Hardcover Report for March 2025

Hi Book Friends!

February is the shortest month of the year, but it hasn’t felt like that to me. The colder temperatures have led to more inside time for many of us.

In the Salt Lake City Subreddit recently, there was a post asking for suggestions on peoples third places. In sociology, the third place refers to the social surroundings that are separate from the two usual social environments of home and the workplace.

The top comment? The library. More than just a place to checkout books, libraries are social hubs with community activities, equipment rentals and events. My local library even has a monthly board game night!

The other most common third places were the gym, coffee shops and the local park. I love all of these, but I’ve struggled to have a community at any of them. Friends yes, but not a community.

We want to make Hardcover a virtual Third Place. A community that you can feel a part of, and enjoy spending part of your days with. As we grow, that vibe of inclusivity and joy is one we will work to maintain as part of our core.

February was a very busy month for me. When I wasn’t doom scrolling, celebrating Valentines Day and my Anniversary (19 years! 😘), I was moving. As of this week we’re moved in! The above photo is my new office I’m working from right now 🙌 We have a lot of unpacking still to do, but I’m excited to have a dedicated space to work again.

For the last 8 years, my wife and I have lived in a two bedroom apartment. The second bedroom served as both of our offices, guest room, stationary exercise bike and closet storage for everything.

Amongst the many things I’m looking forward to with this new home (adopting a dog, having more board game nights, etc), I’m excited about having a dedicated workspace. I’ve always struggled with getting into the flow working in open offices. People take jabs at cubicles, but compared to open offices they’re great.

If you’re curious to learn about designing spaces for productive teams, I love the book Peopleware. Even though it was written in 1987, the takeaways are the same for work that requires flow state.

Any geeky, fun or functional office recommendations?

What’s New On Hardcover?

Custom CSV Import

We’ve had Goodreads and StoryGraph imports for a while, but we’ve always wanted an import format that can fully utilize all parts of Hardcover.

The new CSV importer supports bringing in even more data than either of these! Here’s a sample CSV of what this looks like from Google Sheets if you want to check it out. Most fields are optional. You can select it today from the Import Your Books page.

If you keep track of your own library in a Google Sheet, Excel or Numbers, give it a try!

Reset Your Library

Switching to a new reading app is a big commitment. Many people try Hardcover, but then go back to GR/SG (although more have been sticking around lately 🙌).

If this sounds familiar, we’ve created this tool just for you! Under Account Settings, we’ve added a new “Delete Your Library” option. This will just delete your Library and nothing else. It’s ideal for readers who want to reset their account (but keep their username and followers), then reimport their library from a CSV.

Migrated Images

Some of you might have noticed that images weren’t working right for a day or two. We migrated our Imaginary image resize service from Google Run to Digital Ocean – with a few bumps along the way. Things seem to be good now, but I’m still watching it to be sure it’s behaving. You can read a post mortem about this downtime on Discord.

Where Does Book Data Come From?

I put together a page detailing a complete answer to this question. I hope this can help people building things in the Book space, and clear up any questions about this.

We’re still figuring out API licensing for data. It’s a little like editing an anthology where half the authors forgot to sign their contracts. We’ll figure it out, but for now we don’t have an official policy for API data use yet (but you always own your own data – that part is easy).

What’s Next on Hardcover?

With the addition of Discord Roles integration (thanks to @eriktheviking and others for helping to test on Discord), we’re now feature complete on the application side for the migration! 🥳

It might seem like this migration has taken a long time (which I think myself at times 😅). In reality we’ve done a lot of other things over the last 5 months besides work on this – many of which were mentioned in past months Reports (February, January, December, November). Couple that with emergency fixes, the 2024 Year In Books and general admin/Discord/support, it’s it’s kind of amazing that a project this big is this close to being done!

Now that I’m moved, this is the month that we’ll migrate the main site over! Lookout on Discord for that if you’re curious to learn about it a few days ahead of time.

Yearly Planning

We’ve started figuring out what we’ll work on after the migration is finished. This was always one of my favorite parts of corporate jobs. 😂 Getting to dream about what we could do is inspiring! Some of these will require more research, user interviews and discovery, but I wanted to share the high-level objectives here (in no particular order yet).

1. Create a freemium platform for authors to build relationships with their readers
2. Improve the Supporter Plan to a 5% conversion rate within the first month
3. Improve Speed and Stability with a Predictable Platform
4. Grow an Organized and Supported Librarian Shush
5. Turn every Book Page into “The Page Where it Happens”
6. Enable Readers to Celebrate Reading by themselves, with their Friends and Audiences

To be honest, each of these could use an entire team working for a year (or more) to accomplish. Many of these we’ve already put months of research into (Bulk Edit mode and advanced stats for Supporters, Discussions for the book page, your Hardcover Wrapped for celebrating, dozens of interviews with Authors, Open sourcing the app).

We’re still working on turning these into specific action items which I’ll expand on more next month.

