Otis graduated with a B.S. [30] Goodreads founder Otis Chandler said that "his management team would remain in place to guard the reviewing process" with the acquisition. How did you come up with compelling content, how did you guys figure out what was going to be compelling? 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? Cause I was you know, Mechanical Engineer major, and these were two mechanical engineers that wanted to build a website for mechanical engineers, and it was basically gonna be an online resource for engineers to look up metallic chart properties or various formulas that you would normally find in your textbooks, but this was just gonna be easier. And then what wins goes first, and then you try another one. 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. But it got me to learn HTML and SQL which were important, cause it got me into the web. Their latest investment was Series A - BookClub on Jun 15, 2021, when BookClub raised $20M. And I think a lot of companies dont realize that when you look at all the dumb domains out there. 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. The other person who gets me a lot of books, I guess over time, Kareem Mayan, a friend of mine has recommended a bunch of interesting books. Its all about (muffled) testing. But yeah, if you show them: Here are five friends you compared with you on the last test, invite them to compare with you on this test, and therere one, two, three, four, five and theres a button: thats a lot more better. Maybe its going to be some kind of mobile, social networking that we can all access on our iPhones. The Authors Guild called it a "truly devastating act of vertical integration" and that Amazon's "control of online bookselling approaches the insurmountable." As a young programmer in the mid-2000s, Otis Chandler watched as dozens of niche web sites began to take off. So I wanted to provide that experience around reading. Can you ever get a big enough community to make it worthwhile? [9], By July 2019, the site had 90 million members. How much of that is coming from you? 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. The site provides default bookshelvesread, currently-reading, to-readand the opportunity to create customized shelves to categorize a user's books. Users can sign up and register books to generate library catalogs and reading lists. 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. I was a Saint Bernard because Im loyal. [31], Noting that some authors had been "too aggressive in their self-promotion" (as Goodreads admitted in an email) and that some readers had responded with aggression,[32] in September 2013, Goodreads announced it would delete, without warning, reviews that threatened authors or mentioned authors' behavior. 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. And both my grandfathers own their own companies and are successful. Blogger or WordPress, whatever. Edit Personal Investments Section. Did you have shares of Tickle.com? Hes on Facebook every day. Andrew: Its all about research online. In December 2020, Goodreads deactivated API keys more than 30 days old and said it would no longer be issuing new API keys. Youll learn some of the viral techniques that Otis used to encourage his users to get their friends to join the site. You had match.com, you had americansingles.com, and eHarmony, and those are great. Mrs. 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. They wanted more of a community. A person whos an engineer who wants to develop, who wants to think about engineering problems, and not financial problems. Thanks. Andrew: Was it about the, the Was it about the businesses that were being built out of nothing that excited you? One thing I will be continuing is my podcast Books of Your Life with Elizabeth 1 reply 1 retweet 10 likes He was the fourth and final member of the Chandler family to hold the paper's top position. If we scroll through it we can find lots of different portfolios. If your name is Chris Anderson or Malcolm Gladwell theyre going to help you. So if an author wants to think of himself as an entrepreneur and get a following before he gets published, how do they do it? Andrew: Definitely, alright, well end it there. Andrew: Yeah. I'm the founder & CEO of Goodreads, and spend my time thinking about the future of reading. 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. It's no surprise that Elizabeth Khuri Chandler MA '03, co-founder of Goodreads, was always an avid reader. Its only about a week and a half old, but its pretty exciting for us. Interviewee: So, the founder, James [?] "Reading may be a solitary activity, but what you're reading and what you think of what you're reading are . 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. One of the sites we built, that photo-sharing site I mentioned, was called ringo.com. I cant imagine what the next thing is going to be. 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. I got that book for my Kindle, I love it. You were studying mechanical engineering. Is it going to increase our user retention? I guess, is it enough to go on Goodreads and create a community and create a community on Facebook? Alright, lets continue. You know, there were guys creating things and then six months later a big company would come and buy it and that guy used to live down the hall from me and holy cow. 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. Popular fantasy novelist Rin Chupeco has noted that authors from marginalized groups are often a target, and she also criticized the minimalist approach Goodreads takes to moderation, saying, "Goodreads only removes reviews that specifically target the author, but they do not do that for every book, eitherjust for the authors with big enough marketing and publicity teams to demand these removals." [25], In March 2013, Amazon made an agreement to acquire Goodreads in the second quarter of 2013 for an undisclosed sum. 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. But, you guys also did certain things to make it even more viral. They dont want the interview; they dont want to be on anywhere. 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. And wed already built it so every book has an author profile that lists the titles by that person. Social book cataloging website owned by Amazon, Learn how and when to remove this template message, published under a different name before coming out, "Amazon to Buy Social Site Dedicated to Sharing Books", "Book lovers seething over Amazon acquisition of Goodreads", "Elizabeth Khuri Chandler Tells the Origin Story of Goodreads", "Need Advice on What to Read? We allow you to actually create custom shelves. And I think for every niche now you can find a social network around that. Interviewee: Well sure, like I said, every time you had you made a friend on Tickle. [46], The Amazon Kindle Paperwhite (version 2) and Kindle Voyage feature integration with Goodreads' social network via a user interface button. So its not keyword based like the other ones; its book genre based. What can they do as authors? Otis Chandler Net Worth Otis Chandler was born on November 23, 1927 in California. Last week, O'Reilly GM and publisher Joe Wikert reviewed Goodreads' CEO Otis Chandler's TOC session, in which Chandler presented the results of a recent Goodreads readers survey.One of the interesting pieces from the survey covered the effectiveness of Goodreads reviews. And thats okay. Goodreads is basically a social network for book lovers. [52] Goodreads librarians coordinate on the Goodreads Librarian Group. 