The StoryGraph is a safer, quieter place on the internet where you can find your next favorite book. Founder and CEO Nadia Odunayo joins Emily to discuss developing this cozy online experience and how input from enthusiastic readers makes everything better.

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Foreign.

Welcome to the hybrid club Scout podcast with me. Emily

einlander, we're mapping the publishing frontier with stories

of publishing past, interviews with publishing professionals of

today and peeks into Publishing's future. Today's

guest has created a new way to track your reading discover new

books, and we're about to find out what else Nadia odaio is the

founder and CEO of the story graph, the new website that

helps you track your reading and choose which book to read next.

She previously worked at Pivotal Labs as a software engineer and

originally learned to code at Makers Academy in London in her

spare time, she loves to take dance class and naturally read.

Welcome Nadia, hi. Thank you for having me absolutely. So let's

just start out by asking how you're surviving lockdown and

staying sane and watching your product at the same time. It has

definitely been wild. There's been a lot, I think the main

thing is taking time for me, so I'm still dancing. So there are

a lot of online dance classes, either via Instagram or zoom,

believe it or not, so I make sure to do at least one of those

a week when I can. Sometimes more I'm making. I've got an

hour reading slot in my calendar, which I try and do

nearly every day. So things like that really, really help. I make

a nice lunch most days, all these kind of things are helping

me, you know, stay sane and survive while doing all the

story graph work. Yeah, I admire how you schedule in your reading

to make sure it happens.

I have to do that because otherwise it's very easy for me

to just not do it or to leave it until just before I go to bed,

and then I'm really tired, so I fall asleep having hardly read

anything. I do love, I do love a weekend morning with my book.

That's one of my favorite times. Saturday morning reading time

the best.

So could you give us a little summary of what the story graph

is, why you started it, and what makes it unique? I can so the

story graph is, as he said in the intro, the place to help you

choose your next book. And we want to do that based on your

mood, so how you're feeling, the sort of thing you're looking

for, and also the topics and themes that you're looking for,

interested in generally like to read about. In terms of why I

started it, I didn't directly set out to build a whole book

tracking website. In fact, I had a side project that was just to

help you track and share your reading lists. I was using

Goodreads, and it was just meant to be a companion app to that,

almost. But what happened was, when I started showing early

versions of that side project to people, there was a lot of,

yeah, this seems cool, but not a real need. And so I said, I'm

really enjoying building something that's based on books.

So this is not it on its own. So let me just start talking to

more people and figure out what is it. And that just ended up

becoming this more holistic, initially recommendations and

then tracking product. So I've just been kind of following the

customer research on that. And what makes it unique? I think

that, yeah, on its surface, it sounds like a lot of things out

there, book tracking and recommendations, but I think the

main thing that myself and my co founder Rob are focusing on is

really making it personal, the recommendations and the

experience, so especially with regards to how you get the

recommendations. So we have

a short survey that you can fill out, and you can fill it out in

two seconds if you want check a few boxes, or you can take some

time, and there's a free text box, and in there you can list

the topics, the themes, even the tropes, the kind of authors

you're looking to read. And we then try and find the books that

match what you've basically expressed in your survey. On top

of that, you can change that survey whenever you like. So

through my original research, I found a lot of people said, you

know, wherever I get recommendations from, you know,

whether that was Amazon, whether that was good reads, whether

whether that was another site, was another site, they didn't

feel like they felt like it was a guess, and it was a poor guess

a lot of the time. And so we sort of said, and also there's

been growing distrust with algorithms and things like that.

But I also started the story graph. One of the earliest

versions of the website was what were personal, manual

recommendation. So me recommending books to 10s of 10s

and 10s of people, and that doesn't scale. So what we're

trying to do is find the like the sweet swap between

leveraging the power of an algorithm, but not trying to

guess and keep it personal to you. And so the survey is almost

like you're talking to our algorithm. You're saying, hey.

Really,

I am in the mood for this. I like reading about these kind of

things,

these kind of genres. I don't want to read about. I don't I'm

not in the mood for anything that's sad or anything that's

funny, or I just want this and we show you books. And so I

think that's what's unique. It's we're really trying to almost

set up a conversation between our product and our algorithm to

get you the best recommendations out there. I do love that you

can go back and change what's in your what's in your survey,

because I know that when I'm doing book research about things

that I'm not necessarily interested in, it just destroys

all of my algorithms, and none of it's for me anymore. It's

just for whatever project I've been reading. Occasionally I'll

just be like, I can't I have to open an incognito window, or

just like, not look it up at all, because it's going to,

like, make me look like a bad person.

But I yeah, I like that. There's more of a emphasis on what the

person actually says they want. You've talked a little bit about

the features of the story graph, and what are some of the ones

that you found people are particularly excited about? So

there are, it's on two scales. There are big features that

people excited about, and there are also some smaller ones. So

in terms of the big ones. People are definitely excited about our

recommendations, which is great. But on top of that, we have this

thing called Live recommendations. So you fill out

your survey, but on the recommendation page, there is a

filter menu, and you can say, right now, in this instance, I

feel like and you can select the mood, the book, size, the

genres. Show me this genre. Don't show me that genre. Show

me books.