How we accomplish this with our current team (this year) is still a question. I’m hoping to either open source collaborations with the community or welcome two new Ruby on Rails/React.js devs to the team help on these. We’ll see soon.

From the Hardcover Community

We’re adding a new section to the Hardcover report this month focusing on nifty things created by our members. If you create something fun – either with the API or a useful list, send a note to [email protected] with details. We might even feature it in a future Report!

Hardcover Alfred Workflow

If you’re not familiar with Alfred, it’s an app launcher (like Spotlight), with a programmable interface for custom commands.

With the alfred-hardcover workflow, you can quickly lookup books in your library, change the status of books you’re reading, change sorting and more with a few simple commands. If you prefer a command line interface without opening a browser, it’s a quick way to use Hardcover.

List: Banned in US Schools 2023-2024

@MellyReads_ put together and shared this list of the top 100 most banned books in US Schools. The most popular books from Hardcover readers on the list include A Game of Thrones, Brave New World, The Handmaid’s Tale and all of ACOTAR – with common theme of combatting oppression, sexuality and strong woman main characters.

List: Hugo Award Best Novel Nominees and Winners ( 1953 – present )

@snance compiled a list of the Hugo award winners and nominees since it’s inception in the Hugo Award Best Novel Nominees and Winners ( 1953 – present ) list. I’ve read 58 of these! how about you?

Multiple Library Search

@freeeve created a tool for library superusers to search multiple libraries at once called DeepLibby. It blows past Libby’s 30-library limit (yes, some people have cards at 30+ libraries). It’s super simple to use:

1. Go to the Favorite Libraries tab, click on the “filter” icon next to the Library name, and type in your library, then click “add to favorites”.
2. Go to the Hardcover tab, enter your username and click “search”.
3. Wait (it needs to load a lot of data!)

We’re also evaluating Library integration on Hardcover somewhere down the line. Stay tuned!

Behind the Scenes at Hardcover

We gained 15 supporters this month, bringing our total up to 270! 🙌 That’s 56 this year, or about one a day.

After a few years of progress it’s felt amazing to see this number getting closer to profitability. Once we complete the migration this month, we should know if we’re profitable by the end of April (one full month with the new server). 🤞

Featured Prompt for March 2025

We’ve been having internal discussions about how to better highlight books by newer authors. One idea is to showcase awards like the Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off organized by Mark Lawrence that bring in indie authors. This months prompt by @trelinarch is another good with a similar goal:

Which 2025 debut author are you looking forward to reading?

Anything by an author whose first book is being published in 2025.

If you know of a book by a new author you’re looking forward to reading, or you’re a new author with a book coming out this year, you should add it to this prompt!

👉 Side note, if you’re looking for new books that are coming out this year, check out the Upcoming Books page.

Last months prompt was Which books made you think deeply about freedom, truth, and society? – which 36 of you responded to! The top books align with the US Banned Books list – Fahrenheit 451, 1984, Animal Farm, Brave New World and The Handmaids Tale.

Most Read Books for February 2025

Our most read list has been completely taken over by two authors: Rebecca Yarros and Brandon Sanderson. Fourth Wing, The Stormlight Archive and Mistborn take up the top 6 spots for February.

1. Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros (#3 of 3 in The Empyrean)
2. Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros (#1 of 3 in The Empyrean)
3. Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros (#2 of 3 in The Empyrean)
4. Wind and Truth By Brandon Sanderson (#5 of 5 in The Stormlight Archive)
5. Mistborn: The Final Empire By Brandon Sanderson (#1 of 3 in The Mistborn Saga: The Original Trilogy)

It’s been two full years since Fourth Wing was released (as of May). Mistborn was released in 2006 – 19 years ago! Both are incredible hooks into the fantasy genre that a growing number of people are finding. I’m jealeous of people who get to read incredible books for the first time.

Most Saved Books to be Released in March 2025

This March has some long awaited releases that the community is excited about.

1. Sunrise on the Reaping By Suzanne Collins (#0.5 of 3 in The Hunger Games)
2. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter By Stephen Graham Jones
3. The Martian Contingency By Mary Robinette Kowal (#4 of 4 in Lady Astronaut Universe)
4. When the Moon Hits Your Eye By John Scalzi
5. This Book Will Bury Me By Ashley Winstead

Hunger Games fans have been waiting on Sunrise for a few years since Songbirds. I’m excited to see Haymitch’s origin story. The movie is slated for release November 2026.

Join us on Discord

The Hardcover Community isn’t just on the website – we’re also on Discord! If you’re not an expert in Discord, don’t worry – neither are we.

Join the over 2,000 readers to chat about books, hear about product updates, and be part of the community.

Join the Hardcover Discord

Want to Support Hardcover?

As a fledgling startup, we can use all the help we can get, whether that’s becoming a Supporter, sharing Hardcover with a friend, or just following along. Supporters get full Librarian abilities and access to Support and Librarian channels on Discord by linking roles.

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

Adam & the Hardcover Team