Hello, kittens!
If you're curious to learn more about what this thing is all about, I'd encourage you to check out a story I wrote about how we came up with the idea and what the product does: https://medium.com/@nbashaw/a-ne...
If you want the TL;DRā
ā¢ Books are awesome, but take a lot of time and energy
ā¢ Social apps are less awesome, and make you feel kind of empty inside if you use them too much
ā¢ Scrolling through a bunch of text gets boring pretty quickly unless the writer is amazing
So, we created Hardbound!
ā¢ We create 5-minute, illustrated stories based on bestselling nonfiction books (specifically focused on business, history, and science for now)
ā¢ We use a unique, "tap story" format that combines photos, illustrations, animations, and text in a way your brain will love
ā¢Ā Our team of writers and designers in New York crafts every story with a lot of TLC, and our goal is to be the opposite of the traditional dry, boring "book summary" genre
If that sounds interesting, give our app a try! https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/...
And definitely let me know if you have any feedback!
@nbashaw Congrats on the relaunch!
I tend to dislike reading book summaries (e.g. Blinkist) over the actual book as I believe you'll need to spend some time on a topic to really grasp it, but these stories seem like nice introductions. A quick way to get familiar with a topic and see if it's something you want to dive into deeper by buying the book. (which lets you make an affiliate commission) Smart approach! :)
@bentossell thanks! yep we do it ourselves - got a post on how that works coming soon :)
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@nbashaw Congratulations on the launch! Love this idea. Any plans to import an amazon list? It would be awesome to get a gist before I decide what to buy. At the moment book recommendations from twitter end up in that list.
@arjunram that's a great idea! when we have more titles we should totally do that
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This looks really neat! Rushes to download the app... and missing from app store. Thanks for the disappointment :P
Seriously, I understand why entrepreneurs only want to target one platform for their initial release but Android market share is 90%! Why would you want to waste 90% of your publicity like that? It leaves a bad taste in your potential customer's mouths, knowing that we'll have to wait months or years even to try it out after the initial hype. I happen to have iOS devices at home so I'll check it out tonight, it just seems like bad business to me. Or on 2nd thought, maybe I'll check out Blinkist now.
@apples_over_oranges really sorry this happens so often and is so frustrating for you! If you're curious why so many founders choose to launch iOS-only, I'd love to offer our side of the story:
When you're building something new, you have no idea how people are going to respond. You are probably going to need to change some big things about your vision in response to feedback. So your goal is to make it as easy as possible to make those changes and see if they resonate with users. Also, because you're new, you don't have a lot of resources and you have to choose how you spend your time and money EXTREMELY wisely.
So, you have a choice: build for one platform first, get it working well, then build for the other. Or try to do both at once, and double your cost of making product changes.
Which would you do if it were your company?
@apples_over_oranges Also, to address the 90% market share, it's not 90% of our target market. Probably closer to 50%.
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@nbashaw That's a good point about your target market. If it's split, then I'd probably opt for the skill set that I already have (or cost of development if outsourcing). In other cases, I'd guess the skill set drives the decision but you're the first response I've actually gotten to the question. Really appreciate the reply :)
With all appropriate qualifiers, when can we expect to see an Android release?
@apples_over_oranges@nbashaw I'm an Android phone user, but I also have an iPad where I can use apps like Hardbound, which come out as iOS only. Of the 50% of Android users, there may be a fair amount of people like me too. Good rationale, Nathan!
Awesome work, and a really considered pivot which is great to see.
Can definitely see this as the replacement of that old Amazon preview mode page peak thing... Part of the challenge with services like Audible or Kindle or... real books is that it's tough to get the value across before committing to a purchase. If i could read a couple of Hardbounds(?) for books i knew i could access on Audible, that would probably be enough to temp me into subscribing.
Always loved the animation format too, much more engaging than the static Medium approach (though understandably higher maintenance) - but really looking forward to future versions with even more considered motion design, like so many of these high quality youtube channels. Almost like a lyric video (which admittedly i cant stand!) as part of the release of a new song, can see Hardbound becoming a really considered and high value part of a book launch strategy.
Keep up the good work Nathan & Team!
@jamie_shoard thanks so much! definitely, part of our goal is to become a part of the standard book launch strategy :)
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I'm curious about the legal perspective of these works. These would be considered derivative works I think, whose copyright is still dependent on the copyright of the books they cover, is that correct? In that case, do you need to seek permission of the book authors to create the abbreviated versions? And, if so, I assume they expect a royalty will be paid for it?
@apples_over_oranges Nope! These are original stories. Think of it like a book review. But definitely our goal is to help authors sell more copies of their books and reach a larger audience than they would otherwise. So far they seem to really like it.
Just tried it - awesome - really love it. Great idea to pivot to books
Quick note:
I watch a ton of "edutainment" on youtube
Videos about history mainly.
The new version of hardbound reminds me a lot of those videos. Personally i like the narrater and the background music. They often also use animation to explain.
Imo this format of (up to 10minutes) focused storytelling around one piece of content (eg book or historic context) is super useful. There might even be market space for a curated learning experience around this kind of crowd sourced content. The scope of hardbound might not be stories but byte sized contextualized learning.
I love how you guys also provide context to the book - eg in the End of Power you explain Mark Zuckerberg + Clinton's interest in this book and why. Provides a lot of useful context and faster understanding of the main arguments of a book.
Feedback: The hardest thing will be to get people like me into the habit - example: i just open youtube whenever i get bored. I wonder how much free content it takes to get me there.
All the best for your launch of 3.0!
@andreasklinger Thanks so much! Totally agree that "edutainment youtube" is one of the main competitors. We think there's something special about our format and the consistency of our content, but totally understand about the challenge of building that habit. To me it comes down to always pushing the quality bar, and smartly re-engaging you in non-annoying ways.
Definitely let me know how the first week goes!
@nbashaw maybe it's not your competitor but just the behaviour you productize
in best/future case you maybe even source
btw i stopped reading one story now b/c i cant listen to it next to working
@nbashaw love the idea and agree with @andreasklinger. I've been building edutainment videos even for long form web articles because people don't always have time to read those even though they're useful. I can see this working really well on snapchat. Great use of micro content š
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Looking at the competition mentioned here (Blinkist), what inspired you all to choose 5-min illustrated stories? Did you all experiment with different formats and lengths and what did the results look like?
@apples_over_oranges We started with the format, and didn't have a clear focus of what kind of content we were doing at first. So then we looked at a lot of different options for what kind of content to do and liked this one the best. You can read the full story here: https://medium.com/@nbashaw/a-ne...
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Anyone else getting an error message when asked to plug in your phone number so as not to lose your place in a book?
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