Hardcover Report for August 2024

Hi book friends!

Summer is half over (for us in the northern hemisphere), and I hope you’ve been able to enjoy your preferred way of enjoying the season with a good book. I’ve noticed that the Trending Books on Hardcover over summer tend to change to familiar and popular favorites—as opposed to exploratory reads. Maybe more people like to go into their summer reads knowing what they’re in for.

This last month has been one of the busiest for us. We’ll break down what we’ve been up to next, but it was one of those months where everything seems to come together – new features, fun conversations, and even a few things built just for fun.

Whatever you do to enjoy your summer, I hope you’re finding some time to have a little peace and enjoy a book in your favorite spot.

I’ve been spending most of the days inside lately as the temperature has climbed as high as 105 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius). Occasionally, I’ll head up the mountains for a jog and run through a lovely park here in SLC (Memory Grove). Even when the temperatures are high, I’ll pass by couples sitting in the shade reading and enjoying some time outside.

On the personal side, I spend more time indoors this month than usual due to the excessive heat. On release day, we saw Deadpool & Wolverine and had a blast seeing Jewel and Melissa Etheridge in concert surrounded by mountains. This month, we’re seeing Pink Martini at the same venue, one of our favorites. The Olympics have been on non-stop while working this past week, too – Snoop is my favorite announcer. 😂

We’re not traveling in August, so it should be more of the same – enjoying summer and having fun. ☀️🥳

What’s New On Hardcover?

July was a productive month. Sometimes, when we don’t release anything in a month, I feel like I’m doing something wrong. The real reason is that projects take time—often multiple months. Many of the releases in July are the result of months of prototyping on Hardcover Live and iterating until we’re happy with the result.

📘 Ability to Set Edition For Books in Your Library

This was the most requested feature on Hardcover, and we’re excited to release it! You probably know by now that we have a concept of “Books” with multiple “Editions” in different formats and languages.

Regardless of which edition you read, we’d always show the same cover and title in your library (Want to Read/Read/etc.).

Now, you can change which edition of the book appears there. Click the book button to do this, and you will instantly see the new title and cover.

📈 New Book Progress Tracking

When we initially built progress tracking, it was associated with the book in your library. We didn’t know which edition you were reading, so we couldn’t track what percentage of the book you finished (unless you added it for us).

We’ve switched to tracking progress on the individual read-through, which is now associated with an edition.

That means that every time you read a book, to track progress, you need to know its edition, reading format (physical, audio, ebook), and length (pages or in seconds).

This has a downside: your edition might not be in our database. We’ve tried to make it super easy to add a new edition and specify the format and length from the Currently Reading Page.

🖊️ Reading Journals

I’ve been wanting this for soooo long. You now have a Reading Journal for every book on Hardcover that tracks your interactions with that book. The Reading Journal also allows you to create notes and save quotes with an optional page number and tags.

Similar to changing the edition for a book in your library and for progress tracking, you can set the edition for quotes and notes.

Here’s what will automatically be saved to your journal:

Whenever you change the status of a book (Want to Read, Currently Reading, Read, etc).
Updating Progress
Adding a book to a list
Adding a book to a prompt
Who referred you to save a book
When you refer another person to read a book

This is just the first iteration. I’m sure it will look even better once Ste jumps in (fresh from his move from London to Paris!). 😂 And once more people start saving quotes and notes, there’s much more we want to do!

🔴 Hardcover Live

Earlier this year, we launched the new Hardcover Live, our weekly live show where we build Hardcover in public.

In July, we recorded and released four more episodes, which can be watched on YouTube or downloaded through your podcast player of choice.

Tune in each Wednesday at noon PST to watch us build Hardcover Live! We don’t yet have any guests scheduled for August.

If you’re an author or influencer interested in being on, please email me so we can talk. 😉

👥 Labs: Reader Similarity

During the Hardcover Live with Hailey, one feature she mentioned wanting was the ability to see differences between you and another reader. Something that makes it clear which books you both love and which ones you disagree on.

I shipped an MVP of this the next day, and Ste’s already started brainstorming ways to improve this page. 😂

Want to see which books you have in common with some people on Hardcover? Give it a try! Here are a few usernames to compare yourself with:

@adam, @ste, and @BookAnonJeff (the Hardcover team) @haileyhughes (BookTuber), @rosshardy and @ljmartin (Hardy’s Books), @veronica and @acedtect (The Sword and Laser Podcast).

As mentioned, this is a labs project. It’s not polished and will only be accessible from the Labs menu on the desktop until we get to a point where we feel it’s solid.

