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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 (00:06.253)
Hey, hey, stay. How's it going?
Ste (00:08.522)
Hi, good, good. Enjoying another evening in London for hardcover number 10.
Adam (00:14.487)
Yeah, it's a morning here in Salt Lake, but I'm, I feel like I have a full calendar of things to do today, but I, I've been doing this thing where like on the weekends, I'll like plan out what I want to do for the entire week. And sometimes I feel like I plan too many things during the week, but I feel like then the following week I can narrow it down and uh.
focus more on if I need more of a break the following week.
Ste (00:45.458)
Okay, is it like chores or like other stuff?
Adam (00:50.227)
Kind of all kind of everything it could it could be like scheduling date nights with my wife it could be Recipes you want to make this week it could be game nights with friends just like Doing that step to like really plan those things that I want to do as well as the things I have to do
Ste (01:09.714)
Yeah, well, that sounds familiar. I'm not as planned, but I wouldn't mind being on that edge of the planning spectrum. But yeah, it's more spontaneous on my end, I guess. That's good, yeah. It's been really getting hot over here, so yeah.
Adam (01:32.191)
out.
Adam (01:38.014)
Oh, yeah.
Ste (01:38.782)
I've been enjoying some long, nice walks and yeah, it's been good.
Adam (01:45.889)
What's the common things to do in London when it starts to warm up?
Ste (01:50.81)
Well, just sit in the park and, I don't know, just be like lizards out in the sun. That's what always happens. Like mid-April, everybody's out in the park at lunch having takeaways. So that's good. I mean, it's really like sun appreciating culture, I guess, which is good.
Adam (02:19.603)
Nice. Yeah.
Ste (02:20.542)
Yeah, I'll go so like.
Adam (02:24.135)
Um, I think like we have this, uh, the season kind of between when it's really snowy and when it's like warm called mud season, where you can, you can start going hiking, but the trails are basically just muddy because there's a lot of snow melt. And so right now we're like just at the beginning of mud season and I see the mountains, I'd like to go hiking, but I know if I do
my boots are just going to be like wading in mud. So give it in another month, it should dry out a little bit more. And then, then I'll be outside a lot more. But, uh, there's also the, the Capitol building here has like 150 cherry blossoms around it. And so we are very actively waiting for those to bloom for having a little picnic under them.
Ste (02:57.481)
Okay.
Ste (03:04.189)
God
Ste (03:17.466)
Okay, that's pretty late. Yeah, Motsuzen sounds like really extreme. And cherries are over here. Actually, yeah, there's the decorative kind which are blossoming right now. We have a church nearby and they have some beautiful cherries in their backyard, I guess, which is like a park. But yeah, the first ones, I think, they blossomed. The ones that blossom in Japan, I think it was like.
Adam (03:18.775)
Thanks for watching!
Adam (03:42.792)
I'm gonna go.
Ste (03:47.086)
about two weeks ago. Yeah, depends on the weather, I guess, how cold it is. And we're gonna get a cherry blossom next time. Yeah.
Adam (03:48.475)
Mm-mm.
Adam (03:54.963)
Yeah, we've had a really cold one.
No, nice.
Ste (04:01.902)
Cool. Great. Well, what should we be talking about on the HireCover friends today? Have any ideas?
Adam (04:02.871)
Yeah. Well.
Adam (04:11.709)
I had a couple, I had a kind of two ideas I was thinking it would be fun to talk about. One of them is like something, a discussion we've kind of been having both on Discord and in person some is around like how do we, how do we like focus hardcover to support influencers in a way? And what the like, just like chatting about that, brainstorming that.
Ste (04:33.506)
That's a good one.
Ste (04:38.71)
Yeah.
Adam (04:38.731)
Um, and the other one was, uh, uh, around like book editing stuff, but I feel like, um, I'm like 80% there on the book editing stuff. I feel like next week will be a, maybe a better time for that.
Ste (04:53.758)
Okay, that sounds good. Yeah, book influencers are like a huge topic and they're kind of vital to us and how we grow. So yeah, that's a good topic. And then maybe I can show some previews from the designs we've been working on. I know a lot of people have been waiting for visual updates. We're trying to bulk some together, I guess. That's why it's been going...
You know, we haven't seen stuff live, but yeah, we can show a few of the things we've been working on in the background for the book page maybe and for the search. We're doing lots of things that once they're designed, we're going to hopefully get them live so that everyone can see them pretty fast.
Adam (05:52.763)
Yeah. And that, uh, that book page will be a good one to like really start bringing in some of the concepts of like influencers and how we incorporate them into the platform too. So, yeah, for, for, uh, like a couple months ago when we were starting to do, I think it was like the social side. We started talking to some influencers, mostly just bloggers.
Ste (06:05.75)
Yeah.
Adam (06:22.059)
And I think that led to like one of the first things we did, which is like having a canonical URL for every review. So that way, if, um, if you reviewed a book on your blog or somewhere else, you can repost your, your influencers can repost the review on hard cover. And then we'll link to the original as well as, um, use the canonical tag in the head, which is good for SEO purposes. That was kind of like.
