Otis and Elizabeth Chandler are founders of Goodreads. [30] Goodreads founder Otis Chandler said that "his management team would remain in place to guard the reviewing process" with the acquisition. In this inte. Andrew: You also said that you want to make it so that they feel a need constantly, maybe not constantly, but frequently to keep bringing their friends in. Now he gets the same write-up and nothing happens. And while much of this might seem like nothing more than petty playground behavior between children who honestly do not have a clear good guy or bad guy, keep in mind that several e-book retailers incorporate the Goodreads' API into their sales pages, effectively posting book reviews that many in the Goodreads community know to be false, and nothing more than an act of revenge against an author; real-world sales decisions have been made by consumers based on these reviews. 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. Thanks Otis. So I realized that a niche social network around reading, much like a social network around photos, would probably work. Announced Date 68 SS427 Chevelle 5.3 LS 84mm Billet Turbo Okay, so thats where you came up with the idea. So suddenly we were just being mentioned in all these blogs. 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. Can you talk about some of the things that you did over at, and for the transcribers its tickle.com T-I-C-K-L-E.com, can you talk about some of the viral techniques that you used there? But its not social and so coming from this [inaudible] testing we also built a social network right on the heels of Friendster. The site provides default bookshelvesread, currently-reading, to-readand the opportunity to create customized shelves to categorize a user's books. . 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. Him on everywhere else? [56][57][58], In January 2012, Goodreads switched from using Amazon's public Product Advertising API for book metadata (such as title, author, and number of pages) to book wholesaler Ingram. The website allows individuals to freely search Goodreads' extensive user-populated database of books, annotations, and reviews. Because theyre so let down by how little attention theyve gotten from their publishing company. Howd you come up with the idea? Interviewee: I mean thats the challenge. was an HBS guy Harvard Business School guy and he got inspired when he watched his classmates take the [?] And they had little rings of blogs where Ive got my ten blog roll, front book blogs on the side and every time they read a book theyd write a blog post. 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. But without much fanfare -- or outside funding -- he built his community of booklovers to 650,000 members. And thats when we went from five users a day to 100 users a day and then kept going up from there. Without much fanfare or outside funding he built his community of booklovers to 650,000 members. A person whos an engineer who wants to develop, who wants to think about engineering problems, and not financial problems. Tweet. [13] Chandler and Khuri both grew up in California. No, I get those emails from you. Chandler family $4.2B 2015 America's Richest Families Net Worth as of 7/1/15 About Chandler family Some 200 heirs with at least 20 different surnames are benefiting from clerk Harry. efundit that was the first, the first company that you worked on that was online, right? 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. And we can even narrow it by budget. Interviewee: Well, the other caveat is that we launched it in the US only. You didnt have to go about marketing it yourself. Andrew: Now onto Dave [Yaniks] question. So we can really decide if this is the right company for us. 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. But, you guys also did certain things to make it even more viral. Profile Name: Otis Chandler Age: 31 Company: Goodreads.com Title: CEO and president First job: Ranch hand in Montana Bookselling in the future will be "all about using the Internet and free e . In 2012, after a receiving a poor review on her novel The Selection, author Kiera Cass encouraged her Twitter followers to "knock [the review] off" the front page of Goodreads' section on the book. After university Chandler initially worked as a programmer in on-line businesses,[11] including dating sites,[12] and Khuri Chandler as a journalist. 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. If they were Christian, theyd go to ChristianSingles. So, can you tell people what Goodreads is? So much depends on being able to get stuff done, and engineers are the only guys who can get stuff done, so yeah, they have a lot of power in todays internet company. But if the authors not into it, its not going to work. [33] As of April 2020, the site's guidelines still state that "reviews that are predominantly about an author's behavior and not about the book will be deleted. Otis Chandler was the publisher of the Los Angeles Times between 1960 and 1980, leading a large expansion of the newspaper and its ambitions. 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. "[34], In January 2016, Amazon announced that it would shut down Shelfari in favor of Goodreads, effective March 16, 2016. 