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. They were too serious. We built a photo-sharing site right on the heels of Flickr. And yet, a funny thing that he said about business school: He said Dont go to business school, and you go James, you went to business school. Ten years after Goodreads was founded by Otis Chandler and his wife, Elizabeth Khuri Chandler, and four years after its acquisition by Amazon, the online social reading . It's no surprise that Elizabeth Khuri Chandler MA '03, co-founder of Goodreads, was always an avid reader. And plus its more fun for me because I get to discover books, etc. If its not you focus on the part of the business that you know and get a rock star engineer. Its position was see your friends photos. 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. 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. Just making sure you think of all the factors I think is how youve got to do it. Were you also building or creating little businesses as a kid? 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. The first few pages are written in a glitzy, sophomoric style that is grating. And Good Reads it was obvious. You were studying mechanical engineering. Maybe after six years of an intense startup I was burned out. Interviewee: Right, sure. 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. And not work. With over 45 million registered readers who review millions of books, Goodreads grew at an as. Members can receive the regular newsletter featuring new books, suggestions, author interviews, and poetry. 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. [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. Or the most hardcore booklovers. 478 comments. Goodreads features a rating system of one to five stars, with the option of accompanying the rating with a written review. "[34], In January 2016, Amazon announced that it would shut down Shelfari in favor of Goodreads, effective March 16, 2016. Even if you get published by Harper Collins or Manninghouse, great theyre going to put your book in the Barnes & Noble store but, theyre not going to market beyond that. Goodreads has tried to address this, implementing rules such as only allowing reviewers to criticize a book itself, not author behaviour or political affiliations. . 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. Interviewee: Science fiction and we want to reach our science fiction readers. Andrew: And hes a huge author with a huge following and a great track record and hes still out there hustling, selling, connecting, building his audience every day. [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. 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. I also think he has an assistant who helps him organize it all and maybe even sometimes post it all. Otis Chandler is the co-founder and CEO of Goodreads.com. [51], Goodreads librarians improve book information on the website, including editing book and author information and adding cover images. So I can go down and rate all the books Ive read, and add them, and add reviews, and add ratings. Reply Quote. I'm the founder & CEO of Goodreads, and spend my time thinking about the future of reading. We can click over here and we can say three to ten thousand dollars is our budget and find it, companies that can do the work at that price. The idea came about when Otis Chandler was browsing through his friend's bookshelf. Chandler continued running Goodreads until 2019. Fortunately the book straightens out into a well-researched and well-written history of LA, the LAT and the Chandler/Otis families. Andrew: Alright, and you talked about compelling content. So pretty much its up to the author. Otis graduated with a B.S. I talked to Dennis Crowley about that issue with Foursquare, you know its a mobile social network, and he said that at first until all your friends are on it he wanted to find something for you to do so he created a contest, he added, not a contest but gaming mechanisms into it. So giving users the ability to do that means you can use it without your friends being on there. His soon-to-be-wife Elizabeth joined the project, and they slowly built a followingwithout an office, a business model, or a single employee. Or do what Ning did and allow people to create small niches. It depends on, again, on the book. Otis Chandler is the most interesting person in the book, a driven, hollow man. The Authors Guild called it a "truly devastating act of vertical integration" and that Amazon's "control of online bookselling approaches the insurmountable." Interviewee: Definitely. So we were really shocked when we were trying to do anything that was going on that wasnt working. 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. 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 . Otis Chandler was born on November 23, 1927 in United States (78 years old). So, from that perspective, absolutely, it was life-changing. 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: I think you can and theres certainly examples of guys whove done that. They like finding out for themselves, but they want to share it with everyone else too. Without much fanfare or outside funding he built his community of booklovers to 650,000 members. [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. And this is very similar to the Facebook self-serve product or the MySpace self-serve product. Like everything else we do at Goodreads, KINDLR was a passion project from start to finish. [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. Mark (unclear) was here, and I asked him if hed recommend business school to other people and he said No, theres so many better ways to waste your money than that. I should have gone for Mix Energy or Mix Synergy. We have estimated Otis Chandler's net worth, money, salary, income, and assets. 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? Dave, Im going to ask your question in a little bit when we get deeper into Goodreads, but if anyone else has questions like Dave does, just punch them into twitter with the word mixergy and Ill see them. Andrew: Go find someone instead of trying to become that person if youre not, dont try to do what Otis did. Hes on Facebook every day. Goodreads founder Otis Chandler said that "his management team would remain in place to guard the reviewing process" with the acquisition. But the remainder of his collection, some 50 cars and 40 . 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. View Otis Chandler's professional profile on LinkedIn. You can get real time feedback about something you write. But even talking about the people whove moved on, it was a really special culture. 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. He is from USA. 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. But actively working at it, getting into doing speaking events around the book, doing readings and absolutely social media, I think, is big. 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. Okay, so thats where you came up with the idea. See each portfolio image, in big. Got up to 600, let me see if I got the number right, 650,000 members. Any good social network does that well. 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? What can they do as authors? Youll learn how he did it in this interview. 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. In December 2007, the site received funding estimated at $750,000 from angel investors. [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. Net income in mil. [6] By July 2012, the site reported 10 million members, 20 million monthly visits, and thirty employees. [6] This funding lasted Goodreads until 2009, when Goodreads received two million dollars from True Ventures. And maybe every couple months Id empty my Amazon shopping cart. Its all about stats, right. Yeah, you guys do. 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. So suddenly we were just being mentioned in all these blogs. Or even the Google AdWords self-serve product in that its cost-per-click based. Interviewee: Tickle had a very open policy. Interviewee: I think it is. Im in Argentina can I find people who are here instead of having to get the book shipped from the US? No car is worth that money but I guess it is rich mans way to fill a void in their life. 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. One thing I will be continuing is my podcast Books of Your Life with Elizabeth 1 reply 1 retweet 10 likes My wife is something of a writer but Im not and so I dont want to tell anybody how to write. What was the plan? Did you have shares of Tickle.com? 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? Which means a lot of things, but most people get a lot of value out of, from keeping track of what theyve read. In this inte. So realitys about making things really dead simple for the user. . Number three when I finally come back to the US you can come out to a Mixergy event to see him in person. 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. "[22], As of 2012, membership was required to use but free. 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. 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