That was kind of a good baseline. So we're not duplicating review content, but that's not like, I don't feel like that's a big like selling point unless you're a blogger who's hoping to just like get a little bit more SEO oomph from that link. Uh, so I'm wondering like, what can we do to better leverage like TikTok, uh, book talk, um, bookstagram or like booktube like.
those people who are creating amazing content and books on those, those more interactive media friendly platforms and how we incorporate that into hardcover. And, uh, I know like our, our first guess at this is like having a media URL with, with a review where, you know, people on hardcover can link to that, which, and then we show that in the book page, which is something I saw in your mockups, which is really cool.
Adam (07:48.135)
Yeah, maybe we could start there and then kind of use that as a jumping off point.
Ste (07:51.23)
Yeah. Yeah, that sounds great. I mean, canonical URLs are great. And there's a clear selling point for bloggers who would want to duplicate their review, because that means that we're telling Google, OK, this is where the content was posted from. And the original source is their blog. So yeah, that's a good idea.
That's pretty good. But nowadays I think especially young folks use Book Talk and Book Twitter and BookTube, I mean YouTube with reviews, TikTok with reviews, Instagram with reviews much more than they use blogs. So accommodating for that kind of content. Yeah, would be like really cool. And the media URL would be.
easy to embed, right? Technical advice needed for this, yeah?
Adam (08:55.36)
Yeah.
Adam (08:59.504)
Yeah, we can get the cover URL, like a static image of like a TikTok or a static image of like the YouTube video. And we could show that and then if they click it, we could make it interactive and start playing it on our site. So, I'm gonna go ahead and start playing it.
Ste (09:15.442)
Nice. Yeah, that kind of plays. I mean, people who are like doing reviews or who are readers who are yeah, talking about their reading, I guess what they lack is a platform where you can see all those. So you can only see book talk videos if you're on TikTok. You can only see bookstagram videos if
Ste (09:45.102)
stuff from YouTube when you're on YouTube. So that would be a plus because having a network where you can see all of these is something that as a reader, you could be inclined to go to because you have all the content there without having to make an account on TikTok or make an account on, yeah.
all the other networks and maybe you have someone that you follow that posts really good content on Instagram, then you have someone on TikTok, then you have someone on YouTube and it's hard to keep up and this switching between these and not a dedicated book app might be, I mean, that could definitely be a plus. So integrating media URLs from this point of view.
And having those in the feed, I guess, or accessible on the book page, would be really good for surfacing these things.
Adam (10:51.55)
Yeah.
Adam (10:56.439)
It, uh, it also makes me wonder about like, so, you know, one route is that hardcover readers can add like a media URL to their reviews and in that path, every, every video we show from all these other platforms associates with a hardcover reader, like a hardcover user. But one of, one of the other options is like, if we hit
those APIs and then show top TikTok videos or top bookstagram videos, top YouTube videos that are from people who don't have a hardcover account.
Ste (11:36.578)
Oh wow, yeah, that'd be cool. Yeah.
Adam (11:37.495)
And what, what, what even that would look like and what that would even solve. Cause it feels like, like for me, I'm thinking about like how I would use something like this if I were like, uh, you know, I was deciding on a book to read. I was maybe reading some reviews about the book and then I wanted to see like the top, the top reviews about it, the top media about it from some way. And if there were a way to pull those in and then have
like them liked on our platform where like, I don't know, I'm trying to think of like not duplicating like the, the audience because like, if, if someone posts a video on TikTok that gets a million views, does that mean it's better, it's a better review than another review that only has a thousand views? Not necessarily.
Ste (12:22.23)
Yeah.
Ste (12:28.478)
No. Yeah.
Adam (12:32.039)
Like the, the other one might be better for someone who's a, you know, it might, it might be less entertaining and might be less viral, but it might be more like to the point on what a person looking for a review wants. So I don't feel like we can use external popularity as a metric for ranking what we show on hardcover. It would have to be like internal, internal feedback, like what people on hardcover most resonate with is what should be at the top.
Ste (12:52.727)
Yeah.
Ste (13:00.906)
Yeah, that sounds great. I mean, if it's on book talk, it's on the TikTok algorithm and the TikTok algorithm, we know that. Yeah, if it's got those bells and whistles that make it entertaining, they push it. But there's like so many other reviews out there. So yeah, that sounds great. I mean, having those ranked by our ranking system would be...
really neat. And I'm also thinking about like the, let's say, metadata of the review because when I was trying to find people to follow on BookTok, the problem was that I had no like indication, unless I watched like some of the videos, whether they were reviewing
Ste (14:00.81)
non-fiction or whatever else. So that was a bit daunting. If you would have a hardcover profile associated where you could state your genres and you would have your tags associated, you would have your audience tailored on that thing.
Adam (14:03.104)
Hmm.
Ste (14:30.166)
that niche that you read because everybody has a niche. I think that would also be great. I mean, the fact that these networks were not purpose-built for books, but they are really good for surfacing authors and books and reviews and readers, that's really good. I'm wondering how we can come in and add a layer to that that makes it way better
TikTok is not gonna add like reading specific controls to their or like the reading specific layer to their account. You won't be able to like have your favorite books. The genres usually read the stats associated with your reading over there. That's clear. You won't have this on TikTok, on Instagram, on Facebook. You won't have this anywhere. But you have the content and the content is important because some people, you know, are
Adam (15:23.893)
Yeah.
