I got that book for my Kindle, I love it. But without much fanfare -- or outside funding -- he built his community of booklovers to 650,000 members. Sign In http://www.twitter.com/otown https://www.goodreads.com/otis Otis's favorite books More Otis's Bookshelves read (577) You were studying mechanical engineering. Interviewee: Well sure, like I said, every time you had you made a friend on Tickle. Was it just watch me and youll learn, or was it more formal than that? 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? Chandler continued running Goodreads until 2019. Along with a passion for building websites, hes also a voracious reader. Thank you everyone for watching, Im looking forward to your comments and Im looking forward to talking to, actually Im looking forward to your comments lets leave it there. [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. All of which were successful. There were mixed reactions from Goodreads users, at the time totaling 16 million members. [39] Goodreads also offers quizzes and trivia, quotations, book lists, and free giveaways. Youll hear how working for Tickle.coms founder, James Currier, was better than going to business school. And Im no author. Goodreads members can apply to become volunteer librarians after they have 50 books on their profile. Better even than many of the business classes that I took at NYU. Him on everywhere else? So that was the big lesson, serious is good but fun is viral. So thats important to understand, but its easier said then done. And I think it has. And its become more on the author to market themselves. But I was really excited to learn this hot new language called Ruby on Rails. Goodreads is pleased to announce the release of KINDLR, an exciting new dating app exclusively for Goodreads members. For a lot of people, this is when things started to go downhill, and it's hard to argue against that. You had match.com, you had americansingles.com, and eHarmony, and those are great. And I had moved to LAI had followed a girl to LA and so I didnt know a lot of people down there even though I grew up down there and I didnt want to get a job, like I said. Goodreads features a rating system of one to five stars, with the option of accompanying the rating with a written review. [23] In October 2012, Goodreads announced it had grown to 11 million members with 395 million books cataloged and over 20,000 book clubs created by its users. 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. 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. So lets take a look at it here. Interviewee: Definitely. [Break in audio] So what a lot of these authors are realizing Hey, Ive got to be out there on the internet collecting fans and gaining readership.. Interviewee: For one, I didnt feel like getting another job. Andrew: Its working now. But if the authors not into it, its not going to work. So Goodreads was built to do this, our position is not catalog your books, our position is see what your friends are reading, or get excited about reading through your friends. Do you think you couldve learned it so quickly? Or the most hardcore booklovers. The New York Times noted that Goodreads, at the time of the acquisition, had a more reputable reviewing system than Amazon's. [31] Dorothy Buffum Chandler died last summer and her son Otis Chandler, who at one time ran both Times Mirror Co. and the flagship Los Angeles Times newspaper, stepped down from the board after 36 years. I wanted that on the site. You know, today we have Goodreads for books and we have Flickster for movies and we have Netflix and we have LastFM for music. Andrew: Definitely, alright, well end it there. So having seen all this social networking going on I was like wow, reading would be so much more fun if it was a social network and I could see what my friends were reading and I could browse their bookshelves online. Work. Otis Chandler was the publisher of the Los Angeles Times between 1960 and 1980, leading a large expansion of the newspaper and its ambitions. 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". Otis Chandler - San Francisco, CA (1,354 books) 585 ratings (4.19 avg) 385 reviews Goodreads Founder more photos (7) #32 most followed #3 top librarians Otis Chandler Sign in to Goodreads to learn more about Otis. You didnt have to go about marketing it yourself. I dont think it worked. So I wanted to provide that experience around reading. Andrew: Its all about research online. 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.. [40] Goodreads organizes offline opportunities as well, such as in-person book exchanges and "literary pub crawls". You can spend hours on there. Interviewee: No I didnt have to do that. You can get real time feedback about something you write. If we scroll through it we can find lots of different portfolios. Go buy a yacht? Andrew: You know where they grow those kinds of engineers/entrepreneurs is Hacker News. [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. Is it going to increase our user retention? So if you have a new book about science fiction. Andrew: Alright, Ive got to tell you too I looked at one of your latest reads, the book by Tessla, and I said well, Tessla wrote a book, how interesting could it be. Chandler is a descendant of the publisher of the Los Angeles Times; Otis Chandler. [25], In March 2013, Amazon made an agreement to acquire Goodreads in the second quarter of 2013 for an undisclosed sum. I actually found a dating site once for people who golf. There is also a special section for authors with suggestions for promoting their works on Goodreads.com, aimed at helping them reach their target audience. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. It was all about learning how you build the product. Interviewee: I couldnt do this without plugging the fact that we just launched book swap. Some users worried that their reading records would be lost, but Goodreads had a number of plans in place to ease the transition and ensure that no data was lost, even for titles that might be in danger of deletion because they were available only through Amazon, such as Kindle editions and self-published works on Amazon. [51], Goodreads librarians improve book information on the website, including editing book and author information and adding cover images. You had match.com, you had americansingles.com, and eHarmony, and those are great. Howd you come up with the idea? 