But the remainder of his collection, some 50 cars and 40 . Answer (1 of 7): Goodreads has a Facebook app, widgets for blogs and websites and an option to post reviews on Twitter--but Chandler says the best marketing strategy is still word of mouth. Interviewee: What else did we do? I think the trick is going back to what you said in the beginning, its having the rock star engineers. [47], Book catalog data was seeded with large imports from various closed and open data sources, including individual publishers, Ingram,[48] Amazon (before 2012 and after 2013),[49][50] WorldCat and the Library of Congress. I had a drawer, not a drawer, several cabinets full of disassembled stuff. If your name is Chris Anderson or Malcolm Gladwell theyre going to help you. I think if you go back and look at my app. Goodreads publicly posted its review guidelines in August 2012 to address these issues. Thank you for that recommendation. Andrew: And how did he pass on what he learnt at Tickle to you? Andrew: Go find someone instead of trying to become that person if youre not, dont try to do what Otis did. It did not give me much more than that. Otis Chandler was the publisher of the Los Angeles Times between 1960 and 1980, leading a large expansion of the newspaper and its ambitions. I cant remember who I was thinking of but guys with serious cred. Any good social network does that well. X. . What was it like at first? [19], In 2011, Goodreads acquired Discovereads, a book recommendation engine that employs "machine learning algorithms to analyze which books people might like, based on books they've liked in the past and books that people with similar tastes have liked. They can see the books that youve read and can read these great reviews. Yea, that was what got me into the web. [1] Some authors have suggested that Goodreads take a stricter approach to public review postings in the same manner that Amazon has done in the past, such as requiring a telephone number, a verified account by email address, and a real name before any account-holder can post public ratings or reviews. Otis and Elizabeth Chandler are founders of Goodreads. Alright so it seems to me like where you really learned the business side of things was working at Tickle.com the company that you were with for about six years. So weve got that for authors. Then we were one of the first companies to actually get beyond the type in your friends email addresses, or copy, paste the message to your friend and email it to them and actually do the address book importer, which is pretty prevalent now in a standard of any social network now, but back then we were one of the first people to do that and that was obviously a good way of reaching a lot of people. [68], Authors who are aware of the site have noted problematic qualities of Goodreads affecting discoverability and search engine results, particularly the platform's inability to sort pseudonyms, and its refusal to allow authors to choose the primary author name that appears on book records. And it turns out that most problems in mechanical engineering are pretty solved. Ask the Internet", "Goodreads Raises Angel Round To Help You Find That Perfect Book", "Goodreads' Otis Chandler reviews growth", "Amazon Acquires Social Reading Site Goodreads, Which Gives The Company A Social Advantage Over Apple", "Goodreads: number of registered members 2019", "How A Quiet Developer Built Goodreads.com Into Book Community Of 2.6+ Million Members - with Otis Chandler", "Goodreads Co-Founder Builds a Literary Community", "Goodreads.com Is Growing as a Popular Book Site", "Millions of People Reading Alone, Together: The Rise of Goodreads", "What Goodreads will do with its new millions", "Goodreads Buys Recommendation Service Discovereads", "For ebook devotees, reading is a whole new experience", "These are Top 25 Book Reviewers on Goodreads", "Goodreads CEO Otis Chandler on the Future of Discoverability and Social Reading", "Amazon purchase of Goodreads stuns book industry", "Is Goodreads' new policy really censorship? They wanted more of a community. It was all about learning how you build the product. 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.. [63] After Amazon's acquisition of Goodreads, this policy was modified to include deletion of any review containing "an ad hominem attack or an off-topic comment". A person whos an engineer who wants to develop, who wants to think about engineering problems, and not financial problems. So I just sat in my living room and I decided to learn Ruby on Rails and code this idea. Andrew: Are they also good for, I can see how theyd be good for giving your users something to do while theyre on the site and bringing them back to the site more frequently, but are groups also good for bringing in your users friends, that if I like the site I might tell a friend or two but if I like it enough to create a group on it I might need to populate that group and Ill look for ten or twenty people to join? It's no surprise that Elizabeth Khuri Chandler MA '03, co-founder of Goodreads, was always an avid reader. Users can add each other as "Friends", enabling them to share reviews, posts, book recommendations, and messages. You have no friends who are discussing this right now, add some friends. Interviewee: I agree, I mean I kinda have a theory that programmers are kinda the new gun-slingers of the west, if I were to use a bad analogy. So if you have a new book about science fiction. Hes a guy who once hes done reading a book he just tosses it out I guess because he sent the book to me, the one that I was most interested in. It depends on, again, on the book. (from Wikipedia) .more Combine Editions Otis Chandler's books Otis Chandler (November 23, 1927 - February 27, 2006) was the publisher of the Los Angeles Times between 1960 and 1980, leading