Ste (15:29.706)
celebrities because they're reviewing books and rightfully so. I mean, that's really good. But there's also that question. So, you know, if someone has a million, uh, followers on tick tock, why would they come to a platform where they would, uh, we, we tell them, okay, you can post their content on tick tock there. They could just say, yeah. Okay. I have a million tick tock views. I'm fine. That's good.
Adam (15:57.924)
Yeah.
Ste (15:59.722)
I don't need more audience from that part, but I guess, I mean, to me, one advantage would be that layer that we add. So on TikTok, you have the videos, but if you had a profile where you could show like your favorite books, if you could show like your content organized in a way that's more intuitive to someone who, you know.
wants to read, let's say, young adult reviews. But we could do that. So it would be way more specific to readers. I mean.
Adam (16:34.164)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I think like when, when someone has a hardcover account and they're an influencer, there's so many things we can do with like the combined data between those two, between like match percentage and like, you can really showcase the, the, uh, like preferences of that, that influencer, like what genres they like, like you mentioned, I was, it kind of got me thinking as you were saying that
Like if we did have, if we weren't linking videos that were relevant to what someone was looking for, like, you know, you're looking at a review of a book. Um, we only have, maybe, maybe we only have like a couple of, or maybe we don't have any media URLs for a book and someone searches for media about a book. Um, we could supplement the lack of content on hardcover with content from those platforms.
And then what we could potentially do is like, whatever the readers are, whatever the, the media, like whatever the Tik TOK videos, the YouTube videos that people are engaging with on hardcover, we can reach out to those influencers and say, Hey, your, your content's getting a lot of attention on hardcover. Why don't you create an account? And because you're already getting views on our platform.
Ste (18:00.258)
That'd be great. Yeah, I mean, that's like a very good approach and it's the other way around. So we're not like actively trying to sell it to someone who already has like an audience, which, you know, but we're telling them, there's some people over here that, you know, there's like a community who's like looking at your stuff from hardcover. Yeah, that'd be great.
I'm wondering, I mean, that would mean that we take the TikTok data and show it, would it be in our Explorer feed or would it be tied to a book? I'm guessing it would be tied to a book. So if a book has a review on TikTok, we could show it on the book page in the discussions panel or as a review, I guess.
Adam (18:54.409)
Yeah.
Yeah. Uh, Liggy in the chat asked about like, won't that be tricky with copyrights? And I think, I think as long as we don't claim to own it and we embed it using like the official, um, like YouTube API, the official Tik TOK API, then it'll be kind of like, when, uh, like the New York Times embeds, uh, uh, a video on their, on their site, it's a, it's free use as long as it's a public video. Um, and as long as you don't claim ownership of it.
I think the hard part would be like giving that influencer some reason to come over after, after it's after we've done that, like, you know, like, uh, whether that's giving them insights into who their audience is, or things that we could do that. TikTok couldn't provide like TikTok can provide data on like the gender or the age of the people watching their videos, but we could provide things like the taste of the audience.
the type of books, the exact books they're reading, the overlap with their own books. So yeah, I feel like those selling points that an influencer could get could be really neat. So, yeah, I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point.
Ste (20:11.55)
Yeah, that definitely is. I mean, the quantitative data, I mean, it's good, but I mean, I wouldn't want to know the actual numbers that are associated with maybe my reading, but not my network, like the demographics. That maybe could be useful for authors who are trying to look into insights into who their readers are. But even for them, yeah, the qualitative data, like...
What books did they actually read? What tags, moods, what content wordings did they look out for? That could be really insightful. And it's way more fun. I mean, it's like, I think we touched upon this in other parts of our exploration to reading in general.
Adam (20:49.835)
Yeah.
Ste (21:10.978)
data, what people say is more important than the like count or the impressions or the views. A good review can have 10 views and it can be the best thing ever. How do we surface that? How does our algorithm not go for popularity but for quality?
Adam (21:41.899)
Yeah.
Ste (21:42.39)
That'd be interesting. Yeah, they just asked, maybe asking before using it from influencers, could be like asking them if we can use their video. I mean, I think in the TikTok or like in any social network terms and conditions that would be shareable and they encourage shareability, but
Adam (21:45.321)
Yeah.
Ste (22:08.182)
Definitely it would be like interest. I mean our goal is to like get those people who have lots of activity not even like views like we all of course want the most popular people, but we also want those who like give We want obscure accounts as well, but ones that really do have like good book reviews on the platform, so yeah like
Acest tip de touch va fi interesant.
Adam (22:36.399)
Yeah, yeah, I have a feeling all the APIs are going to give the most popular videos for a search. Like if you're looking for a specific book title reviews, I'm sure it's going to order them by like a combination of like most views, the ones that it thinks are currently the hottest right now and the most relevant.
Ste (22:59.981)
Yeah.