You can say yes, keeping books that I have already marked as to

read, or I don't want to see anything I have already marked

as to read, or that I own, I want to see something new. So we

give you that flexibility, and you can do that like instantly.

Right now, everyone can do that Unlimited, but we're going to

eventually put that into a paid plan, which I might talk about

later, because it's just very costly to run. But with people

who who don't pay for the site, will still be able to use it.

We're just going to have to put some form of a limit

on that. Another thing, stats. So our statistics, we have a

stats page, and you've got pie charts and bar charts on what

moods you tend to read

the pace fast, slow, medium paced books, the size of the

books, fiction, nonfiction. And you can look at that over all

time, on a per year basis or on a month by month basis. And so

people are really excited about that. And again, another feature

which is which is going to be in our our our pay plan is the fact

that you can compare two slices side by side. And so we're

giving people insights into the type of books they choose,

using, in some cases, vocabulary that they didn't know how to

express before, particularly with the moods.

And then another feature that we have is reading challenges. So

people have been doing reading challenges before the story

graph existed.

And what we just provide a place to track it order automatically,

so

you can join either challenges that are already out there. So

we've got, like, book rights challenge on there, or reading

women, or we, as the story graph, host a few challenges

each year. Or you can create your own and keep it private to

yourself. Say there's a certain list of books you want to work

through, or you want to try and read more nonfiction. Whatever

the goal is, you can construct your own challenge and give it a

timeframe or leave it open. And then you get all these you get a

nice dashboard with all your progress bar. So so those are

three of the big features that people are excited about. And

then there are more features that are built into other parts

of the site that people really love, one of, one of which is

content warning. So when you do your review, you can tag which

tag types of content that appear in the book with a severity

level. So you can say, you know, we had graphic of this. We had

moderate mentions of this and very minor, but it's it was

still in there. And what this means is that people, before

they can go into a book, have a sense of, is this something I

want to avoid? And what we hope to do. The reason why we

introduced that is because we see a future where in the

survey, you can say, I don't like content. I don't want to

read content that features x, y, z, and then we will not

recommend you those books. And no killing the dog. Exactly. We

have animal cruelty. Was when we when I did my research on this,

I got a long list of content warnings. It's a very it's not a

fun spreadsheet to read through. But like in the top five or was,

it was animal cruelty, animal abuse, that is something that

people really don't want to read about. And then just two other

quick ones to mention that are very small features, but people,

some people, say, This is it for me, this is why I love the story

graph, DNF button. So to be able to start reading a book and then

go, did not finish as a as a status at the same like level as

currently reading.

Or to read, to have DNF there is very important to people, and

then the quarter star, so we have half and quarter stars, so

we're giving you a lot more granularity in rating. And those

are a couple of features. Those last two are ones that are

smaller. But for some people, they're like everything. And

it's really fun to see people make stories or tweets and say,

This is life changing for me, or game changing, and it's like,

wow. Okay, cool. Yeah, there's so many times that I'll look at,

you know, Goodreads reviews where they're like, I wish I

could give this half a star as a half an extra star, but I gave

it this much instead. But I don't really think so. Or for

me, with the didn't do, not the DNFs, I would just, I had, like,

a tag that I would one of my shelves on Goodreads. Was like,

these are the ones I didn't finish. But it yeah, that seems

more like a good way to put your point across and remind you that

you actually weren't interested in something later down the line

when you've forgotten whether you read it or not.

As one gets older, have

you ever seen a website called does the dog die.com?

People when I was doing my research for the content

warnings, I think people said that sent that to me as a

resource for thinking about how to go about it. I never watch a

horror movie anymore without looking at that first. Yes,

you've been very consistent about interacting with your

audience through Instagram Live and a regular MailChimp

newsletter. Why did you make the decision to have that much

audience input, interaction with your audience as well, and

transparency about your process and What benefit do you feel

like you've gotten out of it through my work at Pivotal Labs,

and I am a big consumer of startup stories like how I built

this is my favorite podcast. I've and just through the people

I've worked with as well, I've learned the importance of

customer research and how, essentially, if you have a good

customer reset setup, it's very hard to go wrong.

