Hardcover is a social network for people to track what they read and want to read, make lasting connections with other readers and find life-changing books. We're anti-Amazon, pro-author, actively pursuing feedback and just getting started. 📚
Hi PH crew, I'm Ste I've been working together with Adam on Hardcover for the past 2 years. 🫡
Very eager to get this in front of the eyes of all readers everywhere.
No matter where you are on your reading journey, check us out!
Hardcover is optimised both for huge libraries of 1,000s of books, and readers just starting their journey.
It's also great for book discovery via our OpenAI integration and feed where you can see what others are up to (spoiler: reading).
Our vision is to become not only a valid G**dreads replacement (which we might already be) but also a functional operating system for the book industry. When we began working on this project, we had little idea about the magnitude of the problems readers, writers, publishers, and everyone in the book space were facing.
When you think about it, books are still the main vehicle for new ideas and stories. And right now the fate of the whole ecosystem depends on a few large companies. That have been doing good work in the past, but not an amazing job lately. Hardcover is part of the shift to something new.
In the meantime, it's a great place to build your library. Maybe even follow other readers.
I've also personally found it to be a great escape from all the noise on other social networks.
Building a library and seeing others post their updates is always surprisingly calming.
If you sign up, let us know how it goes! ✌️
👋 Hi Book Friends!
I'm Adam, the founder of Hardcover, and I'm excited to share our newest version after over two years of building a community, a website, and iOS & Android apps!
During that time, we've talked to hundreds of readers about what they want in a book tracking and social platform. We've listened to their feedback, tested and iterated constantly.
We believe we've created a book space that feels as warm as a familiar library but as exciting as a midnight book launch party. 🥳
Here are a few of my favorite things you can do on Hardcover:
🔍 Find books - Search for books you know of, check out trending books, explore lists and prompts to find hidden gems, review your recommendations, stumble on friends reads in your feed, or browse all book by genre, mood or tag.
📘 Decide what to read - Besides all the book facts you'd expect to see, we show you a personalized Match Score from 0% to 100% for each book based on your reading history. You'll also see ratings & reviews from readers you follow and readers most similar to you.
📚 Track your reading - One place for every book you want to read, have read and more. You can set your privacy level to public, private (for a 🌶️ book?) or friends only. Use Airlists (our version of Airtable for Books) to further organize your library.
⭐ Log your reads - Rate and review books on a 5-star scale with half-star increments. Showcase your favorite books on your profile at hardcover.app/@username
🏁 Read even more - Set reading goals and explore your reading stats through charts and data visualizations to help keep you consistent and understand your own reading habits and tastes.
♾ AI librarian, Bookle game, referral program, Goodreads/StoryGraph importer, GraphQL API, light/dark modes, an active Discord and so much more!
This is a bootstrapped passion project by a small but dedicated team working in public with the book community. We absolutely love this space and will be around in the comments. We'd love to hear what you think! 🙌 Join our community and be part of Hardcover's journey!
First impressions are great!
I noticed some issues. Mainly that:
1. when I search for a book, the search results include a lot of duplicates, and it doesn't seem like the different additions of the same book, but rather separate books when they're not.
2. when I add a review, I get a toast message on the top right saying that my review was posted, but it still keeps me on the edit screen. When I manually go to the reviews of that book, my review is often nowhere to be seen (even though the review count has increased to include mine).
3. The reading goal doesn't seem to work. I made an account just now and said it go for 12 books this year. I added four books that I already read earlier this year and now, in my profile, it says “Goal 0/12 books / 0% / You're 9 books behind schedule." The math ain’t mathing here.
I like that if a book is missing a cover, you can upload one yourself.
Honestly, I would have liked more of a focus on, you know, books in user profiles. It's like all the books are cramped in a tiny section with tabs and I don't understand why. It seems quite well made though, so I remain hopeful that I'm gonna love it in the future. Until then, I think I'll keep tracking the books. I've read on my personal website.
My profile: https://hardcover.app/@an
Congrats on the launch! Will be giving it a try as I’ve been interested in finding an alternative to Goodreads for a while now.
Awesome concept! I just added Pachinko By Min Jin Lee as a book I'm currently reading. Really love your support for authors. F'ck Amazon and viva indi book stores.
I love Hardcover!!! I’ve been using it and prefer it over goodreads. The Hardcover team is so thoughtful and focused on building the right thing, and the community is great! So much love for hardcover!!
I really love this concept and I'm excited to see if they add integrations for Audible and Libby soon!
This is the first Goodreads alternative that actually feels sustainable as a replacement. I've been using it now for a few months, have tried a lot of the other book social and reading log apps out there, but Hardcover is the first where I've felt they're releasing features (and for a bootstrapped app they have incredible momentum releasing new features and improvements) that actually improve on what Goodreads offers, instead of just being "less bloated" than GR. Adam and Ste are dogfooding the app like crazy, and their obvious love of reading and books shows in every decision and aspect of the product. I have a lot of confidence in this app getting better and better as they continue to build it out.
Also a lot of revenue potential, when you consider that authors, publishers and bookstores all have a financial interest in getting their books in front of a targeted reading audience. (I trust the creators' ability to find the beneficial balance there and not just bomb the app with ads.)
Since I know they're reading, I will offer 1 piece of feedback: this concept of the "Airlist," I really don't get what it's for, or why that's its name. Is it, like, built on Airtable under the hood, and the name is playing off that? If so, non-tech readers won't get that and it's confusing. Can it have a more book-relevant name? Is there a function to it existing? I dunno.
I've been following the development of Hardcover for the past two years.
I'm impressed by the Hardcover teams' commitment to its mission-driven approach. The fact that the actively seeks feedback shows their dedication to making the platform the best it can be. It's clear they genuinely care about the reading community and want to create a space where readers can all flourish.
While it's just a small part of the site, one fun feature I've really enjoyed is Bookle, a Wordle-like game where you get 6 guesses to figure out a pixelated book cover. I'm also really excited about the Recommendations page and match scoring.
Kudos to the founders for bringing Hardcover to life, and I can't wait to see where this wonderful project goes!
I'm in love with the UI of this website, what a great discovery!
The interface is so easy to use, I can't wait to read more books to add them to my library 👀
Congrats on the launch, team! I’ve been using Hardcover for a while now as a way to recommend books to my friends and newsletter subscribers. It’s a great product and has been growing by absolute leaps and bounds!