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. I learned C, so I had a little bit of exposure to it, but not a lot. And these guys just picked us up like crazy because it was essentially what they wanted to do only better. But if you wrote a book about a certain topic you should go to people whofind communities around that topic and market to them. It actually started as EMO.com which is when I joined it in 2,000 and I thought it was pretty dumb when I joined it actually to be honest but luckily it was started by some really smart people who knew what they were doing, and that was lesson number 1: People who are smart and determined to succeed, WILL succeed, even with what seems like a dumb idea, and you know, the Tickle guys were smart and determined and thats what they did, so they took an idea to do a testing company online from an idea to a funded startup to selling it to Monster.com in 2004 for 100,000,000 bucks. Then plus wed have advertising on the test throughout it and that ended up working because the fun tests would go viral and draw people into taking more fun tests and then some of them would take a serious test and all of it was designed to be fun and to learn about yourself. Little bit of Goodreads trivia. Andrew: Yeah. Interviewee: So, the founder, James [?] So now you have the opportunity to become a better writer by putting yourself out there more and more often and seeing what people like and dont like. Scott Everett for NPR Like about 10% of our users went kind of nuts and would add everything theyve ever read. And maybe every couple months Id empty my Amazon shopping cart. In 2013, Goodreads sold to Amazon for an undisclosed sum; and today, it's the world's largest site for readers, with 125 million users. And plus its more fun for me because I get to discover books, etc. 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. I mean it was all about creating content so I mean to make something viral you have to create something that is able to go viral right? Andrew: We might need to start something like that. [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. Andrew: Why did you decide to start your own company instead of going and looking for another great company to work in? How can I get myself to be more excited about doing that? Beyond that, publishers do not have budgets to help market their titles. And wed already built it so every book has an author profile that lists the titles by that person. Thats the hard part of being down here in Buenos Aires. Thats actually a big asset which is kind of sad because it means that first time writer whos got an amazing idea or an amazing story to tell is not going to get the same chance that, you know, I dont know, Sarah Palin is going to get. MySpace everyday and hes just posting little stuff, little snippets, things hes thinking about. Andrew: How are they doing that? Interviewee: Well, the other caveat is that we launched it in the US only. Can you ever get a big enough community to make it worthwhile? You have no friends who are discussing this right now, add some friends. [17] During its first year of business, the company was run without any formal funding. Andrew: Funny how many people who went to business school would say the same thing. So we were really shocked when we were trying to do anything that was going on that wasnt working. 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. One thing I will be continuing is my podcast Books of Your Life with Elizabeth 1 reply 1 retweet 10 likes How did you come up with compelling content, how did you guys figure out what was going to be compelling? Andrew: How can you decide which ideas you listen to? Its all about (muffled) testing. Its cataloguing your books. Shes loving that line that you said, Ill teach you everything about business school in two days. I love it too Big Space. Several members of the Goodreads team are single and dating in . Dave Yenk, again, Im reading everyones twitter names here, hes saying, Youd think that Goodreads would allow authors an easy way to get in front of their target niche, Im guessing is what he means. Andrew you might be a golden retriever because youre kind of outgoing. The website allows individuals to freely search Goodreads' extensive user-populated database of books, annotations, and reviews. I cant remember who I was thinking of but guys with serious cred. You know, maybe in their job theyre a professor of something or a TV personality so that they know theyll be able to market it on their own. 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. Alright, lets go back to when you were at Stanford. And in thinking that way, I realized wow, books are kinda broken on the internet. 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. I was running a dating website [before Goodreads]. Interviewee: Ah, right. Interviewee: I think it is. 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. Interviewee: Right. On his own, and then he went out an got funding. [inaudible] Id always kinda been a reader as a kid and I wanted to get back to that. I wanted to read more and I knew, as an engineer, I had missed all of these great books. Otis Chandler. I dont think it worked. In this inte. But actively working at it, getting into doing speaking events around the book, doing readings and absolutely social media, I think, is big. My process before Goodreads was that Id hear about a book somewhere and Id put it in my Amazon shopping cart. 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. 