Hardcover Report for October 2024

Every October, we have a tradition. We find all the spooky, thriller, horror books and movies we’ve missed the past year and push them to the top of our lists. That includes a few favorites we rewatch (my wife is starting her Hocus Pocus rewatch this week. 😂).

This got me thinking more about tradition. Whether it’s a national public holiday or an event you entirely made up (ex, Festivus), something magical happens when a group of people decide to embrace a shared vision.

I’ve been thinking about trying to start more traditions in my own life, such as “Watch an award-winning old movie day,” “Go for a long hike and listen to audiobooks day,” or even “Make a new recipe I’ve only ordered out day.”

When I think about collective agreements, there’s a book that always comes to mind: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Through a lens of history and science, it describes how shared visions and agreed-upon understandings of the world have shaped the society we have today. Everything from money and religion to culture and values are all examples of collective agreements.

In many ways, Hardcover is a shared vision. We’re building a social network for readers with a big assumption: we find amazing and life-changing books through other readers’ opinions, activities, and recommendations. That’s at the heart of Hardcover. ♥️

This has been a hectic month for me. We did many fun things, including attending FanX and Salt Lake City’s Annual Comic Convention. I, of course, had to check out the Dragonsteel booth for Brandon Sanderson’s latest wares – including his newly illustrated children’s book, The Most Boring Book Ever. It’s a super short read and more in the juvenile fiction genre than the young adult genre Sanderson is known for.

My wife and I also started testing the idea of buying a house. Whether it makes financial sense, we can find a house we like, and if we end up moving, it is still up in the air – but it’s exciting! The prices of houses, however, are not exciting. 🤮

Many people know my financial situation thanks to years of writing a blog about investing, minimalism, and mindfulness. As it stands now, we still have enough funds to sustain our lifestyle for quite a while (15-25 years), but after that, we’d need to go back to real work – not an appealing prospect for a 57-67 year-old).

Instead, we’re thinking about housing alongside going back to work, the future of Hardcover, and what kind of life we want to live (spoilers: lots of reading, coding, time in nature, and time with friends). That more likely means going back to work in some form in about five years. In a perfect world, Hardcover will reach some level of cash flow, and I can live off that. Either way, if it comes to that, I’d opt for a job that offers flexibility (part-time or consulting) to continue working on Hardcover.

We’ll see what the next few years hold! I’m starting to realize I’d rather be 60 years old with a paid-off house than 60 in an apartment that could raise my rates. If money was no option, I’d probably want to live in an apartment forever 😂.

What’s New On Hardcover?

September has been a surprisingly quiet month. We planned to focus on bugs, maintenance, and performance, and that consumed the bulk of my time. These parts of an app aren’t as exciting, but when they’re not working right, people notice.

Bugs, Performance & Maintenance

Ask any software developer about rewriting a codebase or changing technical stacks for an existing project, and you’ll likely get a somewhat timid and scared response. It’s always more work and takes longer than expected.

Yet, that’s what I’ve decided to do for Hardcover’s Next.js front-end. 😅 Fortunately, we’re not planning to rewrite the entire front-end. It’ll continue to use React.js and have all the same functionality it currently does. But instead of being served from Next.js it’ll be served from Ruby on Rails and Inertia.js (at least that’s the plan! If you’re using this stack, I’d love to hear from you).

Why the switch? I shared some reasons in our team channel, but here’s the tl;dr (which is still long 😂).

SLOW development loading time in Next.js
Slow paradigm for how data is fetched (Next.js → Redis → Graphql → Rails → Postgres) vs (Rails → Redis → Postgres)
Magical and inconsistent caching on Next.js
For the new stats page, we’ll need to work with a lot of data, which will require tests, pre-processing, and caching.
I look forward to writing tests in Ruby versus dreading testing in Javascript.
No more GraphQL on initial page requests. It’ll all use Redis caching and ActiveRecord to fetch all initial data.
Using Vite for development is SOOO much faster with hot module reloading.
Several existing bugs that need architectural overhauls – which I’d rather do in Ruby than TypeScript.