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. 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. Guys who are really in there, who were scrappy entrepreneurs. [37] Once users have added friends to their profile, they will see their friends' shelves and reviews and can comment on friends' pages. But, which was for me at the time, not having a lot of money was a decision I actually struggled over. Critics of Goodreads have considered this decision to be a form of censorship. Net income in mil. Im in Argentina can I find people who are here instead of having to get the book shipped from the US? 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. Since the second I found the Hardy Boys all the way through when I got to high school. "My mom taught me to read with flashcards when I was 2," Chandler says. So it just always seemed like something I wanted to do. And by helping them I mean actively getting them into the press and spending money, marketing money, to promote the book. Otis and Elizabeth Chandler are founders of Goodreads. Andrew: And how did he pass on what he learnt at Tickle to you? You know they had all different types and this thing went viral and this was right before I joined. He essentially mentored me into becoming more than an engineer, becoming a product manager, and by the end of Tickle, I was not just a coder, I was managing a team of ten people including marketing, design, business development and engineering, and et cetera. 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. Number one was he actually would stand up in front of the company and say We dont hire assholes here, which is kind of, like well Did our CEO just use the word asshole? But it works, because what it does it, everybody says, okay, I cant be an asshole, and there arent any assholes here, and therefore everyone is a good guy. How can I get myself to be more excited about doing that? Maybe theres the business model. Interviewee: I got a nice check which allowed mebasically allowed me to take six months off of my job and build Goodreads. He is a software engineer at heart and loves tinkering on the site to make it the best product possible. If they were Christian, theyd go to ChristianSingles. Alright how can people connect with you Otis? What to give them and what not to? [73] A form of extortion scam known as "review bombing", in which trolls post numerous 1-star ratings and poor reviews on an author's new book from different sock-puppet accounts to make the book look bad (sometimes demanding money or that the author quit Goodreads usage to stop the bad reviews from coming in), has also been widely reported as a growing form of bullying on Goodreads, targeting both traditional and self-published authors. So I just sat in my living room and I decided to learn Ruby on Rails and code this idea. How can they get their books out there? I had never read all these classics that I knew were really good. Thank you Otis. They were too serious. I want to get into Goodreads and how you came up with the idea and how you built it up but lets go a little bit more back story. Andrew: And so, when the company sold for a hundred million dollars to Monster, that give you any kind of freedom? He said, Ill teach you everything in two days. And I did major in mechanical engineering and I liked it a lot. Alright, lets go back to when you were at Stanford. Youll learn how he did it in this interview. Which were very passionate about. If they were Christian, theyd go to ChristianSingles. Maybe after six years of an intense startup I was burned out. 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 . Its still very young. 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. Well, Ive got a guy whos done it. And what I noticed about dating was that you had big generic social networks. And in early January I finally switched the name from the z to the s so we looked a little more official and worked out a lot of the initial bugs. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. He says he loves Good Reads, he loves the community on there, and he wonders what youre going to do to get authors more engaged. And in thinking that way, I realized wow, books are kinda broken on the internet. As a young programmer in the mid-2000s, Otis Chandler watched as dozens of niche web sites began to take off. 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. ", "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. 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? 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. The design. Whereas mechanical engineering you werent going to be able to do as much on your own. Did you run a bunch of different quizzes, and then that ones that did you test a bunch of different quizzes and only run widely those that worked well, or did you have some other system to figure out what was compelling? That gave his business enough traction to raise money from investors and take his business to over 2.6 million members. Goodreads founder Otis Chandler said that "his management team would remain in place to guard the reviewing process" with the acquisition. Interviewee: Yeah, I had basic stock options. Andrew: How are they doing that? [42] By 2011, "seventeen thousand authors, including James Patterson and Margaret Atwood" used Goodreads to advertise.[4]. Andrew: How expensive was it? 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. The first few pages are written in a glitzy, sophomoric style that is grating. See each portfolio image, in big. And this is very similar to the Facebook self-serve product or the MySpace self-serve product. So we allowed the authors to kind of take over their author profile. The website's offices are located in San Francisco. Many of his most prized pieces had already been sold, including his 1894 Baldwin steam locomotive and his beloved Porsche 917 racecars. Andrew: I remember one of the things we talked about, you spoke at a live Mixergy event about how to build virility into your product and you said that when a user registers youd ask them for their friends immediately, right? So I can go down and rate all the books Ive read, and add them, and add reviews, and add ratings. No, I get those emails from you. It depends on, again, on the book. I dont think it worked. Goodreads is the largest website on earth for all things books. But even talking about the people whove moved on, it was a really special culture. 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. I think if you go back and look at my app. Otis Chandler is the founder of Goodreads. Before founding Goodreads, Otis was a Software Engineer and Product Manager at Tickle.com. Interviewee: Did he use Goodreads books blog? 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. Thats the hard part of being down here in Buenos Aires. Otis Chandler is the founder of Goodreads.com. But thats the top two percent of authors that publishers are going to be helping them. My mom knew to give me a broken VCR rather than throw it out. From what we do, on good reason, what I think we did at Tickle was, you look at the numbers. I dont know that I can point anything else out. Which means a lot of things, but most people get a lot of value out of, from keeping track of what theyve read. Very nice looking car but I like the one that is in the Otis Chandler collection.It is also one of the 1 converts built. Andrew: Yeah. For a lot of people, this is when things started to go downhill, and it's hard to argue against that. 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