In my 2024 Year In Review, I lamented on my failed reading goal of just 3 books. Halfway into 2025, I’d read 5 and rewarded myself with a Kobo e-reader, which I’ve very much enjoyed. I also boosted my reading goal to 10, which I’ve since tackled.
In 2023, when I first started looking at options for reading trackers, I’d settled on Bookwyrm, a decentralized GoodReads alternative that was sparse on features. But since the reading didn’t stick, neither did that platform. When I got back into reading in April, I decided to look around again. I ended up returning to another platform that was pretty new in 2023, Hardcover, which had made a lot of strides in the intervening years.
What happened next was this: I would read a book, log it, then ensure all of the book data on the site was accurate. This was possible because they have a Librarian program which grants powers to edit books and editions, crowdsourcing book data much like TMDb or Discogs. As a heavy contributor to both of those platforms, it wasn’t really a question of if I’d do that, but how fast my application would be approved. A day later, I was voraciously fixing books. Ones I’d read and otherwise.
I don’t know what it is about metadata that relaxes me. You’ll know by now about my Letterboxd habits. My idea of a good night is my Mac, a queue of data cleansing tasks, and a movie or podcast on in the background to idly keep me company while I work. I got pretty involved pretty quickly.
By the end of May, Hardcover posted some open roles on a part-time basis—paid in equity. I figured if I was going to be putting the number of hours in that I was, I might as well get something for it. I liked the idea of having some input in the platform as well. When I invest in an app, I tend to hold strong opinions. Those opinions, shared with founder Adam Fortuna during a video conference in early June, seemed to win him over. I onboarded the following week as one of maybe a half-dozen Senior Librarians in a class of 22 new team members.
It's not a full time gig, but it's a great way to spend some of my spare time, help build a platform I believe in, and earn a little equity on the way. The last startup I was involved with was Breaker, a wonderful social podcasting platform. Coming into Hardcover gave me a very similar feeling of community, teamwork, and opportunity to build something genuinely great. I love the team and, since starting, think we’ve made great strides at improving the platform.
My role as Senior Librarian begins with data janitor at the foundation. In addition to managing the queue of reports from users and community librarian volunteers, I organize or take on projects like cleaning up a specific author or franchise. There’s a lot to do, but less every day.
Beyond that sort of work, there’s documentation to be done. Guidance for librarians on how to complete data on Authors, Books, and Edition consistently is sparse, but we’re bulking it up. I’m gathering (and forming) a lot of feedback for how to improve the Librarian experience on the site and for core team members in our admin application. I’m happy to say a number of those recommendations have already come to fruition thanks to the awesome dev team building the platform.
Tangentially, I’ve been building stuff of my own. I built a TMRNL app for Hardcover that shows recent reads and their scores, current reads,[1] a shuffled assortment of your “want to reads” as well as an overview of your reading goal progress. I submitted that into a hackathon and got an honorable mention. It was featured in the latest Hardcover newsletter along with some other cool things the community has been building.
I’ve also been working on a browser extension, cross compatible with Chrome and Firefox, that makes copying data from sources around the web easier for Hardcover librarians. I’ve called the app Marian and have releases available on GitHub for side loading. [2] I plan to release it officially after some refactoring and setting up automated releases to both web stores.
Look. I realize I’ve undone all the hard work of relieving myself of self-imposed obligations by taking on this gig. But that’s okay for now. I’m finding a balance and I’m energized by the work and the community. That’s something I’ve missed and am glad to have found again.
If you’re looking for a community that loves books, join Hardcover and our Discord community!