A letter to those considering becoming a Hardbound Patron
Hardbound exists because we believe in the power of books — and we want to make it 100x easier to absorb their wisdom.
We accomplish that in three ways:
- Our beautiful “tap story” format. You’ll read longer, comprehend more deeply, and retain your knowledge longer. Scrolling through text just isn’t good enough anymore. The combination of words, images, illustrations, and animations creates a completely new and awesome experience.
- Our obsessive thirst for quality. Our biggest gripe with most book summaries is simple: they’re boring. That’s why each of our stories goes through a rigorous, Pixar-esque editorial process. We believe that life is too short to create mediocre content.
- The perfect length: five minutes. This is just long enough for you to truly learn something, but short enough to fit several into one day.
So far, it’s working!
- Over 250k people have read our tap stories, tapping through over 16 million pages.
- Apple featured us as a “best new app” and said our tap stories are “so beautiful we didn’t want to stop.”
- Fast Company named us one of the top 10 apps of 2016.
But most importantly, real people love it:
(And these are just from the past couple weeks!)
What you get when you become a Patron
As of April 15th, 2017, we’ve published 46 stories, and about 40 of those are behind our paywall right now. This number grows by about 2 stories a week, and that will only accelerate over time. If you’re curious to see what they are, you can just scroll through the app!
But more importantly, by becoming a Patron you’re supporting our mission to make the knowledge in books more accessible. If we adopted an advertising-based business model, we would face a very different set of incentives. We’d need to get you as addicted as possible, rather than satisfy your curiosity in a more healthy way. We’d need to track lots of personal information about you, rather than respect your privacy.
I don’t think ads are evil, but I do think ad-free models make you happier and serve you better. And I’m looking forward to a society that generally moves away from them.
Questions, concerns?
Of course the best way to know if it’s for you is to try it (you can cancel anytime) but feel free to reach out to me at any time!
- Email me — n@hardbound.co
- Tweet me — @nbashaw
Thank you so much,
Nathan
