Hardcover Book Data Scraper

Scrape Hardcover.app — a modern, fast-growing Goodreads-alternative for tracking and discovering books. Search by title, author, or ISBN; browse by genre or reader-tagged mood; or look up specific books by URL. Every book comes back with ratings, reader-tagged moods and content warnings, series info, and full bibliographic metadata. No login, no cookies, no proxy required — all data scraped is publicly viewable.

What this actor does

• Seven modes: search, byGenre, byMood, byAuthor, byBookSlugs, bySeries, authorProfile
• 14 reader-tagged moods (adventurous, dark, hopeful, tense, etc.) and dozens of community genre tags as ready-made filters
• Reader-consensus data: average rating, rating count, review count, how many readers have the book on their shelf, how many marked it read, and how many community reading-prompt discussions mention it
• Content warnings as submitted by the reading community, with a one-click exclude filter for the most common ones
• Full bibliographic metadata: series (with reading-order position), page count, release year, ISBNs, alternate/translated titles, audiobook/ebook availability
• Author profiles: bio-style records (books count, top books, alternate pen names) fetched straight from Hardcover's author index — not just author-attributed book listings
• Empty fields are omitted — every record only contains data that was actually found

Output per book

• bookId, slug, title, subtitle, alternativeTitles[]
• authors[], primaryAuthor, authorSlugs[], primaryAuthorUrl, contributionTypes[] (Author, Illustrator, Narrator, Translator, etc.)
• seriesNames[], primarySeriesName, seriesPosition, seriesSlug, seriesUrl, seriesBooksCount, seriesPrimaryBooksCount
• coverImageUrl, coverColor, description
• pageCount, releaseYear, releaseDate, isbns[]
• genres[] — community-voted genre tags
• moods[] — reader-tagged moods (adventurous, dark, hopeful, tense, etc.)
• tags[] — additional reader-submitted tags (pacing, character-driven vs. plot-driven, etc.)
• contentWarnings[]
• averageRating, ratingsCount, reviewsCount, usersCount, usersReadCount, listsCount, activitiesCount, promptsCount
• hasAudiobook, hasEbook, isCompilation
• sourceUrl, recordType: "book", scrapedAt

Output per author (mode=authorProfile)

• authorId, name, slug, imageUrl
• booksCount, topBooks[], alternateNames[] (pen names / name variants)
• sourceUrl, recordType: "author", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	search	search / byGenre / byMood / byAuthor / byBookSlugs / bySeries / authorProfile
searchQuery	string	fourth wing	Free-text query (mode=search) — matches title, author, ISBN, or series
genre	string	–	Genre tag to browse (mode=byGenre)
mood	string	–	Mood to browse (mode=byMood)
authorName	string	–	Exact author name (mode=byAuthor), or name/URL/slug (mode=authorProfile)
seriesName	string	–	Exact series name to browse (mode=bySeries)
bookUrls	array	–	Hardcover book URLs or slugs (mode=byBookSlugs)
sortBy	string	relevance	relevance / popularity / rating / newest / mostReviewed / longest / shortest / mostActivity / mostRead / mostDiscussed / seriesOrder
minAverageRating	number	–	Drop books rated below this (0-5)
releaseYearMin / releaseYearMax	int	–	Restrict to a release-year range
minPageCount / maxPageCount	int	–	Restrict to a page-count range
excludeContentWarnings	array	–	Drop books tagged with any selected content warning
hasAudiobookOnly / hasEbookOnly	bool	false	Only include books with that edition format
excludeCompilations	bool	false	Drop multi-book compilations/boxsets
maxItems	int	30	Hard cap on emitted records (1-500)

Example: browse a series in reading order

{
  "mode": "bySeries",
  "seriesName": "The Empyrean",
  "sortBy": "seriesOrder",
  "excludeCompilations": true
}

Example: author profile lookup

{
  "mode": "authorProfile",
  "authorName": "Rebecca Yarros"
}

Example: shorter books, no graphic content

{
  "mode": "byGenre",
  "genre": "Fantasy",
  "maxPageCount": 350,
  "excludeContentWarnings": ["Sexual content", "Violence", "Gore"],
  "sortBy": "rating"
}

Example: highly-rated dark fantasy

{
  "mode": "byGenre",
  "genre": "Fantasy",
  "mood": "dark",
  "minAverageRating": 4,
  "sortBy": "rating",
  "maxItems": 25
}

Example: everything by an author

{
  "mode": "byAuthor",
  "authorName": "Rebecca Yarros",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: look up specific books

{
  "mode": "byBookSlugs",
  "bookUrls": [
    "https://hardcover.app/books/project-hail-mary",
    "fourth-wing"
  ]
}

Use cases

• Reading-app integrations — pull mood tags to power a "books like this, but lighter" recommender
• Content warning research — surface sensitive-content flags before recommending a book, or exclude sensitive titles entirely
• Book-club curation — filter by genre + mood + rating + page count to build a themed reading list
• Publishing intelligence — track how readers tag a title's mood/genre against marketing copy
• Backlist discovery — pull an author's full bibliography with community engagement stats in one run
• Series tracking — pull a whole series in reading order to power a "what to read next" feature
• Author research — fetch an author's profile (books count, alternate pen names) without scraping their whole catalog

FAQ

What's Hardcover? A modern social book-tracking and discovery platform positioned as a faster, ad-free alternative to Goodreads, with StoryGraph-style mood tagging layered on top of genres and reviews.

What are "moods"? Reader-submitted tags describing how a book feels to read (e.g. "dark", "hopeful", "funny", "tense") — the same taxonomy popularized by StoryGraph.

Do I need a Hardcover account? No — search and book pages are public; the actor never logs in.

Why do some books have very few genres/moods/tags? Tagging is community-driven, so newer or less-popular titles may have sparse metadata. Popular titles usually have rich genre/mood/tag coverage.

Can I combine genre and mood filters? byGenre and byMood are separate modes (server-side filtered by the primary axis), but minAverageRating, releaseYearMin/Max, hasAudiobookOnly/hasEbookOnly, and excludeCompilations all apply as additional filters on top of any mode.

What's the difference between genres and tags? genres are category-style labels (Fantasy, Romance, Nonfiction); tags capture other reader-submitted descriptors (pacing, character-driven vs. plot-driven, diversity of cast, etc.). Tags are too free-form/long-tail to offer as a filter, so they stay output-only — genres and moods cover the bounded, filterable taxonomy.

What's the difference between byAuthor and authorProfile? byAuthor returns every book written by an author (recordType book). authorProfile returns a single bio-style author record (recordType author) — books count, top books, alternate pen names, profile photo — without listing the full bibliography. authorProfile also accepts a partial name for fuzzy author search, or a Hardcover author URL/slug for an exact lookup.

How does bySeries order the books? Set sortBy to seriesOrder to get books in official reading-order position. Series data on Hardcover includes boxsets/omnibus editions tagged to the same series, so also enable excludeCompilations for the cleanest single-book-per-slot list.

How current is this data? Ratings, review counts, and tags update continuously as the Hardcover community reads, rates, and tags books.