Hi everyone, we have some community updates to share. Pagebound has grown significantly since the app launched in October, and to support this larger group we're revamping our Quest creation and community recognition programs.

We have decided to sunset the Top Contributor program. We started the program in the early days of Pagebound to recognize active community members and help build the culture. TC's created Quests, welcomed new users, answered questions, and helped us behind the scenes with beta testing, user interviews, and feedback. We are so grateful to the 80+ TC's who were crucial in helping shape the platform & culture as we built the v1 of so many features.

To make Quest creation and community recognition more democratic and community-oriented, we will have two paths for Quest creation:

• We will continue the community-voted List initiative, where each quarter Royalty members nominate Lists to be turned into Quests, and the entire PB community votes on the nominated lists. We will have 3 winners per quarter for a total of 12 list-to-quests a year.
• We will start a new program, community-voted Member of the Month (exact language TBD). Each month starting in the Fall, the entire PB community can nominate a user they believe embodies PB values. The user with the most nominations will be awarded a badge and the ability to create a Quest.

We will have more details on this new program when voting nears :)

App + Product Updates The Discover People section got an upgrade: at the top, you'll see a Featured My Taste book that rotates daily, similar to the Featured Emoji. We highlight active users with that book in their My Taste section

We also fixed some small edge-case bugs related to progress updates + tracking. Reminder: you need to track your progress to see daily pages/minutes updated in your stats! So if you start & finish a book in the same day, you'll need to track progress still to see that graph updated (this is because there are some folks who don't track daily, and if we auto-tracked, stats would look very incorrect).

Thank you everyone for keeping this community thriving, PB wouldn't be what it is today without everyone's support & engagement. We can't wait to recognize new community members with these new initiatives, and are so excited to see what Quests y'all cook up. And of course, a special thank you to our Top Contributors who invested so much of their free time, love, and energy into this community. A round of applause for the (retired) TCs 👏👏👏

Happy Reading, Jennifer + Lucy 💜💙

What are you into playing right now? What is your current read? Do the genres even remotely overlap?

I am so interested in the intersection of gaming and current reads when it comes to preferred genres!

since pb is anti-ai, i wanted to highlight this. i found out about it today from a bookseller friend.

in a recent interview, tokarczuk (drive your plow over the bones of the dead, the empusium, etc) stated that she used AI to help write her most recent novel. here is an article about it on lithub.

it seems to be a recent interview and therefore new information, so there isn’t too much on it yet besides some horrified reactions on insta/threads. i’m planning to look into it more when i’m home from work and update with more links as necessary!

Ok, I’m asking the question. Which book would you be reading when you appear in the bookshop?

Erin & Lucy y'all knocked it out of the park!!!! absolutely stunning, I am obsessed 😍😍😍

🥹🥹🥹

Why is this ending making me so emotionalllll?!

Also, Kylie is clocking tea in her authors note talking about the non-virtuous history of Japan and the samurai. A lot of ppl were hurt by them.

Hi boundlings!

Recently done reading the Harry Potter series, now im starting The Hobbit then LOTR trilogy next. Planning to reread Percy Jackson & the Olympians (its been ages & I forgot already!)

Any book recommendation? I prefer trilogy of the same genre above. Thank you so much! Happy Reading!

So today I was talking with a bookclub I was going to join, but decided against it because unfortunately I was very very different from them and they just wouldn't have a good time since I don't fit in at all. (Womp womp for me. Maybe next time!!)

For a moment, we actually almost started an argument. They brought up the last book they read, and I meantioned that I also read it and unfortunately didn't like it... I know I shouldn't have said this, I was just nervous and blurted it out!! But the conversation basically turned into an argument that hate-reviews and/or overly negative reviews should not be public if they aren't constructive because the author spent a lot of time on their book and it won't change now that it's published, that if you aren't an editor or author yourself you don't have the credentials to offer such criticism, and that all reviews should offer some kind of constructive criticism to help the author grow for their next work...

And more, but... I didn't really feel like retelling how a group of people yelled at me... 😭

So. I write pretty negative things about a lot of books. Unfortunately I am very fussy and picky with books most of the time, and I have definitely written a hate-review(?) or two before. But I NEVER tag authors or insult them as a person. I always thought that if you buy a product, you are open to criticize and dislike it, because reviews aren't for the one that made the product... but for people looking to buy said product.

The whole thing made me feel some type of way, and I'm not sure if I'm just being sensitive because they called me out but I just wanted to know what other people think and how you guys write your reviews! Do you think authors belong in reader/review spaces? How do you go about writing your reviews? I'm very curious and I want to do better with my own reviews.. 🦭

I think I had the wrong expectations going into this book. It has such great reviews so I assumed I’d enjoy myself but I’m finding it quite slow so far. There’s a lot more politics going on than I was expecting and I don’t know that I would have picked this one up if I’d know that 😬

I’m hoping my feelings change as the plot starts to to pick! Someone tell me it gets better!