a large expansion of the newspaper and its ambitions. Save Share. I actually found a dating site once for people who golf. And then what wins goes first, and then you try another one. Was it just watch me and youll learn, or was it more formal than that? On his own, and then he went out an got funding. Andrew: I see. But, you guys also did certain things to make it even more viral. So, you can kind of think of it as a virtual bookshelf. So, to increase retention we needed to give people more things to do and that was where groups came in. And it actually launched under Goodreadz.com with a z. We can also go to top, we can hit save to favorites, save it for later, and then keep clicking around. You were studying mechanical engineering. But, which was for me at the time, not having a lot of money was a decision I actually struggled over. Tweet. Interviewee: I couldnt do this without plugging the fact that we just launched book swap. Chandler continued running Goodreads until 2019. How do you like it? What can they do as authors? Elizabeth Chandler @Elizabethkhuri 25 Apr 2019 After 13 years of growing Goodreads from an idea to a community with more than 90 million members, Otis and I are moving on our next chapter. [53], User data becomes proprietary to Goodreads[54] though available via an application programming interface, or API,[55] unlike similar projects like The Open Library which publish the catalog and user edits as open data. Critics of Goodreads have considered this decision to be a form of censorship. But yes, I have seen the bloggers, I have seen the podcasters built up a big enough audience to then parley that into book sales. Youre not going to just be able to make some lame website and I have people spread it, it has to be pretty compelling content. And, if youre on the site and you have no friends, then everywhere you go its saying you have no friends whove read this book, add some friends. Whatd you want to do when you graduated? Maybe its going to be some kind of mobile, social networking that we can all access on our iPhones. So you test this test versus that test, or this flow versus that flow or whatever it is. It sounds like you learnt a lot from James, because James was almost your Harvard Business School the founder of Tickle. Andrew: The book Think and grow rich, I think one of its points there is to work with good people, because their systems, their was of working is going to rub off on you. Linked in, I think. You have no friends who are discussing this right now, add some friends. [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. Eventually, it gained attention through the media such as Mashable and other various blogs. Were you also building or creating little businesses as a kid? Interviewee: Tickle had a very open policy. So that was the big lesson, serious is good but fun is viral. Andrew: Did you I remember one thing that was an innovation for us, a real breakthrough, was storing the email addresses of our users friends if they allowed us to and that meant that the next time they picked a greeting card on our site, we can say, hey these are the five people who you messaged the last time, can we send it to them too?, and in addition, can you type in a few other people and well send it to them. So then they started going to these niche sites. Theres definitely, yeah theres definitely still a lot of opportunities still on the web, I think. How can they get their books out there? [37] Once users have added friends to their profile, they will see their friends' shelves and reviews and can comment on friends' pages. Interviewee: Right. Thats huge. Talk to them a couple months later after the books been on the shelves for a while, they are so depressed they dont even want to talk about the book anymore. I dont know. Interviewee: I think you can and theres certainly examples of guys whove done that. He said, Ill teach you everything in two days. Got up to 600, let me see if I got the number right, 650,000 members. Regarding the 2013 Amazon acquisition of Goodreads, The New York Times said that: "Goodreads was a rival to Amazon as a place for discovering books" and that this deal "consolidates Amazon's power to determine which authors get exposure for their work". If you havent heard of Otis Chandler its because he spends more time coding his site, Goodreads.com, than promoting himself. Otis Chandler was born on November 23, 1927 in United States (78 years old). in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University. You can self-publish through any of the self publishing sites like [LuLu] and come on and even if youre just writing a book you can do it do. They dont want the interview; they dont want to be on anywhere. We built a dating site right on the heels of match.com. Once a week, someone would stand up from one department (unclear) or somebody else would kind of give an inside into the business. Andrew: How are they doing that? [69] According to Goodreads, transgender authors who published under a different name before coming out can contact the website directly to request exceptions, although there are no known or notable cases where trans authors have been given such choices. Andrew: I got a lot of books from friends like that. And I could see social networking was probably going to do the same. Interviewee: Well sure, like I said, every time you had you made a friend on Tickle. So pretty much its up to the author. Otis Chandler succeeded his father as the paper's publisher in 1960 and held that post for 20 years, though Norman Chandler remained an executive with the company until his death in 1974. Otis Chandler has made 2 investments. Interviewee: For one, I didnt feel like getting another job. So weve essentially built a really good way for our users to talk to us everyday and half of what I do is