Adam (23:01.415)
In our case, we would be using the API, so we wouldn't be getting personalized search recommendations, like if you or I were to go search YouTube on our personal accounts. So it could be more of an impartial representation of what the hottest reviews are, which could be good or bad. I think ideally, it would be similar to searching under your.
Ste (23:06.711)
Yeah.
Ste (23:11.423)
Mmm.
Ste (23:20.651)
Yeah.
Adam (23:27.751)
your personal account because YouTube knows that like a little more data about you and probably refines those search results accordingly.
Ste (23:34.494)
Yeah, but still the API, I mean, it's not up to us first of all. So yeah, it's going to be like the way their API works, I guess. But just showing the content and maybe, I mean, the way it would like merge into our feeds would be interesting because I think the habits of the readers on HireCover are like really different from
uh, what usually goes on on other networks. Uh, we have an algorithm for readers and for books, uh, rather than like something that's been adapted to, uh, because it works well. I mean, the TikTok algorithm obviously works well because it's surfacing like mostly good stuff. I mean, I found like really, really good, like, uh, reviewers.
through that, but yeah, the way you actually like find those that you're interested in could be like a thing that we could help with or solve. And
Adam (24:49.607)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, yeah, it's one of those, it's, it feels like it's one of those, uh, chicken and the egg problems, like, uh, getting influencers to come to a site that's not, not huge yet, like it's, it, it feels kind of fun because we're like designing it from scratch. It's like, if we were to design something where the best ideas floated to the top.
Ste (25:07.383)
Mm-hmm.
Ste (25:18.827)
Yeah.
Adam (25:19.539)
then that's, that feels like what we're doing. Like it's, it's less focused on, well, like TikTok, I feel like, you know, there's a part of it that's like entertainment, like that's a huge part of it. Like if someone's just giving a list of their top 10 books, it's a lot less fun unless they do it in a very like interesting way that keeps you engaged for the entire minute. Our focus isn't gonna be on keeping someone entertained for the entire minute. Our focus is on
helping you make that choice if you want to read that book or not. So we have a different intention and a different goal for why we're showing the video and that lets us be like much more, much more creative in how we solve that, but it also brings up a whole new problem, which is like how, how we get people to that point where they say, I want to read this or I'm excited to read this book or I want to buy this book or I want to check it out.
Ste (26:18.02)
Mm-hmm.
Adam (26:18.295)
And yeah, in influencers are for sure a part of that, making, helping people make that decision because more and more people want just, they want to, like, just immerse themselves in the, in the world of, of a book. And, uh, uh, one of the things that we, that came up when I was doing like SEO research around books is just like all of the additional
information about a book that people look for, whether that's like, uh, as you mentioned, fan art, or it could be like maps about the bike, things that happen in the book. It could be like a Wiki where you learn more. It could be, um, uh, photos of people, cosplaying as the characters. It's like, it's like, there's all this information about a book that exists and even knowing all that for all that even exists for a book.
could be a reason to read a book. Like if you know that there's a community around a book, then that might sway you more towards that book than another book that has no community around it.
Ste (27:26.122)
Yeah, 100%. Yeah, those are all great. I mean, definitely having those. I mean, if you'd see them on the book page, anything related to that, including like, I mean, books are written words. So...
Ste (27:44.578)
having the ability to show that extra content, that's visual, that's video, alongside being able to comment on it in a way that is relevant, I guess, and engaging in discussions with people. I guess that would be really interesting. And you can get that on TikTok or on Instagram. I mean, they have comments, but I mean, who watches TikTok comments?
I'm guessing it's just a way for the creators to respond to their audience instead of really engaging in discussions or in chats about the book. Whereas if you would post a cosplay image from a favorite book or comic you've read, that'd be a really nice starting point for people to...
start the discussion or like, yeah, a trope. Yeah, a trope. The people like, how do they relate to that trope? I mean, you can ask that on TikTok, you can do that on Instagram, but it's another type of, I mean, I feel it's unidirectional. So the creator talks to the people who are watching that rather than we readers on the same level.
I really like Letterboxd from that point of view. I mean, I think they're close to that kind of interaction and the reviews, because they have a style to them and you can reply to them. I feel like, you know, it's a game of finding out that info in a fun way. So you don't have to be entertaining like on TikTok or like move around or show like really flashy stuff or.
like book covers or all the algorithms that go into that. But you find ways to be, you know, smart, funny, and really like get the essence of a movie or a series and show it to others. And you get like rewarded for that if, because, you know, it's fun to.
Adam (30:04.752)
Yeah.
Ste (30:05.45)
Yeah, come up with something smart and other people to like it or like come up with other smart stuff based on your smart stuff. So yeah, letterbox really has that going. Yeah. There's even that account. Yeah. With 20 letterbox reviews.
Adam (30:14.087)
Yeah. Yeah. On. Oh, yeah. Does it account for that?
Ste (30:24.843)
Yeah, there's like, oh, why is it? It's like a meme account, like funny letter. No, it's not that. I'll send it to you on Instagram. I'm following it. It's like, yeah, yeah. So like the craziest letterbox reviews. They got a style to them and they got people to like really get on this boat. Like.
Adam (30:35.125)
Nice.
