As a young programmer in the mid-2000s, Otis Chandler watched as dozens of niche web sites began to take off. But people started to get burned out on those big generic sites. Work. They just want to move on with their lives. 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. That has that kind of community? 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. But people started to get burned out on those big generic sites. [67] Goodreads has also fallen under criticism from users who feel that the site is outdated and prone to frequent crashes and bugs, and that the recommendations are poor, frequently suggesting popular books at random rather than anything more personalized. 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. If you havent heard of Otis Chandler its because he spends more time coding his site, Goodreads.com, than promoting himself. If theres a company that were interested in we can quickly scroll through a bunch of their work and see whether we like them or not. I never give up my books after I fall in love with them. I had never read all these classics that I knew were really good. 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. Hes talking to fans and hes got big followings on all those services. The band can have a profile and show off their music and their events. 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. 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. And what I noticed about dating was that you had big generic social networks. Interviewee: Well, the other caveat is that we launched it in the US only. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University. Komunitas Goodreads sebenarnya adalah komunitas baca internasional yang digagas Otis Chandler pada tahun 2006. Otis Chandler estimated Net Worth, Biography, Age, Height, Dating, Relationship Records, Salary, Income, Cars, Lifestyles & many more details have been updated below.Let's check, How Rich is Otis Chandler in 2019-2020? 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. 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. I cant believe I struggled over it because now its a no-brainer. You know, today we have Goodreads for books and we have Flickster for movies and we have Netflix and we have LastFM for music. The collection of former Los Angeles Times publisher Otis Chandler evolved over the years along with the interests of the man, from classics and motorcycles to muscle cars and racing Porsches. Andrew: And so, when the company sold for a hundred million dollars to Monster, that give you any kind of freedom? 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. It just seemed like there was a lot more innovation going on. Youll learn how he did it in this interview. [38], Goodreads users can read or listen to a preview of a book on the website using Kindle Cloud Reader and Audible. Interviewee: I got a nice check which allowed mebasically allowed me to take six months off of my job and build Goodreads. 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. So I kind of already had it segregated that way at home. So if you took a 40 question test about your personality wed give you one page about what it meant for free and then wed give you 15 pages about deep psychological analysis coming from our PhD psychologist about what exactly it means for your personality and how you can improve your life, and we would actually sale those for between $4.99 to $9.99 depending on the test so there was a little bit of direct consumer revenue there. Goodreads publicly posted its review guidelines in August 2012 to address these issues. What about groups? That was huge did you guys do anything like that? And I think it has. Linked in, I think. 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. 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. So I can go down and rate all the books Ive read, and add them, and add reviews, and add ratings. 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. The design. Chandler is a descendant of the publisher of the Los Angeles Times; Otis Chandler. You'll learn how he did it in this interview. And these guys just picked us up like crazy because it was essentially what they wanted to do only better. So, I mean, first of all it depends on the content of the book. Number two, well give you a way to connect with him on Twitter. And this is very similar to the Facebook self-serve product or the MySpace self-serve product. You know the Sci-Fi and Fantasy group on Goodreads is one of my favorites, those guys are just amazing, and theres so much discussion going on, and theres so much excitement going around all the books that people are reading. Andrew: Do you think you couldve learned it if you didnt have an engineering background? The idea came about when Otis Chandler was browsing through his friend's bookshelf. Goodreads is the largest website on earth for all things books. Research help from Claire Murashima. You can spend hours on there. [72], Both authors and readers have noted an increase in political banter, trolling, cancel culture and cyberbullying afflicting the website. So then they started going to these niche sites. Andrew: Alright, and you talked about compelling content. Yea, that was what got me into the web. Interviewee: Heh, right. So then they started going to these niche sites. I think the trick is going back to what you said in the beginning, its having the rock star engineers. 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.. You know I was talking to one of my favorite authors, Steven [Pressfield] who told me that exact thing. Better even than many of the business classes that I took at NYU. I was running a dating website [before Goodreads]. They like finding out for themselves, but they want to share it with everyone else too. Like about 10% of our users went kind of nuts and would add everything theyve ever read. Personal Investments. So we were really shocked when we were trying to do anything that was going on that wasnt working. Thank you Otis. "[34], In January 2016, Amazon announced that it would shut down Shelfari in favor of Goodreads, effective March 16, 2016. You didnt have to go about marketing it yourself. 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 scion of the wealthy Chandler family who took over the Los Angeles Times and transformed it into a nationally respected publication. Thats actually one thing publishers look for in an author, is do they have a way to market it? 