🏷️ Updated Genre, Mood, and Tag Pages

This is a minor update, but we updated these pages to use the new Letterbooks way of showing a list of books. This allows you to change sorting and view options for any of these. Want to sort a genre by your rating? Or maybe sort by Match Percentage to see our best recommendation for you in a specific genre?

🔜 What’s Next on Hardcover?

Whew, that’s a lot! August will have far fewer updates 😂 Here’s what’s in progress.

🎲 Book Crossword Puzzles

This one is just so fun. 😂 Luca on the team has been working hard, creating an entire system to generate these. We’re still polishing these up, but they’re getting close.

We’ll be creating these manually. The process is surprisingly simple: craft short crossword-style questions, collect the answers, and feed them into a website that generates a grid. Transfer that grid into a Google Sheet. We can export it from there and import it into Hardcover!

Okay, that sounds like a lot of steps. The hardest part is being familiar with the book enough to create the questions and answers. We’re looking for a few people to create crossword puzzles for some of the most popular books on Hardcover. You’ll get credit as the creator of the Puzzle and see a leaderboard showing who’s completed it (and how fast).

If this sounds fun, reply to this email and let me know! All you need to do is write around 25 short questions with answers. We’re only looking for one Crossword Puzzle per book, so this is a chance to create the official Hardcover Puzzle for your favorite book. Here’s a work in progress of what these will look like with some questions I wrote. (from weeks ago).

🐞 Bugs, Server Updates, and Server Costs

After moving very fast the last few months, we’ve neglected a lot of bugs in favor of new features. You’ve likely seen the dreaded Server Error, or needed to restart the mobile app to use it. This month our main focus is on paying down that technical debt, making the site faster, and lowering the cost to host it.

It’s not as glamorous as new features but this is essential for longevity.

🆓 Open Source Hardcover

One of our goals this year is to open-source the codebase for Hardcover. I confess: I underestimated how much work would be involved in this. 😅

We need to do several things to reach this point—some in code, others in legal work. We’re still working towards these and want to get there this year.

The Rest of 2024?

The Hardcover team had a great strategy meeting last month, during which we brainstormed what to work on. Our biggest focus for the rest of the year will be creating an amazing Supporter tier.

To put you at ease, we won’t do this by just moving features from the free tier. Instead, we’ll add new features for power readers: advanced stats, bulk edit mode, supporter-only ordering, and filters (e.g., sort by Match Percentage). Our hope, as always, is to create a business that lets us work on this full-time because we love it – while building for readers first and avoiding enshitification.

Behind the Scenes at Hardcover

This month, we climbed from 136 to 156 supporters, our second-largest monthly growth ever. We also hit 14,000 members! 🥳

With 200 supporters we estimate we’ll be able to cover server costs. That’s our goal for this year, which seems well within reach (even without going viral again 😂).

If you’re enjoying Hardcover, consider sending your referral link to a friend! If two friends join, you’ll get a free month as a Supporter.

Featured Prompt for August 2024

August’s Prompt comes from Ross Hardy from the Hardy’s Books YouTube Channel (Ross created July’s prompt!)

What books brought you out of a reading slump?

We’ve all been there—it’s easy to get distracted and go for a while without reading anything. But what books brought you out of that place?

What books come to mind for you? Let us know by upvoting a book or adding your own!

Last month’s prompt was In honour of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, what are the best dieselpunk and/or post-apocalyptic books? The Road, Station Eleven, and The Stand are the top.

Most Read Books for July 2024

Last month’s most-read books span genres and 14 years. With only one book released in 2024, readers have turned to some older favorites.

Funny Story is the only 2024 release on the list. Cursed Bunny jumped to the top of the list as this month’s Sword and Laser Podcast Bookclub choice. August’s S&L book club pick is The Spear Cuts Through Water, which you can expect to see on this list next month.

Most Saved Books to be Released in August 2024

A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher (59 saves)
Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid (55 saves)
The Pairing by Casey McQuiston (38 saves)
Wisteria by Adalyn Grace (29 saves)
Apprentice to the Villain Book 2 by Hannah Nicole Maehrer (28 saves)

Nettle & Bone and A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking author T. Kingfisher leads this month’s most anticipated books with a dark reimagining of the Brothers Grimm’s “The Goose Girl”.

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Join the over 1,000 others to chat about books, hear about product updates, and be part of the community.

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We appreciate you reading this and hope you have an amazing month. Talk to you soon. ♥️