Ste (30:51.126)
Let's comment movies in a real smart way. So if we can do that with books, it would be like books, jokes, characters. Would be really, really fun.
Adam (30:56.043)
Yes.
Adam (31:01.399)
Thanks for watching!
want to spend a few minutes looking at like the desktop view of the book page where there's like the embedded parts.
Ste (31:11.903)
Yes.
Ste (31:15.969)
Yep
Adam (31:17.375)
We can uh...
Ste (31:20.11)
I can, okay, you're showing the screen. No, I'm showing the screen. Let me show the screen. Yeah. Here we go. So.
Adam (31:20.343)
talk about some options for that.
Adam (31:26.344)
Have you? Cool.
Ste (31:35.734)
Here we are in our big design file.
Ste (31:42.754)
So this is the book page we're working on. And it's this one you wanted to talk about, right? And embeds. Now, I was thinking for these, what TikTok doesn't have is, okay, they have the video embeds, the videos, but I'm guessing it could be nice.
Adam (31:52.555)
Yeah.
Ste (32:12.27)
to also like feature those optionally with a written review. I don't know, how did that idea seem at first? I don't know.
Adam (32:25.627)
Yeah, it's, I feel like in a desktop view, something like this makes sense. And then in a mobile view, it almost be more like, let's just swipe up to swipe between the different videos.
Ste (32:31.44)
Mm-hmm.
Ste (32:40.782)
Mm-hmm. It could be that this text also be like minimized so that you only see the video. And if you want to see the written review, which maybe like contains different like take, you could expand that on mobile. I mean, I'll do the mobile designs because we don't have mobile designs for Dewey. Oh, yeah. Oh, no, we don't have the embeds.
Adam (32:43.712)
But yeah.
Ste (33:10.218)
I'll do those. I put them on desktop because I think this is where the embeds are the trickiest because they're on a mobile format. And yeah, as you can see, I was trying to like integrate it in something that's not like excessively tall, which is not like this. So yeah.
Adam (33:27.415)
But yeah, that's definitely a tricky part. It could take over the entire screen. And at least there will be like a maximize button on the videos so they can, people can maximize them on their monitors if they want. So, yeah, that's it. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, please like, share, and subscribe. And if you have any questions, please leave a comment below. And if you have any questions, please leave a comment below. And if you have any questions, please leave a comment below. And if you have any questions, please leave a comment below. And if you have any questions, please leave a comment below. And if you have any questions, please leave a comment below. And if you have any questions, please leave a comment below. And if you have any questions,
Ste (33:32.584)
Hmm
Ste (33:39.806)
Yeah, of course. TikTok for desktop also has something similar. They show a blurred version of something, I think the environment of the video in the background. So yeah, we could do that.
Ste (34:01.238)
And this is how it would, yeah, this is how it would match with reviews that are all written. And these reviews also feature the review title, which would be like a summary. So for review, you could actually like do only the title if you want like a short review.
or you could have the long one. I'm thinking this could be, I mean, I've followed by since we, yeah, it was first introduced in the designs, but I've kind of grown, let's say, interested in the possibilities. Yeah, it can have.
the title.
Adam (35:00.967)
Yeah. And I like that they're optional. Like people could add a title if they want or just skip it.
Ste (35:08.042)
Yeah, I mean, for reviews, it could be like, I'm hoping maybe we don't even like call it title. Maybe call it something like this. What would it be? It would be not a snapshot, but like not a soundbite. Well, yeah, just the field. It can be the title. You can just leave it as the title. But I don't want to encourage, I mean.
I think it would be great for people to review books using this title, like a really quick review, a snapshot of the book, like they do on Letterboxd, and summarize the whole essence of the book in a smart way using the title. And then they can write, okay, I like this, I didn't like this, I like the mood, I like the pace, the tropes, the characters, and yeah, expand on that.
Adam (35:52.775)
And yeah.
Adam (36:05.107)
It makes it a lot easier to scan reviews for the review you want to read the rest of as well, which, which is a big part of it.
Ste (36:13.686)
Yeah, great point. Yeah, haven't even thought about that. But yeah, that's that's also good.
Adam (36:20.995)
And I like this, like at the bottom, right? The like these little badges, which I think those are, the idea there is that this reader, or this reviewer, the person who reviewed this has read 234 fantasy books and 856, I think that would be like a sci-fi, but like horror, okay, yeah, that makes sense.
Ste (36:44.154)
or no, it's for, yeah, it's an X. Yeah.
Adam (36:50.515)
Yeah, that makes sense. And yeah, it would show up if you hovered over what genre it is, but.
Ste (36:58.214)
Yeah, this would be...
Adam (36:58.475)
That way you can know like, okay, this reader's prolific in the areas that this book is about. And those would show up based on the genres of the current book that you're reviewing. So it wouldn't show like your number of romance books if you're on a horror book. So, yeah, I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point.
Ste (37:17.978)
Yeah, that'd be very smart. And I think this batch system is simple enough to work. It also gives you other areas. So yeah, it would be really good to have that proof of investment in a genre.
Ste (37:50.39)
I'm wondering like what, yeah.
Adam (37:51.271)
If you... Oh, go ahead.