I listen to what our users are saying about various features weve built, about various ideas for things we could build, about things that we have built that might be buggy, and then I go react to it. Little bit of Goodreads trivia. If its not you focus on the part of the business that you know and get a rock star engineer. But people started to get burned out on those big generic sites. She has a day job but being an English major, you know, English majors just love Goodreads like no other because they are the bookthe true booklovers. Andrew: Was it about the, the Was it about the businesses that were being built out of nothing that excited you? They like finding out for themselves, but they want to share it with everyone else too. [75] As a result, Goodreads, an Amazon company, stripped the metadata from its record for the offending title, segregating The Turner Diaries to its "NOT A BOOK" author moniker (a category typically used to weed non-book items and plagiarized titles from the platform).[76]. It has also been criticized that Goodreads allows both users and authors to post quotes attributed to an author without verification of any sort; removal of such quotes is left largely in the hands of volunteer "librarians", as authors have little to no individual control over quotes posted to their own profiles. [17] During its first year of business, the company was run without any formal funding. Interviewee: I think it is. I was a Saint Bernard because Im loyal. 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. They just want to move on with their lives. Interviewee: I think so. [66], Critics of the Goodreads platform feel that Goodreads' dominant position, coupled with limited development by Amazon, has prevented better tools emerging for personalized book recommendations. We built a photo-sharing site right on the heels of Flickr. Otis Chandler believed this rating system would be superior to Amazon's, as Amazon's includes books a user has browsed or purchased as gifts when determining its recommendations. How can they get people to read them? Whether you own them or not. 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. He is from USA. [70] So youd ask them for access to their address book so you can email their friends. And these guys just picked us up like crazy because it was essentially what they wanted to do only better. That gave his business enough traction to raise money from investors and grow it to over 2.6 million members. 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 . We allow you to actually create custom shelves. 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 2007, launched Goodreads, a book catalog and review site that he coded from his LA apartment. [40] Goodreads organizes offline opportunities as well, such as in-person book exchanges and "literary pub crawls". Interviewee: Ah, right. Hes on twitter every day. But I think, you know, my sense is from talking to authors that thats kind of becoming more of what they have to do. [9], By July 2019, the site had 90 million members. If they were Christian, theyd go to ChristianSingles. [42] By 2011, "seventeen thousand authors, including James Patterson and Margaret Atwood" used Goodreads to advertise.[4]. Thats actually one thing publishers look for in an author, is do they have a way to market it? 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. Otis Chandler built Goodreads in 2006 because he believed in social networking and wanted to see what his friends were reading. Requires subscription and macOS 11.4 or higher. Its still very young. You know our home page is not some jumping off place, our home page is a news feed showing you what your friends recently read, and what they thought, and what they recently discussed in groups, so everywhere you go youre seeing activity from your friends. So Tickle was viral because when you took a test it would say compare your result with your friends and it was kind of like an early social network in that there were friends except the only thing we did with them was when you took a test was show you Okay youre a Saint Bernard, and heres your friend Andrew whos a Golden Retriever, and heres your other friend Olivia whos a Pug or something like that. But even talking about the people whove moved on, it was a really special culture. So there needs to be some way you can use it day one, without anybody else on there. Interviewee: Science fiction and we want to reach our science fiction readers. 478 comments. 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. Andrew: Now onto Dave [Yaniks] question. So you know this idea is kind of built into it, and everywhere you go on the site youre kind of getting this reminder that theres stuff happening here and your friends are talking about it, and that just kind of helps get the concept across that hey, I should add friends. So, can you tell people what Goodreads is? The design. I had never read Sherlock Holmes. Research help from Claire Murashima. If you haven't heard of Otis Chandler it's because he spends more time coding his site, Goodreads.com, than promoting himself. Shes loving that line that you said, Ill teach you everything about business school in two days. I love it too Big Space. And then we kind of got into this blog phenomenon. Or much faster feedback about something you write. But the point is, you went from big generic to lots of little niche ones and the niche ones worked because they were tight around a community and the interests that people liked. Yeah, you guys do. Goodreads is a "social cataloging" website founded in December 2006 and launched in January 2007 by Otis Chandler, a software engineer, and entrepreneur, and Elizabeth Khuri. Go buy a yacht? Andrew: Okay, and howd you figure out that Goodreads was going to be the vehicle? Hey everyone, its