Interviewee: Now, were at about 2.7 million registered users. Andrew: Sure. Andrew: I got a lot of books from friends like that. Otis Chandler is the co-founder and CEO of Goodreads.com. When he decided to launch his own site just for book lovers, a respected colleague told him there was "probably not a very big market there." Otis figured he might prove him wrong, and in . They were too serious. I know the first time that we tried this interview it didnt work out so well. Of course, if there is someone we like we can click over, we can either save them to favorites or we can scroll to the bottom, get their email address, and contact them directly. Additional support from Jeff Rogers, J.C. Howard, Julia Carney, Elaine Coates, Farrah Safari, Liz Metzger, Harrison Vijay Tsui and Katherine Sypher, and Margaret Cirino. Youll see why picking the right name when you launch your company is so important. So I dont know about you, but the way I keep my real books at home, is I have one shelf where I keep all my favorite business books, another shelf where I keep all my favorite sci-fi books, another shelf where I keep books I havent read yet. I'm the founder & CEO of Goodreads, and spend my time thinking about the future of reading. And not work. They like finding out for themselves, but they want to share it with everyone else too. I think if you go back and look at my app. You know for us we had a problem where Goodreads was about cataloging your books so you come in and youd add a bunch of books and youd say what you thought of them, and maybe youd go kind of nuts. Andrew: Did he use it? [9], By July 2019, the site had 90 million members. Hes on Facebook every day. Work. Andrew: Yeah. Once a week, someone would stand up from one department (unclear) or somebody else would kind of give an inside into the business. Im beating it into peoples heads at the beginning of all my interviews. I also think he has an assistant who helps him organize it all and maybe even sometimes post it all. [24] A month later, in November 2012, Goodreads had surpassed 12 million members, with the member base having doubled in one year. Their latest investment was Series A - BookClub on Jun 15, 2021, when BookClub raised $20M. Interviewee: I think thats the trick and I dont know if theres a right answer, but we try to judge every new feature on kind of three criteria, and they would be: number one is it going to get us more traffic, number two is it going to make us more money, and number three is it going to be stickier? Interviewee: Right, sure. Can you talk about that? So realitys about making things really dead simple for the user. Blogger or WordPress, whatever. [64] Several news sources reported the announcement, noting Amazon's business reasons for the move: Where authors were threatening a mass account cancellation to protest the bullying, many of the reader users who commented on the announcement are now threatening the same thing. And what I noticed about dating was that you had big generic social networks. So one other thing weve done is weve figured out, Hey, lets not just give these authors a platform to connect to their fans but lets actually let them get in front of the entire Goodreads audience. So we built a self-serve advertising product where you can sign up right now with a credit card and buy advertising for your book on Goodreads. Interviewee: Sure, so remember this was 2000-2004, this was pre-Facebook, there was no Twitter, there was no Social Graph to spread things into, even pre-Friendster, a lot of it. Thanks for liking this post. But even talking about the people whove moved on, it was a really special culture. If youve got a guy on your side that can build youre farther ahead, and luckily I was that for yourself, but every time Im at a Mixergy event and I meet some guy whos like Ive got this great idea, but I need a good engineer and some money, what do you suggest I do? Andrew: How expensive was it? If theres a company that were interested in we can quickly scroll through a bunch of their work and see whether we like them or not. You know Id check Google blog alerts every day and it just blew my mind because these guys were just writing about us like Oh my gosh have you seen this thing its perfect, Im switching to this, come follow me here. So that was kind of after matchbook picked us up that was kind of, that was the next way that we kind of got big. Login or become a premium member. Andrew: How are they doing that? Heres the interview. Otis graduated with a B.S. Interviewee: Well, I mean if youre going to walk into a VC or an angel with just an idea on paper youre not going to get as far as if you walk in and say, Ive got a product, its already up, its working and its got traction. Youre in a better bargaining position. [38], Goodreads users can read or listen to a preview of a book on the website using Kindle Cloud Reader and Audible. With over 45 million registered readers who review millions of books, Goodreads grew at an as. What else did you do that was different and that helped spur on virility? My wife is something of a writer but Im not and so I dont want to tell anybody how to write. They were very open with all number and stats and where the business was going, and they really believe in being a teaching company, which I also believe in, from them. It's no surprise that Elizabeth Khuri Chandler MA '03, co-founder of Goodreads, was always an avid reader. Some authors have criticized Goodreads's stance on functioning like a public library rather than giving authors any control over how their information is displayed, noting that for most authors, Goodreads is the first page people see when they search on a web browser. 