Ste (37:56.946)
I was going to say that I'm wondering what other types of reviews were, like media-associated, non-media-associated things we can put here. I'm also thinking this layout could work for pictures as well. So maybe if you want to post a picture of the cover or, I don't know, post a picture of yourself with a book, you could do that and also add...
like some text, but it would be like the same format as the video. So it would just show this background and here you'd either have a picture or like something else.
Adam (38:41.691)
Yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure on that one. Like it, it feels like duplicating Instagram in a way. But I do wonder what we can do to like, to do more. Like, what can we do beyond just like a review to like, yeah, showcase something.
Ste (38:52.93)
True. Yeah.
Ste (39:05.598)
Well, I'm guessing these would be like the starting point for another thing that we could be exploring and we've chatted about it. So each review is technically something you post. So it's a type of posts you can associate the media, some media with it or...
uh, some media and text, but essentially, you know, if you, if, uh, other readers would be able to comment on it, it would be another kind of posts. So I'm guessing the next step would be actually allowing comments on.
Adam (39:50.947)
Yeah. Yeah. Good point that I think that that makes a, that makes a lot of sense. Like being able to comment on both reviews and activities on the activity feed seemed like a next step. Yeah.
Ste (40:02.292)
Yeah.
That would essentially be, you know, last time we talked about discussions, let me, I think I was actually like looking at that. Oh no, it's not here. Where is it? This is our old file. So people don't judge. It's not a mess, but it's reorganized for its own sake, let's say. So you can see, you know, in the steps of creating a startup, you often...
reach points where, yeah, you just can't find where you put something in the design file like I'm doing now. Where the hell was that? Oh, my God. Well, just bear with me. See, this is why I put everything on one big page. Was it with Booktrak? No. Yeah. It's been
Adam (40:58.503)
Yeah, it's been a lot.
Adam (41:03.871)
Which, are you talking about the new book review form?
Ste (41:08.618)
No, the actual like discussions which are ah, here we go. Ha ha, remember this? Yeah, exactly. So this is what we were thinking of with discussion. So you'd be able to tag books and authors and maybe even other users. And it would essentially
Adam (41:12.486)
Oh, yeah.
Adam (41:17.219)
Experiments.
Ste (41:37.806)
function a lot like Twitter. So the initial post would be like, let's say the starting point and all of the other posts, including the replies would be tied to that. And just like you'd see on Twitter, every reply that has replies of its own would be like a starting point for like another thread in the discussion.
So I'm guessing comments could follow that structure. We can also disable at first replies to comments. So you'd only be able to comment on the initial post or initial review.
Adam (42:30.323)
Yeah. Yeah, it's like how we, like at least for, for how we have it now, like these reviews and the activities, they're like existing entities in our database and making a system where we could comment on either of them would be pretty easy where we're basically, we just have like this idea of like, um,
Ste (42:30.722)
What do you think Adam?
Adam (42:58.007)
something is commentable, like this entity review and this entity and activity, we can use the same discussion system for how we reply to it. And so the functionality of what it means to reply to both of those would be the same. And this is one way of doing it where we have different types of things. We don't just have one type of post and every post has sub posts, but we have
different things across the site. Like maybe we have a list and people can comment on the list. We have, uh, you know, uh, a prompt and people can comment on a prompt. And I think, uh, from a technical perspective, that would be even easier than trying to create like a, a unified, um, like post kind of entity. That is the same across everywhere. Um, because then we would have to make sure.
an activity as a post, a review as a post, a prompt as a post. And instead we kind of turn it on its head and say, like, it doesn't matter what it is, but we can comment on it.
Ste (44:09.134)
Mm-hmm. Okay. That means yeah
Adam (44:10.623)
But, but it also, but yeah, it all, oh, sorry. Go ahead.
Ste (44:16.286)
No, I was going to ask if we'd actually like have the ability to unify that further along. So I'm guessing like the natural activity for like people, I mean, in general, readers, like don't, they're more interested in what they would naturally do. And I think a natural like thing on networks is to post and.
that post I think would eventually need to be like a thing that you can create on the go. So you're just thinking about something and let's say you wanna ask questions about a certain book, let's say get recommendations. You could like write a post where you tag that book and you would get replies with other tag books to that. Or let's say you'd wanna make a poll.
which is basically a prompt and ask, what are the best sci-fi books you've read in March? And the replies would basically be what today is a prompt. So I'm guessing there's like a really easy way to do that in design so that it matches like natural, like...
tendencies of readers on the network. I just don't want to bury them. So commenting on them would be like a first thing. But I'm guessing having those discussions freed up and at the same time searchable would be the ideal thing to happen. So you wouldn't go.
Adam (45:57.332)
Yeah.
Ste (46:08.366)
to a prompt for prompt comments or to a review for review comments, they would just be part of the same thing that kind of works. So yeah, I'm thinking we could like design a smart way to do that, especially like if you said this is gonna be the same functionality, I'm guessing that can happen at some point, just like thinking about those discussions as something you, you know.
can do. I mean, people right now review books, but they also do like a bunch of other things.
Adam (46:43.123)
Yeah.