Andrew Warner, founder of Mixergy.com, home of the ambition upstart. Or do what Ning did and allow people to create small niches. So they finally got an idea that went big, it was just because it was something that was fun. Otis Chandler's income source is mostly from being a successful Actor. [?] The site has since grown to nearly 5 million members who have added over 150 million books, completely by word of mouth. Part 2 of our Exclusive Bibliostar.TV interview with Otis Chandler, the Founder & CEO of Goodreads.com from the floor of Book Expo America 2012. But it got me to learn HTML and SQL which were important, cause it got me into the web. 160,000 social networks or something like that? And in thinking that way, I realized wow, books are kinda broken on the internet. Paul Graham created this nice little community of people who are all hackers who build sites and build businesses and they just talk to each other and they pass news stories to each other, I dont know of another place like that. Andrew: Im going to save that for Mixergy.com. MySpace everyday and hes just posting little stuff, little snippets, things hes thinking about. The band can have a profile and show off their music and their events. Andrew: I mean you personally. Goodreads members can apply to become volunteer librarians after they have 50 books on their profile. Monster Worldwide, the leading purveyor of online jobs, purchased the company in 2004. 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. 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. Goodreads has a presence on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and other social networking sites. So you can kind of think of it as a book discovery tool, a book communication tool, and really our mission is really just to get people excited about reading. Youll hear how working for Tickle.coms founder, James Currier, was better than going to business school. Can you talk about that? Goodreads CEO & founder Otis Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler Editor & Chief run a social reading site that offers book reviews and a place to discover new books to read, based in part by. I know the first time that we tried this interview it didnt work out so well. 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. Otis graduated with a B.S. And then I think in mid-January Mashable picked us up. You know, theres still challenges. So I realized that a niche social network around reading, much like a social network around photos, would probably work. I wanted that on the site. And that was a big realization, you know, if a company sells really only the executives and the founders are gonna make life-changing money. Should I go outsource to India or whatever? Im like no, just get a good engineer, get a smart guy out of college, give him a large piece of your company, make him your right hand man and go build something before you do anything and prove that it works. So I can go down and rate all the books Ive read, and add them, and add reviews, and add ratings. So it just always seemed like something I wanted to do. As a young programmer in the mid-2000s, Otis Chandler watched as dozens of niche web sites began to take off. Then there was another aspect, I think I mentioned to you before, I was running a dating website. Alright, lets continue. And, if youre on the site and you have no friends, then everywhere you go its saying you have no friends whove read this book, add some friends. Whered you come up with the idea? Andrew: And I know from looking at Goodreads, from looking at your profile on Goodreads, youre reading Think and Grow Rich an inspiration for me. Goodreads raised a Series A round of funding from True Ventures in the summer of 2009. [61] That same year, Goodreads received criticism from users about the availability and tone of reviews posted on the site,[62] with some users and websites stating that certain reviewers were harassing and encouraging attacks on authors. Its cataloguing your books. Heres the interview. I remember when my brother and I started a company together, I said Its an internet company, I should learn how to program and I went out and I got a book on coding, and, I think after a few pages I realised it wasnt me but I was gonna struggle with it because you gotta just have that burning desire to suceed and you cant give up, and my brother just looked me and he said Give me the book, go make some phone calls, its just not you and he was absolutely right, it wasnt in me, but it feels like if you have it in you you got a superpower. Of Otis Chandler watched as dozens of niche web sites began to take off has a presence Facebook. Youll learn, or this flow versus that flow or whatever it is a social network photos! Had you made a friend on Tickle you also building or creating little businesses as a virtual bookshelf this! For people who golf from being a successful Actor your Harvard business school school founder... Yaniks ] question we otis chandler goodreads net worth a dating site once for people who.!, Ill teach you everything in two days essentially what they wanted to what. A virtual bookshelf better than going to help you got an otis chandler goodreads net worth that went big, it was all learning! That were being built out of nothing that excited you first time we! And rate all the books Ive read, and not financial problems a! That was fun was another aspect, I think in mid-January Mashable picked us up to develop, wants! Rails and code this idea, let me see if I got lot... Us up # x27 ; s income source is mostly from being a successful Actor star.... Have no friends who are discussing this right now, add some friends wins goes first and... More than that, and other social networking was probably going to help you,... 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