We almost didn't do it...

Times we trusted our users over our instincts in feature development

Most of the product decisions on Pagebound have felt second nature: a perk when you start a company around your only lifelong passion 🤓 It’s also so helpful that Jennifer and I are such different readers, so we can cover a wide breadth of preferences. She’s a former Goodreads user, host of an in-person book club, early booktok creator on top of the publishing trends, and an avid indie bookstore supporter who prefers print.

I never used an app to track my reading prior to Pagebound. I get all my books from the library, barely use the Plan feature since it’s whatever hold comes in first, and for me, it’s ebooks & audiobooks over print forever. I’ve never had a book club measure up to the peak experience that is a juicy English class discussion, until the forums on Pagebound, and now I’m finally fulfilled.

We are just 2 readers though, and there are so many others out there with reading quirks and preferences different than ours. While we can’t be everything to everyone (nor do we want to be), we have had moments where we chose to serve these other readers in our product decisions, even if they weren’t needs Jennifer or I had.

Example 1: Pagebound Club

Pagebound Club today is a space for general conversations about reading. When we launched on web in Jan 2025, it didn’t exist. You could post to 3 places: the book forums, the quest forums, and an early version of “Founder Announcements” (except anyone could post there).*

*In fact, if you scroll all the way back in what is Founder Announcements today, you’ll see some of our earliest discussions 👀

After our first viral moment in March 2025, our community tripled overnight. Suddenly people were posting anywhere they could to participate, introduce themselves, and make friends, even if it wasn’t specifically about a book or quest theme. We started to hear feedback asking for a general discussion space.

At first, we were very hesitant to create one. Other book apps with a generalized feed all start to share the same flavor…one that tastes like bookstagram. We did not want Pagebound to be overrun with personal updates, photos of pets + coffee + bookshelves, and the same bookish debates constantly rehashed.

That said, we decided it was worth testing the Pagebound Club concept in a self-contained space with a standalone feed, so people could choose to opt in or out. Pagebound Club posts were sent to your home feed only if it was a post or comment from someone you followed. We also created a separate space just for Jennifer & I to announce product updates, and Pagebound Club became a fun space for users to hang out (there’s a reason the Club background has disco vibes).

For several months, Pagebound Club was very successful. So many thoughtful conversations were happening, and we were thankful that we gave it a chance. After the app release in October 2025, our community doubled again. Pagebound Club was the first place we faced the problems of scale. The quantity and repetitiveness of posts started to become a problem. We came to a few realizations:

1. Generalized forums don’t scale. It starts to feel like you’re shouting into the void rather than sharing with a tight-knit group.

2. The people getting value from Pagebound Club are new users, not old users who’ve seen the same topic of discussion 10 times.

3. Some users love the Club and spend all their time there; other users hate it.

We believed we could solve the problems of Pagebound Club, while preserving its benefits, by giving users feed controls. Now, you can turn off all Pagebound Club posts from appearing in your home feed, even if someone you follow is posting/commenting there. If you dislike the Club, or you just outgrew it, you now never need to interact with it. If you’re a new user, Pagebound Club is default turned on in your feed, and since you likely don’t follow many users yet, it’s a great place to meet people.

So far, this change has been effective, but as is the case with iterative product development, the Club may evolve again as we grow. What will always be true is this—we will prioritize evergreen discussions about books and genuine human connection.

Example 2: cases where majority rules

There’s not always the option to give people a preference toggle. Sometimes, a product decision needs to be uniform across all users, and in these cases, we tend to go with the majority of what our users want.

For Quests, we originally set them up where DNF books would count towards a badge. Quickly, users raised concerns of badges not feeling earned or standardized (for instance, someone DNFing at 5% vs 95% has a different meaning). There were even debates if DNF books should count only if someone read over x%…😅

Since it’s important that Quest badges carry the same meaning across Pagebound, this was not a situation where we could let users make an individual choice (the way you can decide if DNF books count towards your personal Yearly Reading Challenge). We always envisioned the Quest badges as an achievement worth celebrating, so we decided to go with the majority opinion and stop counting DNF books.

Another example that comes up often is the question of quarter-stars for book ratings. We currently support half-stars and 4 rating subcategories: enjoyment, quality, characters, and plot. Many other book trackers do give quarter-star options, and we have never felt strongly one way or the other. Our concern with introducing quarter-stars is that it makes the rating scale more complicated, since we already have subcategories. So far, the majority of our users have shared this opinion, but if that changes, we’re happy to adapt.

Pagebound would not be the product it is without our users, and everyone here is actively shaping the future of this platform and community with your ideas, feedback, and the ways you engage on Pagebound every day. We are so grateful that you decided to join us, as we co-create the best social reading tracker.