Adam (46:48.251)
Yeah. And, and there's the option that like, if we do, if we do go that route where you can comment on a review, you can comment on an activity or a list or a prompt. And then maybe that's like the first step, like being able to just comment on those and figure out how to showcase those. And then at a, at a future date, like if you create a comment, maybe we create a new whole entity called like a post and a post is like an equivalent of a
of a tweet or a TikTok, Instagram. It's like the social media thing that says, like, I just wanna post to my feed and post to my followers about something without it relating back to anything unless they decide to relate it back to it. And it feels like that would be an easy transition to being able to do that at a later date.
Ste (47:43.242)
Yeah, that sounds good. I mean, it's definitely like a thing that would come naturally to comment and then to like create that post. Yeah.
Adam (47:58.055)
Yeah. I, one of the most common things I remember people hearing, um, people saying were like, uh, on my feed, I want to be able to ask someone how, what they thought of a book or like, uh, why they, why they added a book or just like have it have discussions at that moment, like after someone's completed a book or, and you're like also excited about it, you're like, Oh man, I want, I want to talk to you about this. What did you think?
Ste (48:20.945)
Mm-hmm.
Adam (48:26.863)
And sometimes people are more likely to respond to, what did you think about that book than to write a review? Because then you're actually like, you're talking to another human being about it rather than writing into the void of a review.
Ste (48:40.162)
Yeah, good point. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. I mean, that's how it should feel like
Ste (48:48.61)
The reason, I guess, people would, readers would want like discussions, yeah, it's exactly that. Being able to relate on that level. And I don't think like those conversations happen on Reddit, they happen on Book Talk, they happen on Instagram, on Facebook groups. But they don't have like the...
the whole like back end to them, let's say, or the whole network, like you can't like tag books, you can't tag, well, you can't tag authors or nah, you actually can't, yeah. So it would be like really, really good to have that. I mean, naturally it happens, you'd wanna do that. Just ask for...
any kind of book advice from what books to read, what other readers thought about something. And yeah, I can't think of a way to actually do that on any kind of other network. And it's also important for forming your reading taste. I think, and I've seen this, I actually saw a tweet today from someone who said...
Adam (49:48.503)
Thanks for watching!
Ste (50:12.386)
Are you feeling you're reading, you used to read books cover to cover when you were younger, but right now you can't focus on finishing a book anymore. And the poll was like a lot of people saying yes to that. And yeah, so I was wondering what's going on.
Adam (50:36.104)
Oh really?
Ste (50:41.158)
I mean, apart from, you know, maybe I was thinking you already formed some kind of booktaste, and now wouldn't be like your threshold or your book curiosity might have gone down after you read like a bunch of stuff. Or just the distractions of like growing into adulthood and not like moving away from that age where you were like devouring books.
Adam (51:08.811)
Thanks for watching!
Ste (51:09.31)
Yeah, it was interesting. I mean, we've seen this with people who are trying to like form their reading taste. I mean, this is what BookTwitter is all about. And Booktalk in a way, you're looking at people and trying to, yeah.
Adam (51:11.657)
Yeah.
Adam (51:28.631)
Thank you.
Ste (51:30.804)
See.
Ste (51:34.274)
what they're reading, what they're saying. And I'm guessing, yeah.
Adam (51:39.143)
I just, I just had an idea as you were saying that, uh, so one of the things that were, um, that we recently added was the ability to update your progress in a book so you can say like, I am now 30% done with the book, that kind of thing. Uh, it got me curious about like, if we had another tab in the book page for, or maybe this is, this is what discussion starts off as. And it's a, when you're, when you're giving that progress update,
Ste (51:42.924)
Yeah.
Adam (52:08.691)
you can also give some information about like what you think about the book. You know, you, you're saying like, yeah, I, I can't believe so and so have died. I, or I don't know what's going to happen with someone, but that, and we know like they were 30% of the way done with the book when they, when they wrote that. So one, one concept of discussions would be like, if it had like a
like a timeline and you're at like 30%. So you're able to see all the discussions that happened at 30% or before in the book. And discussions that people posted after that, you're just not gonna see unless you, you know, override a spoiler thing. And that way you get to like safely have a little discussion and see all the comments, all the progress by people who are to where you are or earlier.
Ste (53:05.79)
Yeah, I really like that. That's basically what we talked about with Async book clubs, but without like actually inventing Async book clubs, actually like finding like a natural way of people doing that, which is great.
Adam (53:20.115)
Yeah. And, and we could, we could even do that without the ability to reply to those at first. And it's just like, you're just seeing a lot of activity about the book. And then eventually we could add this discussions to that as well.
Ste (53:36.662)
Yeah, that sounds great. I mean, discussions, did we talk about this? At first we can have them available for supporters so that we can trial it. So that's like a really good way to see how it works. So if we're able to easily implement like something that allows you to comment.
on a certain initial item, so the originating item, whether that's like a prompt or a review or a progress update, that would be basically like a post on progress update. If we'd allow comments, I'm guessing we should. I mean, I'm thinking this is a good, like...
Adam (54:29.739)
Yeah.