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. Reply Quote. Fortunately the book straightens out into a well-researched and well-written history of LA, the LAT and the Chandler/Otis families. Then I read your review of it and you said, This guy can write. Youre a great reviewer by the way. I love that, I love the clever thinking, the clever business thinking, behind Goodreads. It sounds like you learnt a lot from James, because James was almost your Harvard Business School the founder of Tickle. But actively working at it, getting into doing speaking events around the book, doing readings and absolutely social media, I think, is big. Thank you. 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. Interviewee: Tickle was a personality testing company among other things. 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. As a young programmer in the mid-2000s, Otis Chandler watched as dozens of niche web sites began to take off. Thats the hard part of being down here in Buenos Aires. Otis Chandler Founder and CEO in San Francisco Visit my company website. 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 was all about learning how you build the product. 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. Theyre so let down by how people arent paying attention to their book in the world. Andrew: Why did you decide to start your own company instead of going and looking for another great company to work in? 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? 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 website's offices are located in San Francisco. 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. What was the plan? 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. [13] Chandler and Khuri both grew up in California. Beyond that, publishers do not have budgets to help market their titles. Interviewee: Groups work really well. Its position was see your friends photos. And it actually launched under Goodreadz.com with a z. Andrew: Good example, by the way. You know you basically take fifteen questions and you learn about yourself a little bit and at the end you get typed into one type. Ning has built like what? So it turns out what had been going on, people who had this desire to share their thoughts about books, they had all been using blogs. Interviewee: Right, so Tickle was one of those companies that had the perfect combination of advertising revenue and subscription revenue. 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. No, I get those emails from you. And Im no author. [37] Once users have added friends to their profile, they will see their friends' shelves and reviews and can comment on friends' pages. But it got me to learn HTML and SQL which were important, cause it got me into the web. Otis Chandler is the founder of Goodreads. Is the audio coming in? Andrew: Its all about research online. 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. 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. Andrew: How are they doing that? Its only about a week and a half old, but its pretty exciting for us. So shes really been into the product and we kind of view it as both of ours a little bit. Haystack is where you are going to find the right web designer for your next project. The book misses some opportunities to delve deeper into . And plus its more fun for me because I get to discover books, etc. Hes on Facebook every day. 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.". 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? It had a news feed before Facebook did. [26][27][28] Amazon had previously purchased the competitor Shelfari in 2008,[29] with the Goodreads purchase "stunning" the book industry. One thing I will be continuing is my podcast Books of Your Life with Elizabeth 1 reply 1 retweet 10 likes I think if you go back and look at my app. Like everything else we do at Goodreads, KINDLR was a passion project from start to finish. Otis adalah pemilik perusahaan penerbitan di Amerika Serikat yang juga menerbitkan Los Angeles Times. Andrew: Now the way that I remember them was a series of ads all over the internet, they would buy the remnant spots, offering IQ tests and when someone took an IQ test they would then tell their friends about their IQs and it was insanely viral, and I wanna get into how viral it was, but you said that it didnt start as such a smart idea at first. [36], On the Goodreads website, users can add books to their personal bookshelves, rate and review books, see what their friends and authors are reading, participate in discussion boards and groups on a variety of topics, and get suggestions for future reading choices based on their reviews of previously read books. This episode of How I Built This was produced by Casey Herman and edited by Neva Grant. Interviewee: Probably not. Blogger or WordPress, whatever. So now you can create a custom shelf and put all the books you want into it. 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." Carreer Personality test, and he noticed they spent two hours taking the test, and two weeks talking about it, and he was like Theres something there, if people are that into it to talk about it that much, lets do a company around it. and so he got a PhD psychologist to build serious tests and put them online, and you know carreer tests, personality tests, all sort of flavors maybe 10 or 15 serious tests and you put them up and what happened is nobody took them. 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. 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. 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? 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. His net worth has been growing significantly in 2021-2022. Okay, so thats where you came up with the idea. [14], Goodreads was founded in 2006. They can go to Goodreads.com, they can add you over there right? He had a number of good things about him. So weve got that for authors. And I could see social networking was probably going to do the same. [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]. I actually found a dating site once for people who golf. 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. Interviewee: I cant answer that as well because I cant take credit for doing that part. See each portfolio image, in big. Can you ever get a big enough community to make it worthwhile? [9], By July 2019, the site had 90 million members. Its good. He said, Ill teach you everything in two days. 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