There are a few downsides to this:

No more nested layouts. Layouts are at the page level.
No more React server components with partial rendering at the page level. Inertia.js v2 has some proposed updates that allow for setting variables in a proc, then lazy-loading those on the front-end within a suspense block.
Debugging hydration errors will be just as annoying.

Next.js has served us well over the last few years, and we’re thankful for what we’ve been able to build with it. In performance tests so far, the Rails version of the app is worlds faster, and I’m excited by the possibilities this will offer us.

Dashboard & New Stats

Ste’s been making progress on designing and prototyping the new dashboard alongside new stats. The more we thought about it and the more people we talked to, the more we realized that we should build this in a module way that allows for (most) stats to be shown on the new dashboard.

I love the idea that people can add widgets based on what they want to see about their reading, drag them around, and even change their size to create the perfect view of their reading.

This will most likely be the first big project we develop with the Rails backend, which works well because it will require a lot of data.

🎙️ Hardcover Live

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

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

Did you know we’re working on stats? 😂 We aim to update the stats page and create a system that allows those stats to be pinned to your Dashboard (which will come after).

Tune in each Wednesday at noon PST to watch us build Hardcover Live. We don’t yet have any guests scheduled for September. Are you an author or a book influencer interested in being on the show? Let me know!

👩‍💻 API Documentation

We’ve seen an increasing number of people using the Hardcover API to access their libraries and build awesome stuff. We want to simplify this process while protecting the main site from the API. We don’t want someone hitting the API to slow down the main site.

We’re not ready to release this documentation yet, but @RevelryPlay on Discord has started Operation: API Documentation, and it’s looking great so far!

You’ll even be able to add your API key and see the data returned!

We’re on the path to getting there, combining the Rails migration, API documentation, rate-limiting the API, and more. In the coming weeks, we’ll likely add GraphQL depth limits and make more changes to prevent LLMs from scraping our API.

🔜 What’s Next on Hardcover?

October’s Focus is on the Rails rewrite, general bugs, preparing the dashboard & Stats pages to begin development work, and preparing the API for version 1.0.

Behind the Scenes at Hardcover

This month, we climbed from 163 to 169 supporters and hit 16.8k members! 🥳

This month, we’ve had a few bugs that prevented signups on iOS and from the app, and these were fixed within a day or two.

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 October 2024

With spooky season here, we’re picking a spooky prompt this month! This month’s Prompt comes from @Williagea:

What is the scariest horror book you have ever read?

I love horror books but am not scared the easiest! What are some books that had you locking your doors and checking under the bed?

Whether you’re looking for a scary book or you’re excited to share your favorites, check out this month’s prompt. 🎃

Last month’s prompt was: What books did you learn most from? After 44 answers, the top book is All the Bright Places By Jennifer Niven, which also shows up on the What are your favorite books of all time Prompt.

Most Saved Books to be Released in October 2024

The Fury of the Gods by John Gwynne (fantasy, Bloodsworn Saga #3, (65 saves)
Don’t Let the Forest In by CG Drews (dark fantasy, 40 saves)
Heir By Sabaa Tahir (fantasy/romance, 36 saves)
Blood of the Old Kings By Sung-Il Kim (fantasy, translated from Korean, 24 saves)
Make the Season Bright By Ashley Herring Blake (romance, 20 saves)

The skew toward fantasy and romance on Hardcover continues! Each of these looks exciting. I’m interested to check out Blood of the Old Kings. This description reminds me of The Will of the Many (one of my favorites from last year):

In an Empire run on necromancy, dead sorcerers are the lifeblood. Their corpses are wrapped in chains and drained of magic to feed the unquenchable hunger for imperial conquest.
– Blood of the Old Kings description

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