Number of Investments 2. View Otis Chandler's professional profile on LinkedIn. You know, today we have Goodreads for books and we have Flickster for movies and we have Netflix and we have LastFM for music. Interviewee: I got a nice check which allowed mebasically allowed me to take six months off of my job and build Goodreads. 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. [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. Interviewee: Yeah, I had basic stock options. 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. 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. 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. 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. [3][4] In December 2007, the site had 650,000 members[5] and 10,000,000 books had been added. You know, theres still challenges. Several members of the Goodreads team are single and dating in . How can they get their books out there? You can spend hours on there. Did you code it all up yourself in the beginning? That they should see that the place doesnt feel as good, doesnt feel as comfortable without as many friends on it. Not Mixergy. You know, if you wrote a book aboutI cant come up with a good example. 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. 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. So shes really been into the product and we kind of view it as both of ours a little bit. So, from that perspective, absolutely, it was life-changing. [70] You didnt have to go about marketing it yourself. 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. Hes on Facebook every day. But, you guys also did certain things to make it even more viral. [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]. Andrew: Was it about the, the Was it about the businesses that were being built out of nothing that excited you? [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. Interviewee: I did. Otis Chandler Net Worth Otis Chandler was born on November 23, 1927 in California. 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. Goodreads often refuses to remove quotes with "likes" from an author's profile, even if the quotes are false or invalid. Interviewee: I think it is. To get me to take the mindset of yeah okay, I can take a year off and not go on salary and build something for my living room, that was essentially life-changing. In this inte. And our difference is clearly that, because we know what books people like, we target on book genres not on keywords. Sign In http://www.twitter.com/otown https://www.goodreads.com/otis Otis's favorite books More Otis's Bookshelves read (577) 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. 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. As a young programmer in the mid-2000s, Otis Chandler watched as dozens of niche web sites began to take off. 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 . There were mixed reactions from Goodreads users, at the time totaling 16 million members. US . [10], Goodreads founders Otis Chandler and Elizabeth Khuri Chandler first met while studying at Stanford (Engineering and English respectively). 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. 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. So suddenly we were just being mentioned in all these blogs. 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 read one of them once and I was like man, I bet there are so many of these great books that I never got to. Like everything else we do at Goodreads, KINDLR was a passion project from start to finish. I was a Saint Bernard because Im loyal. I dont know. 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? And I think a lot of companies dont realize that when you look at all the dumb domains out there. 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. And thats okay. 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. Goodreads is the largest website on earth for all things books. You had match.com, you had americansingles.com, and eHarmony, and those are great. Interviewee: Probably not. 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. efundit that was the first, the first company that you worked on that was online, right? Goodreads felt Amazon's requirements for using its API were too restrictive, and the combination of Ingram, the Library of Congress, and other sources would be more flexible. Maybe after six years of an intense startup I was burned out. So now people, I mean our groups are amazing now, we have book clubs that have thousands of people in them that read two books a month. Before founding Goodreads, Otis was a Software Engineer and Product Manager at Tickle.com. 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. Interviewee: I had an absolutely horrible design at first and then I had one of the Tickle designers, friend of mine, do the design and he was really good. 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. So its not keyword based like the other ones; its book genre based. Andrew: Definitely, alright, well end it there. 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. So weve got that for authors. I'm the founder & CEO of Goodreads, and spend my time thinking about the future of reading. It did not give me much more than that. So its gotten a lot harder. Otis Chandler has made 2 investments. So I just sat in my living room and I decided to learn Ruby on Rails and code this idea. Number two, well give you a way to connect with him on Twitter. 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? Andrew: Go find someone instead of trying to become that person if youre not, dont try to do what Otis did. So we were really shocked when we were trying to do anything that was going on that wasnt working. 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. This episode of How I Built This was produced by Casey Herman and edited by Neva Grant. Alright, lets continue. Theyre so let down by how people arent paying attention to their book in the world. How do you like it? (from Wikipedia) .more Combine Editions Otis Chandler's books 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. "Reading may be a solitary activity, but what you're reading and what you think of what you're reading are . And you just track as much as you can and then better it. Now its really easy to put down a hundred bucks and see, hey do I get any traction, and Go ahead. Interviewee: First, Ive always been a reader. Whether you own them or not. So youd ask them for access to their address book so you can email their friends. [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. They can also create their own groups of book suggestions, surveys, polls, blogs, and discussions. And I see Dave Yank, whos watching the slide has got a question. Im in Argentina can I find people who are here instead of having to get the book shipped from the US? Tweet. Otis Chandler was the publisher of the Los Angeles Times between 1960 and 1980, leading a large expansion of the newspaper and its ambitions. Interviewee: Definitely. [46], The Amazon Kindle Paperwhite (version 2) and Kindle Voyage feature integration with Goodreads' social network via a user interface button. Do you think you couldve learned it so quickly? Research help from Claire Murashima. And what I noticed about dating was that you had big generic