478 comments. Otis Chandler was the publisher of the Los Angeles Times between 1960 and 1980, leading a large expansion of the newspaper and its ambitions. And if we want to follow up with them theres their email address and their website right on the bottom so we can connect directly. Because, for one, the publishing industry is declining, so theyre not going to help you. Do you have some advice that you can give to other scrappy entrepreneurs who say, I like the way Otis did it, he didnt go out and look for funding first, he built his product first, I want to duplicate that approach.. [25], In March 2013, Amazon made an agreement to acquire Goodreads in the second quarter of 2013 for an undisclosed sum. You know I was talking to one of my favorite authors, Steven [Pressfield] who told me that exact thing. Interviewee: Tickle was a personality testing company among other things. And theres a lot ofpretty much everybodys building a social network these days. Scott Everett for NPR Any good social network does that well. So if you have a new book about science fiction. I got that book for my Kindle, I love it. I dont think it worked. Andrew: Was it about the, the Was it about the businesses that were being built out of nothing that excited you? You know, theres still challenges. Youll hear how working for Tickle.coms founder, James Currier, was better than going to business school. Goodreads is the largest website on earth for all things books. Interviewee: So we launched it, I think, in December of 2006. Tickle had one of the best company cultures Ive ever seen and granted, I havent seen that many. And you look at how many people come in and how many invites get sent and how many people can make it to the end. If we scroll through it we can find lots of different portfolios. Haystack.com, thats where youre gonna find the right web designer for your next project. So we both launched it, blasted out an email to all of our friends and we got it up toI dont know, I think after a month, from December to January, we got it up to about 800 people with our friends and friends of friends, just kind of organically grown. So now people, I mean our groups are amazing now, we have book clubs that have thousands of people in them that read two books a month. Interviewee: I couldnt do this without plugging the fact that we just launched book swap. Goodreads raised a Series A round of funding from True Ventures in the summer of 2009. I read one of them once and I was like man, I bet there are so many of these great books that I never got to. So its kind of fun like that. It just seemed like there was a lot more innovation going on. Goodreads is pleased to announce the release of KINDLR, an exciting new dating app exclusively for Goodreads members. Because Goodreads allows reviews for any book record as soon as it first appears on Goodreads, and cannot verify that any account-holder in fact owns the book they claim to have read, there is no clear way to police this. Andrew: 2.7 million registered users I said in the beginning you got up to 650,000 on your own, no outside funding. The band can have a profile and show off their music and their events. In December 2007, the site received funding estimated at $750,000 from angel investors. Tens of thousands? You would add photos and there was a news feed that had all your friends photos and our whole company, an 80-person company used this every day and every day there was an email update with everyones photos from the weekend or the day before and it was really amazing because you really got to know everyone in the company much better than you did by just talking to them because you got to see where they were and then you had a basis for a conversation. But most of them are guys who published a book or self-published a book and theyre trying to figure out How am I going to market my book to people? And this is the biggest problem that authors are facing right now. [7] On March 28, 2013, Amazon announced its acquisition of Goodreads,[8] and by July 23, 2013, Goodreads announced their user base had grown to 20 million members. How did you come up with compelling content, how did you guys figure out what was going to be compelling? Andrew: Yeah. See each portfolio image, in big. If you want to narrow your search down a little bit further you can click on the city, and I used to live in Los Angeles, so well experiment by clicking on Los Angeles. Since the second I found the Hardy Boys all the way through when I got to high school. So then they started going to these niche sites. Or much faster feedback about something you write. So we kind of, I actually have a spreadsheet where Ive got a product and then I give a rating on each of those three criteria and then I come up with a total priority. You know personally, I cant think of junior high without thinking of Danwich [sp] is when I first read that, or Lord of the Rings, which is when I first read that. Goodreads has a presence on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and other social networking sites. If they were black, theyd go to a black dating site. Andrew: I see. Amazon bought Goodreads for $150 million in 2013, though founders Otis and Elizabeth stayed on for a few more years. Andrew: Its all about research online. And wed already built it so every book has an author profile that lists the titles by that person. I think the trick is going back to what you said in the beginning, its having the rock star engineers. And by helping