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. "My mom taught me to read with flashcards when I was 2," Chandler says. So, from that perspective, absolutely, it was life-changing. If they were Jewish, they would go to JDate. And one of the requests that I keep getting from people who watch interviews with me talking to venture backed entrepreneurs or to venture capitalists, is, they want to hear from people who built a business from nothing. [41], The website facilitates reader interactions with authors through the interviews, giveaways, authors' blogs, and profile information. Otis Chandler Founder and CEO in San Francisco Visit my company website. [Andrew Laughs] And I took a few CS classes two CS classes at standford. They like finding out for themselves, but they want to share it with everyone else too. So its not keyword based like the other ones; its book genre based. View Otis Chandler's professional profile on LinkedIn. Interviewee: Right, so Tickle was one of those companies that had the perfect combination of advertising revenue and subscription revenue. Find out a little more about them. I actually interview authors all the time, and I can see day one, when I talk to them, before their book launches they are so freakin enthusiastic. If your name is Stephanie [Myer] or Dan Brown, then theyre going to help you. You'll learn how he did it in this interview. [37] Once users have added friends to their profile, they will see their friends' shelves and reviews and can comment on friends' pages. Many of his most prized pieces had already been sold, including his 1894 Baldwin steam locomotive and his beloved Porsche 917 racecars. Goodreads is the largest website on earth for all things books. You Grok? Interviewee: I mean thats the challenge. Can you talk about that? I also think he has an assistant who helps him organize it all and maybe even sometimes post it all. [72], Both authors and readers have noted an increase in political banter, trolling, cancel culture and cyberbullying afflicting the website. I had never read Pride and Prejudice. Andrew: What about the business behind it, or how do you, alright so I can understand its fun, but if theres not as much substance to it wheres the money coming from is I guess what Im asking. 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. Thankfully the Kindle is allowing me to buy books remotely though. Goodreads often refuses to remove quotes with "likes" from an author's profile, even if the quotes are false or invalid. Theres still people doing interesting things like Tesla, etc. So its gotten a lot harder. Interviewee: Tickle had a very open policy. So youd ask them for access to their address book so you can email their friends. And two, I think Ive always kinda had the idea that I would start a company some day. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University. Donta lot of authors I think get depressed because their publisher tells them to go do signings around the nation and so they go to some Barnes & Noble store in Ohio somewhere and ten people show up to sign a book and they just get, Oh man, what am I doing in Ohio with ten people? Thats not going to move the needle anymore. But people started to get burned out on those big generic sites. Interviewee: Yeah, its looking good. [6] By July 2012, the site reported 10 million members, 20 million monthly visits, and thirty employees. In 2007, Otis Chandler developed a social network for bookworms because, rather than relying on media reviews and bestseller lists, he wanted to get reading recommendations from friends. Interviewee: No, we have a lot of book geeks but. Andrew: Alright, but, so you were taking things apart even as a kid. Heres the interview. Andrew: I got a lot of books from friends like that. We built a photo-sharing site right on the heels of Flickr. I probably said I wanted to be a mechanical engineer and build cars someday. Otis Chandler is the founder of Goodreads. [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". We built a dating site right on the heels of match.com. Goodreads has tried to address this, implementing rules such as only allowing reviewers to criticize a book itself, not author behaviour or political affiliations. Andrew: Good example, by the way. Their latest investment was Series A - BookClub on Jun 15, 2021, when BookClub raised $20M. Do you have a group on Goodreads thats like that? [38], Goodreads users can read or listen to a preview of a book on the website using Kindle Cloud Reader and Audible. Whatd you want to do when you graduated? Interviewee: I think you can and theres certainly examples of guys whove done that. How can they get their books out there? So pretty much its up to the author. No car is worth that money but I guess it is rich mans way to fill a void in their life. 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? In December 2007, the site received funding estimated at $750,000 from angel investors. A lot of engineers just like thinking about code and I can understand that, so if youre an engineer who likes just thinking about code maybe you need your left hand man who can go think about business, like you and your brother. Otis Chandler was born on November 23, 1927 in United States (78 years old). And both my grandfathers own their own companies and are successful. And by helping them I mean actively getting them into the press and spending money, marketing money, to promote the book. So am I coming up with these ideas, kind of, but really its our users who are coming up with it and saying Gee it would be really great if you did this, and I go Yeah, youre right, so its not that hard actually, you just have to listen. [3][4] In December 2007, the site had 650,000 members[5] and 10,000,000 books had been added. And it also depends on the author. They wanted more of a community. Andrew: Alright, so one of the reasons that it went viral is because people love talking about their IQs or the results of their tests, what kind of dog they were. Some authors dont get into it but go look at Paul Coelho whos a bestselling, international bestselling author and that guy in on Goodreads every day. They just want to move on with their lives. If they were black, theyd go to a black dating site. Alright, how many members do you have now? Interviewee: Its a very smart point, because if something is boring, if you sign up for a service and theres nothing for you to do until someone signs up, youre just going to leave, right? Are you a designer? And my wife and I, I kind of view my wife as my co-founder. But yeah, I think you need to be doing everything and anything you can. His books ten years ago they would just become best sellers by getting in the New York Times. Thats huge. Whether you own them or not. 478 comments. Am I reading your history properly here? (from Wikipedia) .more Combine Editions Otis Chandler's books

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