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. Users can add each other as "Friends", enabling them to share reviews, posts, book recommendations, and messages. Thanks for liking this post. He is from USA. I never give up my books after I fall in love with them. You know, for pretty much every ethnicity, every race, every sports activity, anything you can figure that you can create a community around there was a dating site for that. [10], Goodreads founders Otis Chandler and Elizabeth Khuri Chandler first met while studying at Stanford (Engineering and English respectively). 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. 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. Andrew: Before we get started, I want to introduce you to Haystack. 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. How can they get their books out there? [14], Goodreads was founded in 2006. 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. 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. 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. Maybe we can afford a down payment on a house, in East Bay. Eventually, it gained attention through the media such as Mashable and other various blogs. Or if its you but youre not good at thinking about the business side I think engineers like myself, who can think about the business side and the engineering side, are kind of rare, and I dont know why that is. If you havent heard of Otis Chandler its because he spends more time coding his site, Goodreads.com, than promoting himself. 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. You were studying mechanical engineering. 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. They can go to Goodreads.com, they can add you over there right? 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? And these guys just picked us up like crazy because it was essentially what they wanted to do only better. Interviewee: Heh, right. (from Wikipedia) .more Combine Editions Otis Chandler's books Andrew: Can I find people locally to swap books with? You know, today we have Goodreads for books and we have Flickster for movies and we have Netflix and we have LastFM for music. Which were very passionate about. They finally have written a book, its going to be out there, people are going to know their name. Goodreads has a presence on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and other social networking sites. And then what wins goes first, and then you try another one. You know theyd spend half a work day going down memory lane, all the books I read in junior high, all the books I read in high school, and its a kind of fun process to go through actually. Hundreds of dollars? Hey everyone, its Andrew Warner, founder of Mixergy.com, home of the ambition upstart. You know they had all different types and this thing went viral and this was right before I joined. 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. But even talking about the people whove moved on, it was a really special culture. Interviewee: For one, I didnt feel like getting another job. 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. There are settings available, as well, to allow Goodreads to post straight to a social networking account, which informs, e.g., Facebook friends, what one is reading or how one rated a book. You Grok? Thank you Otis. Please enter your email address to continue, Create products people want (By building in increments), LeadPages founder on why you should be embarrassed by your first launch, How a list nerd grew Ranker.com to 27,000,000 monthly visitors. I had never read all these classics that I knew were really good. Thanks. And it also depends on the author. And Goodreads allows you to keep all of the books youve ever read. You know, today we have Goodreads for books and we have Flickster for movies and we have Netflix and we have LastFM for music. Otis graduated with a B.S. And I did major in mechanical engineering and I liked it a lot. Chandler continued running Goodreads until 2019. Theyre so let down by how people arent paying attention to their book in the world. 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. And it turns out that most problems in mechanical engineering are pretty solved. Thats huge. I think the trick is going back to what you said in the beginning, its having the rock star engineers. Interviewee: Definitely. So its kind of fun like that. Many of his most prized pieces had already been sold, including his 1894 Baldwin steam locomotive and his beloved Porsche 917 racecars. What to give them and what not to? Youll see why picking the right name when you launch your company is so important. Interviewee: Right, sure. You have no friends who are discussing this right now, add some friends. Interviewee: Well, I guess all of it, but I cant take credit for all of it because the way we develop is we built something that we thought people would like and we listen to them. His soon-to-be-wife Elizabeth joined the project, and. You know, a kind of a virtual shelf to show off and that ends up being very good for book discovery, you know, book communication with your friends. Their publishing company about marketing it yourself funding he built his community of to. Give up my books after I fall in love with them gained attention through the such. Business School guy and he got inspired when he watched his classmates take the?! Up with the idea have written a book, its andrew Warner, founder of Mixergy.com home., Goodreads was founded in 2006 such as Mashable and other various blogs I never give up my books I. 10 ], Goodreads founders Otis Chandler its because he spends more time coding site. 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