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Goodreads Wants To Fill Your Bookshelf With Its Social Book Discovery Site

I am loving these new make-reading-easy-and-fun sites and apps I keep discovering such as foboko–a platform to download, create and discover eBooks from independent and inspiring authors–and unglue.it, the site that’s bringing free e-books to the masses. Goodreads is another site helping bookworms and casual readers discover and recommend books to their friends and the world. You can join a book club and even answer trivia questions.

 

 

Here are the characters of the Goodread story, and an updated epilogue of site’s going-ons.

 

Otis Chandler and the Hardy Boys

Otis Chandler was in second grade when he discovered the Hardy Boys series, kicking off his love for books. This fire for leisurely reads as well as brain growing lit, ignited an idea.

 

For Otis, reading book recommendations on Amazon was helpful in some ways, but he thought of an even better way to discover books. While he was scanning a friend’s bookshelf one day hey realized that recommendations from friends were much more helpful to him and most of his friends than bestseller lists.

 

 

In 2007, with his Mechanical Engineering degree from Stanford as well as experience over at Tickle.com and Monster Worldwide in tow, he launched Goodreads.com to help other readers search, share and discover new books.

 

Fun fact- Otis is the grandson of legendary LA Times editor Otis Chandler. Publication is in his blood.

 

Otis Chandler took charge of a paper that for decades had generated almost as much ridicule as revenue and transformed it into one of the best newspapers in the country.

 

The Co-Founder Wife

Elizabeth Khuri Chandler met Otis at Stanford where she received a B.A. in English. The two launched the site soon after they got engaged in 2006. She is currently the editor-in-chief of the sites newsletter that is circulated to 9 million users.

 

 

Goodreads is on a mission

The site hopes to help people share and discover their favorite books and helping to improve reading and learning in the world along the way.

 

The site allows you to see what you’re friends are reading and also create a “bookshelf” of your own to display what you’ve already read as well as books you want to read. You can even create book clubs on the site.

 

Recently, the site has hit its 10 million-user mark, with a catalogue that’s claimed to include 360 million books (360 million books people!) and 22 million unique visitors to the site a month.

 

 

Goodreads’ Epilogue

Otis says the site is working on allowing users to update their book recommendations as they’re reading (instead of just after they finish) so others can track how the read is going. The site also hopes to integrate their book club forming featuring with Facebook.

 

Oh yes, and the team is putting their feet up and snuggling with their favorite novels in a new 6,000 sq. ft. office in San Francisco.

I’m not a bestseller kind of chick (except when it’s Hunger Games, then I’m all over it), so this site is excellent. I just picked up an absolutely extraordinary book from my boy Sterling who highly recommended it–Tom Robbins’ Skinny Legs And All. Goodreads recs are a mixed-bag for the book, but I take the bad reviews as people who really don’t get it (granted, it’s on a whole different planet). This book will blow your mind. Check it.

 

Photo Credits

GoodReads.com

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