Ste (54:35.19)
trial if we can do that technically like easily to see if and how people are engaging in discussions like do they actually reply to that progress update do they actually want to find out more yeah and even if we don't do that at first although if we can I say yeah why not go for it we can test that to see if it's like something
Adam (54:56.535)
Thanks for watching!
Ste (55:05.834)
readers are interested in. I mean, if it's easy, yeah, why not test it live?
Adam (55:08.475)
Yeah. It, uh...
Adam (55:13.775)
Yeah, I think, uh, yeah, designing that comment platform to where it'll support a lot of them will be, will be relatively easy. I think the hard part will just be like getting the UI just right. Uh, and, and, uh, so yeah, I get getting it to a point where it's like, it's clear that you're having a discussion about this specific thing or like where you are in the app. Cause
Ste (55:26.614)
Yeah.
Adam (55:40.759)
One of the tricky parts with Twitter for new users is like, you don't have like context for what you're discussing. You're like, you're posting a new tweet, you're issuing a new, it's kind of like creating a new thread on Reddit. It's creating a new video on TikTok. You're starting the conversation and you're inviting everyone else to join you. And the way I think about it on hardcover might be like, we already have all these conversations and you're.
able to join those really easily. You're able to join the review, join the activity, join the progress update. And then, yeah, the next step is creating new posts from that. Yeah, I think.
I think it's just a matter of time before we get there.
Ste (56:26.706)
Yeah, it doesn't, I mean, it sounds pretty straightforward. And yeah, on the design side, I mean, that's where, what's good about is that we only need to figure out one comment and one like discussion that works everywhere. So of course that's like the hard part, but yeah, I'm actually, after we get this done, there's like a lot to get.
done here. Let's show people the book page. There's lots of tabs. Yeah, it's going to be great. Yeah, it's going to be worth. I also put the content warnings here and the moods, which would take you to the tags tab where you would see all of them. And yeah, only show supporters here, which is like the filters for reviews.
Adam (57:00.459)
I'm so excited about this book page.
Adam (57:05.503)
Yeah, like the.
Adam (57:09.298)
Oh, yeah.
Ste (57:23.606)
But yeah, this is going to be great. And after that, yeah.
Adam (57:25.899)
That, that like that top, top left one, like the main book page, if you could zoom in on that, like that's like, yeah, that one, like that, that page, I, I'm just like loving how this is looking so far, like using the colors from the covers and yeah. I.
Ste (57:44.478)
Yeah, it's going to be a stunner. Yeah, it's going to be really nice. Yeah. Have this live.
Adam (57:52.755)
I think I should be ready to start working on this page probably next week.
Ste (57:56.934)
Okay, well, that's good. That's good. I think by next week I'll have all the tabs designed and the desktop version ready as well. So that should be like quite in sync with everything.
Adam (58:11.591)
And there'll be a, quite a bit of like pre-work on my end for things like, uh, getting the chart by rating like that'll need some, some backend work first. Yeah. Cause right now, like we probably like the way you do that from a backend perspective, like there's two ways, either you calculate it every time someone loads the page or you generate it and cash it as like, you know, um, five, you know, um, five star.
Ste (58:21.054)
Oh, this one. Yeah.
Ste (58:36.058)
Mm-hmm. Okay.
Adam (58:41.911)
X number, four and a half star X number, and you cache that on the book. So we'll probably do that. That way this page loads like super fast.
Ste (58:49.886)
Nice. Yeah, that sounds great. That sounds great. Okay. Well, yeah, as usual, we covered a lot of stuff. Let me stop sharing this. Yeah, it's been really productive. Lots of exciting stuff happening. So that's good.
Adam (58:57.655)
Hehehe
Adam (59:05.951)
Yeah. And I think the edit stuff that I'll be showing next week will be around, um, being able to, uh, upload a new cover for books, finally, um, be able to set what additions are on a book, like set what the default edition we use for the cover set, what the default audio book edition is. Cause a lot of the times there's like an abridged audio and a full audio, but we want to always know what the.
Ste (59:18.594)
Yes.
Ste (59:33.687)
Yeah.
Adam (59:35.379)
the full audiobook is, that way when we show the duration of the book, we show the full duration, not the bridged duration, and then be able to remove an edition from a book to create another book. There have been times when there's like a, like you're reading, I think I was reading Monstrous, the comic book, and there are like 50 issues of the
And sometimes multiple additions would be under the same book on hardcover. So we need to like extract that addition and create a new book for like, this is like, you know, issue number one is different than issue number two.
Ste (01:00:19.33)
Okay, so yeah, it's the other way around. Not what we're trying to do with merging books, which has been like our main problem. This is another problem, but yeah, exactly. Well, we're solving that one and this one, so. Great, well, yeah, that's really good to hear.
Adam (01:00:26.899)
Yeah, it's the opposite.
Adam (01:00:35.423)
Yep. See ya.
Adam (01:00:40.919)
Cool, wow. Yeah, there's a.
Ste (01:00:42.698)
Yeah, I think we can wrap it up. Thanks for like sitting through everything.
Adam (01:00:47.655)
Yeah, thanks. And yeah, have a good rest of your Monday. See ya.
Ste (01:00:53.022)
Yeah, you too. Till next time. Bye-bye.