Subscribe
Sign in
139
Replies
@rrhoover thanks so much!! I learned a lot of it from you! hahaha
I'd definitely say the hardest part so far has been deciding what stories to make. It's been a huge learning process and honestly I could write a whole blog post on it. The short version is that I think the stories work best when it's about something I'm genuinely curious about. If I get too caught up in targeting something for an imaginary audience (e.g. "let's make a story that startup people will be into") it hasn't worked nearly as well as when we've just followed our curiosity.
In the long run, it's super important that we get other people on our platform creating stories. But for now we're mostly focused on just creating awesome stories and earning a reputation for quality. If we can do that, I think we'll be alright.
I loved being a part of the early Hardbound beta!
Hardbound quickly became one of my favorite apps on my phone. The stories are entertaining and educational (with amazing visuals 🔥).
Great work Nathan, Joe, and everyone else who worked to get Hardbound to this point!
YAY. I’ve been super excited about Hardbound from the beginning. Definitely reminds me of Snapchat stories but when I look at Hardbound stories, you can already feel this is by far only the beginning of what can and will be the start of a new reading experience in the digital age. As someone who was in self-publishing, in hopes to change how people perceive digital books and the experience of digital reading, I’m beyond impressed and so excited to see what's happening here.
Rooting for you two!
I had a beta version through Test Flight, read every single story. Absolutely love this app.
Huge fan of what Hardbound if building (btw - excellent Hardbound podcast on new media). It really is an engaging, new way to consume content on mobile. Looking forward to creating my own when they open up the platform.
Super pumped to see Hardbound in the app store, and look forward to more stories. These are like the best of those "How Stuff Works" books coming alive in my hand. I feel like I'm walking through the story vs. flipping a page, which is just a fundamentally new and awesome way to learn and experience content.
Congrats Nathan and Joe!
@peterkimfrank thank you so much!! you've been with us since the beginning :)
Hardbound is the best app I installed on my phone this year.
Seriously, it has interesting content, it's well presented and makes things easy to understand.
Already a big fan!
Big fan of this, been using it since early beta and love the idea. The format and lower volume of higher quality stories makes me actually want to read rather than skim (web browsing habits die hard).
@officiallyrad thanks so much!! that's definitely by design, so I'm glad to hear it's working :)
@nbashaw Amazing work!! Question: Hardbound obviously has much potential for different niches; fiction, drama, etc etc. Most of your content is focused on teaching people about things. Why is this?
@abe_storey because that's what I'm personally best at and find most interesting - but I agree, there's nothing inherent to Hardbound that leans towards this style of content!
@palavalli web! if you sign up at hardbound.co you will get notifs for all of our new stories, and you can see some of our existing ones
This is very exciting! I love reading hardbound stories. There are so few places on the internet where I can find content that is fun to read and that is also informative. It's also the perfect length to download a story and read it during my commute.
At some point, you have to make a hardbound story explaining how you choose topics, how you design stories and how distribute the content.
Congrats Nathan and team!
If you could have any writer make a hardbound story, who would it be? :)
@levelsio thanks so much! it works on the web too! https://hardbound.co/read/fire/1
First learned about Hardbound thanks to @beccabigwords when she did her VR story. Absolutely love the app. Moved to my home page with my other readers (Flipboard, Longform, Pocket, New Stand, theSkimm).
Way to go, @nbashaw!
Hey Product Hunt!
You may have seen some of our stories on here, but I'm so excited to finally share our app with you! When you try it, I think you'll agree it's a way better experience than reading on the web. Fullscreen makes a *huge* difference.
Joe and I would love to hear your feedback!
Thanks!!
PS - I wrote more about what we're doing here: https://medium.com/hardbound-co/...
PPS - I talked even more about what we're doing on a podcast here: https://soundcloud.com/hardbound...
@nbashaw Ive seen quite a few Hardbound stories and I just love the format!
I spoke with Nathan a while ago when I met him in NYC and he popped me on the beta.
I could see this going further than stories - onboarding, recaps, even pitch decks 😛
The more we try to tell stories, the more need there is for this type of platform.
I also think (as per a discussion we had about what the hell happened with e-books) that for our smartphone formats, e-books aren't ideal... its way easier for each of us to consume a tweet, a blog post, etc (small 'wins') - An e-book is longer, harder to digest, especially if on a commute and stop-starting etc. Something like Hardbound works perfectly here.
I really do think this will be huge
@nbashaw I have to say this is pretty dope. I like pretty much everything of it. Best app regarding stories on iOS for sure in my opinion.
@nbashaw congrats on releasing @hardbound. the most interesting thing about this product to me is that its focus is not on rapidfire and random dopamine hits, but rather on high quality visual content where people actually learn something. i enjoy hardbound like i enjoy a newspaper -- over a cup of coffee or breakfast where i can put in my full concentration and feel like i've been productive.
(i'm also psyched you use an sms-bot for the new story notifications...obviously)
@matthartman @hardbound thanks so much! You've been an enormous help - we wouldn't be the same without you!
Product Hunt