them I mean actively getting them into the press and spending money, marketing money, to promote the book. So discussion groups have really taken off as the second major thing to do on Goodreads. [52] Goodreads librarians coordinate on the Goodreads Librarian Group. [13] Chandler and Khuri both grew up in California. But So, the large degree most of the jobs I found were, you know, building printers for HP or just stuff that wasnt getting as exciting as hearing about all the stuff going on it the dot com world. Number of Investments 2. (from Wikipedia) .more Combine Editions Otis Chandler's books [36], On the Goodreads website, users can add books to their personal bookshelves, rate and review books, see what their friends and authors are reading, participate in discussion boards and groups on a variety of topics, and get suggestions for future reading choices based on their reviews of previously read books. So its not keyword based like the other ones; its book genre based. Goodreads. Andrew: I mean you personally. He was the fourth and final member of the Chandler family to hold the paper's top position. What about groups? Interviewee: I cant answer that as well because I cant take credit for doing that part. And this is very similar to the Facebook self-serve product or the MySpace self-serve product. Goodreads publicly posted its review guidelines in August 2012 to address these issues. You allow them to connect with their readers. And its an iterative process. That was huge did you guys do anything like that? Otis Chandler was born on November 23, 1927 in United States (78 years old). Thats the hard part of being down here in Buenos Aires. Andrew: Is that really him whos going out on all those networks? Otis Chandler built Goodreads in 2006 because he believed in social networking and wanted to see what his friends were reading. [71] Having false or invalid quotes removed can be a difficult process; problematically the quotes can be picked up by third-party websites like Pinterest and Instagram in the meantime, spreading invalid quotes attributed to the author even further, as Goodreads quotes bring a high amount of web traffic. Amazon.com, Inc. v. Barnesandnoble.com, Inc. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Goodreads&oldid=1141346846, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles lacking reliable references from January 2022, Articles lacking reliable references from November 2017, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 24 February 2023, at 16:16. Doing that process helps you think, okay well heres a feature that would be really cool and maybe its going to really increase user retention but its not going to help us at all with revenue or getting new traffic, so maybe its not as important as this other idea which is going to really make us money and increase retention, or this other idea which is going to get us new traffic and increase retention. Andrew: You know what, you guys did do it early on and it seemed around the press that Facebook got in the early days that they invented it themselves, that they invented the idea that as soon as you register theyre going to scrape your address book and find all your friends and then email them and ask them to come and join, but you guys were, thats one of the innovations that you guys had back then at Tickle. Andrew: Its working now. [67] Goodreads has also fallen under criticism from users who feel that the site is outdated and prone to frequent crashes and bugs, and that the recommendations are poor, frequently suggesting popular books at random rather than anything more personalized. And I think it has. I say Okay theres a lot of users here that are really, really wanting this or that, and then I can prioritize what were going to build. So weve got that for authors. Users can add each other as "Friends", enabling them to share reviews, posts, book recommendations, and messages. . ", "Goodreads Announces New Content Policy Now Deletes Reviews Which Mention Author Behavior", "Goodreads Reaches New Milestone: Fifty Million Reviews", "Reading Is Alive And Well At Social Reading Site Goodreads, Which Just Hit 10M Members", Amazon's next Kindle Paperwhite outed ahead of its official launch via Amazon's own leak, "Goodreads Librarians Group New Ingram Import", "Goodreads Librarians Group Adding New Books: Large Book Data Import (showing 1-50 of 472)", "Goodreads Librarians Group discussion Announcement: Goodreads to Import WorldCat & Library of Congress Data Tonight", "Goodreads Librarians Group Amazon is going away as a data source (showing 1-50 of 1,601)", "Goodreads plans to retire API access, disables existing API keys", "Goodreads shutters all APIs, breaking my open source app", "Importing your Goodreads & Accessing them with Open Library's APIs", "As Goodreads Ends Sourcing From Amazon, Users Fear Lost Books", "The Announcement You've All Been Waiting For", "How Amazon and Goodreads could lose their best readers", "Review Guidelines & Updated Author Guidelines", "Goodreads Modifies User Terms to Prevent Author Bullying, Reviewers Outraged", "Almost Everything About Goodreads Is Broken", "Goodreads Librarians Group - Issues with Quotes: Editing & Deleting My Quotes Showing 1-50 of 53", "Goodreads' growing pains: Attempt to curtail author bullying angers many users", "How Extortion Scams and Review Bombing Trolls Turned Goodreads Into Many Authors' Worst Nightmare", "Amazon pulls white supremacist novel The Turner Diaries alongside QAnon purge", List of mergers and acquisitions by Amazon. 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