Hardbound 3.0

Illustrated summaries of bestselling nonfiction books

6 followers

Illustrated summaries of bestselling nonfiction books

6 followers

Books

Launch tags:iOS•History Books•Startup Books

Launch Team

P.S.: I realize my opinion is not like the 878 people above :/ I don't know what the previous focus for Hardbound was so not judging that.... but I'm sorry to say that this is a horrible concept - for our current and future generations ... You are helping in the further dumbing down of society... as if we didn't already have enough of that in the U.S. - especially with most of what is on Television... There is an actual reason why books are written and the benefit of actually reading a book... and there is much more to be gleaned from reading an actual story or book than can be understood from this bastardization of a novel into tiny snippets... with animations, images etc... This is basically on-your-phone super-abbreviated version of the yellow/black Cliff Notes - they were already a bad idea but at least they summarized things semi-well... [reading the book was 1000x better of course]. What's even more sad is that we are in a time where 878 people thought this was cool/super cool while other project which have and add much more value hobble along with a couple hundred votes... Depressing...

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9yr ago

Lex

Maker

@exlemor Hey! I appreciate your feedback and definitely share your concern about the dumbing down of society. I know this will sound snarky, but I mean it genuinely: have you had a chance to read any of our stories? Here's an example: https://www.hardbound.co/read/th... We don't think our users will view Hardbound stories as substitutes for full books. If anything, they'll read more books, because we'll give them a taste of what they are about and can decide if they want to read them or not. And I think most authors would agree with us! Here, for example, is the author of The Righteous Mind, recommending our story based on his book: https://twitter.com/JonHaidt/sta... I don't think he'd do that if he thought that we were cannibalizing his book sales, or dumbing down society. There's one other thing I'd like to challenge you on. Why do you think that text-only content is superior to content that has text and visuals? The whole reason why books contain very few images is that when books were invented, it was super expensive to print images. Movable type made it easy to print words but you had to create a whole new metal plate and get an artist to create an etching in order to print images. So it rarely ever happened. But now, with screens, it's just as easy to render images, illustrations, videos, and animations as it is to render text. The human brain is much better at making meaning out of images and animations than it is at decoding text. So why not do it?! If you're curious to read more on this, I recommend you check out chapter 6 of Scott McCloud's amazing book "Understanding Comics." http://amzn.to/2ogZXEJ I would love to hear your thoughts on this!

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9yr ago

@exlemor As one of those 878 people (at the time), I can't foresee myself dedicating hours upon hours to read every word of every semi-intriguing non-fiction book released (this actually isn't feasible). I do look forward to reading (and enjoying) Hardbound summaries of them and, then, diving deeper into works that align with my focuses and interests. Sounds pretty great to me. Also, comparing any products, and the votes they get on here, to define your disappointment in humanity is riddled with fallacies.

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9yr ago

Aura

Absolutely love your product, thanks for your work! Any ideas on 1. how to increase # content, and 2. how to make the experience more social?

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9yr ago

Getro.org: a COVID-19 Jobs Resource

I love that Hardbound is going in this direction. Im continuously trying to hack a way to avoid reading most books and I try to read only those I know I'll really enjoy from beginning to end. Hardbound might become my new way to discover the books I want to dedicate time to! Thank you team!

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9yr ago

Lex

Maker

@raulsann thanks so much Raul! it's been awesome going through Techstars with you

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9yr ago

Hardbounds new focus is sweet! Working with Nathan and Joe the last few months at Techstars has been fun and gratifying.

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9yr ago

Lex

Maker

@maxrehkopf thank you! it's been awesome to work with you

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9yr ago

Hardbound is one of my day2day apps now. Loved it and waiting for the next awesome stories. Keep it up!!

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9yr ago

Lex

Maker

@rohillion nice, thank you so much!

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9yr ago

INK'A

Interesting, I think I would use this more than the previous version to "preview" content that I'm interested in checking out. Looks good!

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9yr ago

Lex

Maker

@frank_denbow thank you! that's definitely the idea :)

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9yr ago

Everyday German

I've never been a fan of reading, so when I started using Hardbound 2.0, I fell in love with the style of content delivery you created. Unfortunately, I wasn't very interested in a lot of the content you were creating. I tried blinkist as they had really good content, but even though they were much shorter, I still couldn't get into actually reading their books (never enjoyed the audiobook feature either). It looks like Hardbound 3.0 is the perfect marriage between the two! 👰❤️🤵

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9yr ago

Lex

Maker

@marsh931 that's awesome to hear! definitely let us know how it works for you over the next couple weeks :)

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9yr ago

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