Hardcover

Social discovery for serious book lovers

4.8•15 reviews•

438 followers

Social discovery for serious book lovers

4.8•15 reviews•

438 followers

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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. 📚

Hardcover Reviews

The community submitted 15 reviews to tell us what they like about Hardcover, what Hardcover can do better, and more.

4.8

Based on 15 reviews

Review Hardcover?

Reviewers see Hardcover as one of the first Goodreads alternatives that feels usable enough to stick with, with repeated praise for its clean, fast interface, strong search, easy logging, and recommendation tools. Users also like the visible pace of improvements and the sense that the team listens. The main complaints are still about rough edges: occasional bugs, performance hiccups, confusing features like “Airlist,” incorrect covers, and limited catalog depth for some non-English or localized editions.

+12

Summarized with AI

Pros

goodreads alternative (7)

AI recommender (3)

book tracking (3)

excellent interface (3)

planned features (3)

branding and design (2)

fast performance (2)

Pros

Cons

Reviews

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Founder Reviews (7)

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Other Reviews (8)

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•1 review

This is the first Goodreads alternative that actually feels sustainable as a replacement. So many other book social and reading log apps are out there, but Hardcover is the first where I've felt they're releasing features (and for a bootstrapped app they have incredibly momentum releasing new features and improvements) that actually improve on what Goodreads offers, instead of just being "less bloated." Adam and Ste are dogfooding the app like crazy as they build it, and their obvious love of reading and books shows in every decision and aspect the product. I have a lot of confidence in this app getting better and better as they continue to develop it. 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.

What's great

goodreads alternative (7)planned features (3)

What needs improvement

complex feature names (1)

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37 views2yr ago

•1 review

Hi everyone! I've been involved with Hardcover as a user and supporter for over a year now, and I also joined its Librarian corps when the team first opened it up. I'm a mega-reader, averaging over 200 books per year for the last 4 years, and I'll still get near that number this year even when I was *trying* to go slower. BookSirens.com ranks me among the Top 1% in both reading diversity and readers helped among all those who have submitted data for their analysis. Hardcover has been great in so many areas already, and we're really just getting started. We've already got one of the best AI tools in the game, if not *the* best. We've already got some of the most granular statistics of any book library system I've found to date - and I've found a lot of them over the years. Our social feed system is already one of the better ones out there, easily allowing you to see feeds of just those you follow or even all activity on the system with just a single click, as well as the sometimes-infamous-in-other-systems "For You" feed, which combines the two and tailors them to your interests. As @stelofo and @adamfortuna have said, we're all about making this site the go-to place for *every* reader and *everyone* involved in making books happen. We don't care if you're reading the first book you've read since high school or if you read hundreds of books per year, we want to be the place where you come to find and talk about books. And yes, we even want to be the place that authors, publishers, and everyone else in the industry can come to find the tools they need for their various functions as well - and while we have some ideas there, we'd love to hear what *you* think so that we can try to be the first to make those ideas a reality. So come join us, and let's make revolutionize this game in ways it never has been before.

What's great

AI recommender (3)granular statistics (1)social feed system (1)planned features (3)

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35 views2yr ago

•1 review

Ok so I don’t know much about Product Hunt, but I made an account just so I could leave this supportive review! I’ve tried a lot of Goodreads alternatives and haven’t been into them. Mostly because they seem to have only a few gimmicky (imo) features that don’t long-term add any value to the reading app experience, so I always end up back on Goodreads anyway. BUT I’ve been using Hardcover for about two weeks now and I finally feel like there’s an app that has the potential to be a viable — and improved! — version of Goodreads. Interface and branding are excellent. It seems like they may be working out some kinks in the functionality (for me, many books are not displaying the correct covers and some seem to be displaying as another unrelated book), but I feel good about their ability to tidy this up. The app is already promising, but I love that they have the planned/in-process/proposed features displayed and available for suggestion. I think that especially when some of these new features are up and running, this app will be pretty much all I could ever want in a book tracking app! Excited to see what their plans for collaborating with authors/publishers entail. Good luck guys!

What's great

goodreads alternative (7)branding and design (2)planned features (3)excellent interface (3)

What needs improvement

missing book covers (1)

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33 views2yr ago

•1 review

Overall it's great. You still can see some performance issues and places to polish, but it's sooo much better than goodreads. I will go up to 5 stars when i will be able to find all of books I'm interested in or if i will get the option to add a book myself (I'm from Poland, polish books are still hard to find on Hardcover). One other thing - when i find my book it's usually English version, which for me is fine, but It would be great if i could choose (or manually add) my localized edition. If i read something in polish i would like to have the polish edition in my bookshelf. So - choosing book edition on bookshelf would be awesome.

What's great

goodreads alternative (7)

What needs improvement

performance issues (1)limited book editions (1)

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4 views2yr ago

Hardcover

Thanks for the review Jakub! We're hard at work polishing every little detail. Re: adding a book - that's coming soon. We just launched the Librarian feature and we're testing it. As soon as everything is ironed out we'll be adding the possibility to add your own editions. I can add you as a librarian if you want to be able to edit book data, just send me your @. If you know is ISBN of the specific edition you can also add it here: https://hardcover.app/books/new As for the edition you've read showing up on the book page - would showing the localized cover of the edition in your library and on the book page be what you're looking for? Thanks!

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2yr ago

•1 review

Been using it for a few months, mainly to track recommendations I get elsewhere. The search function is quite good, and adding missing books via ISBN is fairly frictionless. I tried the AI recommender the other day and found some cool books. Still run into the occasional bug or finicky feature but it's my favourite book tracker (I've tried Goodreads, LibraryThing and Oku). I paid for premium the other day to support development.

What's great

book tracking (3)AI recommender (3)goodreads alternative (7)

What needs improvement

occasional bugs (1)

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4 views2yr ago

•1 review

SO nice. Finally, a Goodreads replacement. Really nice UI, fast and way easier than Goodreads. Recommendations will get better as more users get on. I only wish it could connect with my Kindle and automatically mark things read for me, but that's not their fault.

What's great

fast performance (2)goodreads alternative (7)excellent interface (3)

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4 views2yr ago

Hardcover

Thanks for the review Elyse! Syncing Kindle is something on our list of priorities. It's a very tough technical integration apparently (maybe on purpose), but we've got some things we're trying out to see if we can make that happen. Will keep you posted on how that's going.

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2yr ago

•3 reviews

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 👀

What's great

excellent interface (3)

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4 views2yr ago

•1 review

I love it! Specially their recommendation feature and the librarian AI. It is so easy to find books I will love 😲

What's great

AI recommender (3)librarian AI (1)

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2 views2yr ago

Hardcover

Thanks Natalia! We're always thrilled that readers find AskJules useful!

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2yr ago