spaces on the sides.
Adam (44:24.398)
Hmm. Yeah.
Ste (44:46.497)
It's basically that. So, yeah.
That's good.
Adam (44:53.314)
So one of the parts of all of this is that we, like right now, if any of these fields are empty, then any logged in user is able to set something on it. So like if a cover is empty, anyone who's logged in can set a cover for a book or can set the, like if this is unset, they can set the reading format, they can set the page count if it starts off empty. But if it starts off,
with something, like if it starts off with a cover, with a format, then only supporters can change it to a different value. That's kind of what we talked about as kind of a first step, you know. Eventually I like to get it to the point where anyone can do it, but for starters, I feel like this is a safe first step. So, I'm gonna go ahead and start with a couple of things. So, I'm gonna start with a couple of things.
Ste (45:37.797)
Yeah. Uh huh.
Ste (45:43.829)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, with the stuff going on now with bots, I mean, we haven't had like any malicious attempts to hijack stuff, but I'm sure we will have later down the line. When, yeah.
Adam (45:58.273)
Yeah.
So yeah, when someone does make a change here, it shows up here in the history for this item. So there's a way to get history for a book or an edition right now. Eventually when we get to like editing series and editing authors, there will also be a history page for those. And for here, we're able to kind of look at what the user was that made the change, what the changes were. And...
Ste (46:22.395)
Mm-hmm.
Adam (46:30.334)
Really, all I changed were these two fields. But behind the scenes, we changed these four fields because of how we store the data. So these are the real fields that mattered. I changed the seconds, and I changed the reading format from text to audio.
Ste (46:48.722)
Okay.
Adam (46:50.626)
but then it's possible to kind of just restore this. And that'll just like, that created a new history event here that's a version of this one.
Ste (47:04.234)
Nice, okay. Well, it's looking good solid stuff
Adam (47:11.048)
And I think the other kind of major part of this all was like, if you do say, like, let's change this into a different book.
then that's when we have to like figure things out on our side. And so we have this idea of like reports and these are like anything that a user reports wrong with anything on the site. So like in this case, reported to be a different edition of the book and that's what I'm working on now is like that experience when you, when someone reports an edition.
Ste (47:53.09)
Nice, okay. So you're trying to... I mean, it's still gonna be editable from our back-ends, right? Uh-huh.
Adam (48:00.99)
Yeah. Yeah. And from our back end, we'll have to do a bunch of things. We'll have to like, change all the reviews and lists and prompt answers and all that to associate with the new book if people were previously using that edition. So it's a lot of steps happen when you say this book isn't, what this edition isn't part of this book, but yeah.
Ste (48:26.671)
Uh huh.
Adam (48:30.758)
And I think the last part of this was for all of these reports, as we're calling them, like whenever you see like a book or an edition and you like report a problem with it, it comes over as a report that looks something like this. Like this is me reporting the hardcover user saying that they're doing something wrong.
Ste (48:52.368)
Mmm.
Ste (48:58.693)
Okay.
Adam (49:00.45)
And when this happens, like it's kind of like a ticket to our back end, but we didn't really have a way or we don't really have a way to notify the reader of like the status of their report. So I was adding this part where like we can give a message and they're like, okay, we handled it. And, and when you do that, well, I'll fix that. But when you do that, what it's effectively doing.
Ste (49:20.445)
Nice.
Ste (49:24.647)
Yeah.
Adam (49:29.55)
is sending either an email or a notification to the reader. And then they'll see it like, you know, we completed your feedback. And this will be, this can be like the message we give to them. So, I'm gonna go ahead and start the presentation. So, I'm gonna start the presentation.
Ste (49:43.634)
Oh nice, yeah. Yeah, that's really nice. Okay.
Adam (49:51.042)
So yeah, it's kind of a whole reporting admin system with user feedback. And it turned out to be a bigger project than I expected, but I feel like after this phase of it, we'll be able to kind of copy and paste this solution to add new fields to any form, to add the ability to edit prompts or not prompts, series or authors as well. So it's...
Ste (50:17.696)
Mm-hmm.
Adam (50:20.246)
It's laying the groundwork for all of it to kind of use the same system.
Ste (50:25.001)
Yeah, yeah, with with additions it throws like a hammer into the whole thing. It's incredibly like more complex than anything I've like. I could have imagined and probably you could have imagined as well. Yeah.
Adam (50:40.722)
Yeah. And yeah, there's a lot to it.
Ste (50:46.097)
It's a tough problem, but you know, nearly there, nearly there. That's gonna be like really nice. Okay, well this is looking great.
Adam (50:58.227)
I think that kind of covers most of this side. Yeah, and so by the end, people will be able to set the default editions for books, edit the basic things about editions, and then split editions into new or existing books. And those will kind of be the three major features.
Ste (51:17.146)
Nice.
Yeah, this is looking great.
Adam (51:23.298)
Sweet, yeah, I think I hopefully finish this up and ship this this week. I think I just need to fix a couple broken specs and do that splitting action. Like what happens on the Rails side when you actually, when an administrator approves that split? But yeah, I think that'll be it.
Ste (51:43.073)
Uh-huh. Okay. Yeah, it's getting close. And then we can work on the book page.
Adam (51:48.662)
Yeah. Yeah. I, I really can't wait to work on the book page. Like all of, all of this, uh, this like, feels like data organization, like all of the addition stuff, which I actually really love. Like I, I'm like, when it comes to like, uh, uh, architecture and like database normalization and like data organization, it's something I'm really, really interested in and passionate about. So it's been fun to work on this, but.