social networks. We built a dating site right on the heels of match.com. Andrew: Yeah, its still true today though, right? In December 2020, Goodreads deactivated API keys more than 30 days old and said it would no longer be issuing new API keys. So, if the product is going to be viral it has to be useful, more useful if there are friends then if there are not. So, everywhere on the site you go we dont show you like book reviews about Harry Potter, we show you heres what your friends thought of Harry Potter, and we show you heres what everybody else thought of Harry Potter. But instead of copying the leader if we can just niche it out and come up with the Jewish version of it or the runner version of it. I mean I was totally the kid that disassembled every mechanical piece in our house when I was young. Amazon & Goodreads; Education. The scion of the wealthy Chandler family who took over the Los Angeles Times and transformed it into a nationally respected publication. Shes loving that line that you said, Ill teach you everything about business school in two days. I love it too Big Space. So, can you tell people what Goodreads is? And Im no author. Andrew: I mean you personally. Goodreads features a rating system of one to five stars, with the option of accompanying the rating with a written review. Thank you Otis. 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. [?] Any good social network does that well. [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". In December 2007, the site received funding estimated at $750,000 from angel investors. 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. You had match.com, you had americansingles.com, and eHarmony, and those are great. Well, Ive got a guy whos done it. Thanks for liking this post. Find out a little more about them. 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. Otis Chandler is the founder of Goodreads. What did you do to make it more interesting for people until their friends came on? 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. You know, it kind of seemed like it was the wild west where you could actually create real things from nothing. Alright how can people connect with you Otis? 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. 160,000 social networks or something like that? And this is very similar to the Facebook self-serve product or the MySpace self-serve product. Interviewee: What else did we do? What else did you do that was different and that helped spur on virility? Once a week, someone would stand up from one department (unclear) or somebody else would kind of give an inside into the business. So that was my realization. So for some perspective, it used to be, say maybe 20 years ago, all you had to do as an author was write a book, hand it to your publisher, they would take it do their thing, youd get a check, youd go back to writing the next one. So that was the big lesson, serious is good but fun is viral. [30] Goodreads founder Otis Chandler said that "his management team would remain in place to guard the reviewing process" with the acquisition. But, it turns out I graduated in 2000 and there was this whole dot com bubble going on. I emailed Kareem and I said I love your reviewer, I love the book that you talked about. He talked about a book that talked about Ryanair, I forget the name of the book, and he said, Dude, Ill send it to you.. Andrew: Okay, and howd you figure out that Goodreads was going to be the vehicle? And it turns out that most problems in mechanical engineering are pretty solved. [41], The website facilitates reader interactions with authors through the interviews, giveaways, authors' blogs, and profile information. What about groups? [40] Goodreads organizes offline opportunities as well, such as in-person book exchanges and "literary pub crawls". 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. They just want to move on with their lives. One thing I will be continuing is my podcast Books of Your Life with Elizabeth 1 reply 1 retweet 10 likes And then I think in mid-January Mashable picked us up. If your name is Stephanie [Myer] or Dan Brown, then theyre going to help you. So realitys about making things really dead simple for the user. But people started to get burned out on those big generic sites. After university Chandler initially worked as a programmer in on-line businesses,[11] including dating sites,[12] and Khuri Chandler as a journalist. Andrew: Okay, great. It depends on, again, on the book. Are you a designer? Otis Chandler is the founder of Goodreads.com. Thats actually one thing publishers look for in an author, is do they have a way to market it? 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. And then we kind of got into this blog phenomenon. Weve got I think over 8,000 published authors whove signed up and said I am this person. No, I get those emails from you. It had a news feed before Facebook did. Or the most hardcore booklovers. [74], In early 2021, Amazon removed all new and used copies of William Luther Pierce's white supremacist novel The Turner Diaries from sales on its platform and subsidiary platforms, citing concerns with the QAnon movement as the cause. 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. X. . 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. [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. 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? You'll learn how he did it in this interview. 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. If they were Christian, theyd go to ChristianSingles. The design. Andrew: And so, when the company sold for a hundred million dollars to Monster, that give you any kind of freedom? I guess, is it enough to go on Goodreads and create a community and create a community on Facebook? 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? My process before Goodreads was that Id hear about a book somewhere and Id put it in my Amazon shopping cart. [72], Both authors and readers have noted an increase in political banter, trolling, cancel culture and cyberbullying afflicting the website. Andrew: Alright. Theres still people doing interesting things like Tesla, etc. Youll learn some of the viral techniques that Otis used to encourage his users to get their friends to join the site. So that was number one, we were really good at creating compelling content and we had a whole staff of writers to create these fun tests and innovate on that, and then the second step of viral is let people send it to their friends and so we worked as hard as we could on that. Andrew: Im going to save that for Mixergy.com. Heres the interview. Mrs. Its kind of like what Tickle provided, you kind of get to look back at yourself and think like, man what was I like in junior high, what did I read? Thats huge. Interviewee: I think you can and theres certainly examples of guys whove done that. Can you talk about that? Interviewee: Right. 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. So then they started going to these niche sites. Interviewee: Well, the other caveat is that we launched it in the US only. We built a photo-sharing site right on the heels of Flickr. You dont have to be a published author to do this. 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.
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