Hardcover Report for May 2025
By Adam Fortuna
Hi Book Friends!
This months report will be a little different from previous ones. Mostly because we’re leading with some big news: we’re changing from a small dedicated team to a distributed open source project with a small core team managing the project.
What this means in practice is that we’re hoping to add a few more people to the core team, that we’ll be working to open source the entire codebase, and figure out how to scale contributions from a wider number of contributors!
All of us currently working on Hardcover are just as dedicated to making the project a success as ever, and this is how we think we’ll get there. More hands and minds will help.
Here are the roles we’re looking for to join the team:
- Senior Developer in Ruby on Rails and/or React.js
- Senior Librarian
- Community Support
- Social Media & Community Manager
- DevOps / IT Manager
Since we’re small and not yet profitable, these roles are all for equity – like the rest of us on the team. As we grow, the hope would be that these members come on board with paid positions when/if we grow to the point (time will tell on that one 🤞).
You can see the full description of each role, what’s required and how to apply on the new Hardcover Open Roles page.
I’m sure you’ll will have some questions about this. Please feel free to message [email protected], or join our Discord and ask on there.
Why Open Source?
We can only move so fast with a tiny team, and we have a LOT that would be great to do! By opening the project up, we’re hoping to figure out how to work with the community to build things that I don’t have time for.
We’ve brought in developers over the years (over 15!), and they’ve helped a ton! But onboarding people to a team is a high barrier to entry. We can setup systems for anyone to contribute and make this easier.
We also want to provide our book data back to the world for free. Starting a book site is incredibly difficult, and a big part of that is data.
What Open Source License Do you Plan to Use?
We’ve discussed this a bunch on Discord, and the best license for our case looks like the GNU Affero General Public License version 3 license. It’s the same license used by a number of open source sass (software as a service) projects like Mastodon and Cal.com.
We’ll also look for opportunities to split out pieces of the application into their own libraries with MIT licenses whenever possible.
Why Now?
I have some big personal news: I got a job! 🥳
I’ve been living off savings for the last 6 years – 4 of which have been spent building Hardcover. It’s not yet reached a point where it can pay anyone a salary. We could start showing ads and that would cover my expenses, but that’s not a direction I’m willing to go. With everything going on in the world *gestures broadly*, I’d feel more comfortable at this point having an income.
Last week was my first week at the new position as a Senior Backend Engineer at Libro.fm. 🥳 Libro is an independent audiobook provider that’s an alternative to Audible (sounds familiar 😅). They’re an employee owned social good company that sends a portion of what you spend back to your selected local bookstore (mine is The Legendarium in Salt Lake City).
I wasn’t actively looking for a job, but the role showed up on my BlueSky feed and seemed too perfect to ignore. Recently I met the team at an offsite (yes, my first week was their yearly offsite). My first day meeting everyone involved a bookstore crawl and library tour. 😂
In other words, I’ll still be deep in the book space – which could help Hardcover in ways I don’t even know of yet. I’ll be working there 4 days a week for now, and then on Hardcover 1 day plus nights and weekends. Im still excited to work on a bunch of Hardcover projects, but I won’t have the same amount of hours to contribute.
Will Hardcover be around long term?
That’s my hope! These changes are being made with the intention of creating a project that’ll be around 5, 10, 20+ years from now and can outlive single points of failure. Also, now that I have a job, it’ll be easier to pay for any costs not covered by revenue for the moment.
In fact, since the recent migration to Ruby on Rails, our costs have gone down dramatically. I haven’t checked for April yet, but it’s looking like we’re very close to covering costs – if we haven’t already. 🙌
We’re up to 313 subscribers, that’s +36 for April – our largest increase ever!
We also hit 30k total members in April – another huge milestone! For comparison:
- 1/1/2022: 200
- 1/1/2023: 1.3k
- 1/1/2024: 5.2k
- 1/1/2025: 22.5k
- 5/1/2025: 31.2k
- 1/1/2026: 60k?
What Questions Do You’ll Have?
If you have any thoughts or questions please ask ([email protected]).
I’d like to reiterate that we’re just as committed to this project as before, but living in a capitalist society means needing to support ourselves. This is the best way forward that can continue to help Hardcover grow into the social network that readers deserve. If you’ll have any questions, or thoughts on this, I’d love to hear them.
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.
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