Ste (51:55.981)
Yeah
Ste (52:01.412)
Yeah.
Adam (52:18.686)
I'm getting antsy because when I see those book page designs you've been making, I'm like, okay, I really want to get that. Get to that.
Ste (52:27.158)
Yeah, coming soon. Yeah, well, that's good to hear. I mean, there is like, I know because I have, I am the same with some stuff. I mean, that book data is like really, really tough and it's a different kind of fun than actual like, visual fun is always, you know, nicer, I guess.
Adam (52:27.31)
Thank you.
Adam (52:48.42)
It's more immediate.
Ste (52:50.169)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. More like instant gratification rather than. Yeah. Long-term stuff, but yeah, it's, it's good. Lots of stuff. I mean, we're after this is done, we're finally going to get some like stuff or that's going to be seen on, on the app. So that's, that's good. Yeah. I'm also working for some, on some new.
Adam (53:12.206)
Yeah. Yeah.
Ste (53:18.165)
user views, like visual ways we can...
Ste (53:25.445)
show readers, other readers. I was thinking we could use like their favorite books maybe to like have a little like preview of their things. I can actually share my screen and yeah, show you real quick.
Adam (53:28.993)
Mm.
Adam (53:39.816)
Yeah.
Ste (53:45.097)
whole thing. Yeah. So I organize stuff in Sigma. Can you see everything?
Adam (53:51.535)
Yes.
Ste (53:53.097)
There we go. So I reorganized stuff in Figma. I'm using like these new sections that they've implemented. So you have like multiple pages in the section. So this is the book page. I think I still have a couple of things. Oh, I actually wanted to ask you because I'm having a problem with like this available like from six sellers button. Would it be better to actually put it as a tab, like by, like here?
or do you like the button more? On the page, okay, yeah, okay, yeah. I think I like it on the page.
Adam (54:25.607)
I think I like it on the page more. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe if in the future we have like more elaborate details about the book, like here's a chart of its price over time or like if like the buy experience was like its own experience, I could see that. But yeah. Yeah.
Ste (54:46.705)
Okay, but if it's just like this, yeah, I, uh, wait, like this, yeah, we can just show it in, like a drop down and in the drawer for mobile.
Adam (54:59.083)
Yeah, yeah, that works.
Ste (55:01.485)
Okay, that's perfect. Yeah, so let's scroll down to the user reviews I was telling you about. This is the search. Where are they? Oh, here and there. So yeah, stuff like this. So you would see like a preview of their favorite books and this would actually like be if she was, if they were like one of our users. So yeah, it's not, I should, yeah.
Adam (55:28.006)
Mm-hmm. I see. Yeah. Looks cool.
Ste (55:31.069)
So is their name, their handle, their bio, and yeah. I also made it into columns so that you would be able to like scroll these left and right like this. But yeah, maybe it works better for with, but just to show like preview of their favorite books or their own books, I think that'd be neat.
Adam (55:47.101)
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Ste (56:00.649)
to have some covers.
Adam (56:04.638)
Yeah, that, uh, that, I mean, that looks great. Yeah. I like the, the cover, like the faded cover, um, gradient.
Ste (56:04.922)
in here.
Ste (56:13.673)
Uh huh. Yeah. And again, it can have like levels. I mean, depending on how, I mean, ideally this would be a component where we can set like covers, like reader, like as a component and have covers as a prop. Yes. No. So it could be like without any covers or it could be without the bio or it could be without even these.
Adam (56:37.54)
Mm-mm.
Ste (56:41.425)
maybe keep the similarity score and just have this depending on where we show them. So, and maybe even like show more details for desktop. But yeah, I'm also, I mean, these were the original ones but I'm trying to, yeah, make them a bit better.
Adam (56:59.326)
Yeah, that last one looks so much better. Like, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I like it. Yeah, it's.
Ste (57:02.933)
Yeah, I know. Yeah.
Ste (57:09.293)
Yeah, if we have components that we're going to use throughout the site, like these lists, like the full width lists that we can like pluck everywhere and, you know, for prompts, we can have the rankings for, yeah, regular lists or for series, we can have these as well and show like the current one. Yeah, I'm guessing this...
Adam (57:34.493)
Mm-hmm.
Ste (57:38.749)
It's gonna be nice to reuse them.
Adam (57:43.806)
Yeah, yeah, I'm very much looking forward to some normalization and clean up on the front end for that.
Ste (57:52.053)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's not hard. I mean, we have, I mean, this is our library, luckily. We will just have to like build, I guess, second level components. So these would be like primitives and we could have like next level components based on them. Like we do now, but just clear.
Adam (58:15.198)
Yeah. Yeah, sounds good.
Ste (58:17.57)
Okay.
Nice. Yeah, making progress.
Adam (58:24.821)
Cool. Well, want to call it there for the day?
Ste (58:29.701)
Yeah, of course, let's drop it up. Okay.
Adam (58:32.45)
Cool, well, yeah, thanks for the chat. I, yeah, I'm curious, like, by next week, actually, it's not next week, it's, it won't be before our next Hardcover Live, but next Monday through Friday is a Vercell ship where they're potentially announcing the next version of Next.js. So I think that will determine whether we're able to use the new stuff for the new book page or not.
Ste (58:55.318)
Thanks.
Ste (59:01.849)
Yeah, that's gonna be interesting. Hopefully, yeah, think of Shcrust. Let's see. Okay, well, have a good one everyone, and yeah, see you next week. Bye.
Adam (59:01.886)
So we'll see. Yeah.
Adam (59:10.722)
Talk to you later. See ya. Bye.