And so from the beginning, and I you see that with the beginning

of the story graph itself, when I did the side project with the

reading list to track and share them, and I spoke to five

people, and the reception was lukewarm. So rather than staying

attached to that idea, I put it aside and said, Okay, let me

just talk to people that I spoke to people for a few months. And

so

I realized that it, you know, it's very important to because

there's so much out there to do. There's so much potential. It's

so there's so many ideas and ways that products can go, and

also many products fail. And so it's for me, it was a thing of,

if I want to increase the chances of success of whatever

I'm going to do, I'm really going to have to connect and

engage with with potential customers and with readers to

build the best product for them. It's rare that we release a

feature that isn't met with excitement,

that is full of bugs, because it's been like tested and

checked and and also that isn't intuitive to use. So I'll give

you an example. When I did custom tags on the site, first

of all, it was months of people saying, oh, I want shells. You

know, think coming from the Goodreads side. And we pushed

back against that a bit because we we knew that was coming from

a immediate reaction of, I've just come from Goodreads, I want

shelves. And so we were like, we need to, we can't just say,

okay, so even, and then, as time developed, we started to hear, I

have 1000s of books on my to read. It's really hard to filter

through them, or I can't remember why I added this to my

to read like differently. And we started to see we were drawing

all these things out. And we said, oh, having some way to

like tag a book would solve a lot of these problems. Some of

them are going to be so can be solved with more built in

features, like who recommended this book to me, or now we have

additions, tagging a saying, switching to the audio book

format or the digital format. But before that step, we were

like, hey, if we do tags, it solves all of these problems and

more wishlist things like that and so, so I, you know, I

started asking people about their needs and pain points with

that. And then when I came to do it, I said, Well, how do people,

how would this work best, in terms of how people use the

site? And so I did tweet saying, Here's how we're thinking. It's

going to work. What do you think? So? People were like, Oh,

yes. What about this? What about that? And so by the time it was

delivered, on the whole, obviously, there were still

things to improve, and there still are. But on the whole,

people understood how to use it. There weren't a lot of

complaints or confusion. It was like, Ah, finally, taxi here.

And so the benefit is having that kind of really smooth

release cycle that excites people and really fits in with

what they need or want from the product. And then the side

benefit is that we're kind of building this. We're not kind

of, we are building this loyal fan base of invested users. You

know, when I ask for feedback,

when I do customer interviews, and something that comes up,

even if I don't directly ask about it, is, Oh, I love how

you're bringing us into the process, and how I can, you

know, be.

And I can give my suggestions on Instagram or on Twitter, or I

love following the newsletter, so that comes up quite a lot.

And so people feel part of the journey. And so that also helps

with people giving their time and being open and honest with

the feedback, because they know that they're being listened to.

Yeah, that's that's very special. That's actually

something that made me more interested in, like looking into

the story graph. I was like, wow, this is such a

collaborative process. I love it. Oh, why not? Right? Great,

yeah. So it's a combination of tags that you have put out

there, but then people can also add their own tags for their own

benefit. Right now that it's, it's all private tags, but I do

see a future of some form of public, collaborative tags for

people. To someone said recently, I want to know which

books are available on Audible or on Kindle or in or various

other places, or sometimes with themes or tropes things like

that. It it's you know, you don't need each person to find

it. You can have a crowdsource kind of thing. And so this came

up before we delivered the feature, and I was nervous to go

straight into public collaborative tags, because it

could be messy. You need to figure out how people use it. So

for now, it's private, but I do see us having some form of

visible, public collaborative tags. Perhaps we'll see.

I Hmm, might

take a little bit of moderation if you're having people not it

sounds like you really trust your audience, though. I mean,

yeah, we're doing. Something that we're thinking of doing

soon is enabling any user to add in missing where there's missing

page numbers or there's no cover attached to a book, being able

to add it in, not edit it afterwards. That will be

reserved for our volunteer librarians. But we're kind of

like, well, having some pages is better than no pages, and if a

page number is wrong, someone will eventually see it so well,

yeah, we were trying to it's that balance between like, trust

and making an experience that's self service, but also, like,

accurate,

safe for your yes, yeah, for your readers. Okay, so what was

the most difficult part of the development process, or so far,

what has been the most difficult? I think it's, you

know, following on from the customer research discussion and

having a growing audience. It's balancing having a vision and

not being emotionally tied to a vision, or thinking that, yes,

this is the way you've got to be prepared to move, but also

keeping the product streamlined.

So you've got a lot of different inputs. People saying, Oh, this

and this and that, and it's working out. Okay, what fits in

with the vision of this product, which we don't want to do too

many things. We want it to do some things really, really well.

We also want to bring in our customers and make them feel

listened to. But we can't just do everything everyone says,

because then you've got a product that does too many

things, and it's not clear, and it's

cluttered, and then it's also being patient,

balancing those two things with being patient on the journey. So

for example, we have a lot of people asking for things that I

know it's a shortcoming, that we don't have it yet, or I know

it's coming, but it's just not the highest priority right now.

And maybe to the person who asked is their biggest pain

point. But in the grand scheme of things, it has to come lower

down. What's it called, the flagpole? Is that? Is that, what

it's called, lower down the back pole, whatever, whatever the

pecking order. And so

that's the hard thing, and it's, it's being patient, not only

admits people asking for various things and and me just dealing

with like it's coming, and just being okay with people having to

wait, and not getting anxious about that, but also me being

patient and not trying to rush things to show, oh, we're on it.

We've got it, you know? What do you know? What I mean, holding

your own boundaries and the line of what's best for the product,

without making people feel like they're devalued, since you have

created this relationship, right? And also not trying to

rush to get things out, to show we know we've got this on our

radar. We know it's coming. I think sometimes people can look

at the product and think, this is the product, okay? And it's

not, oh, it doesn't have this. It doesn't have this. It's like,

it's coming, really. And I just got to tell myself, so, right,

Nadia, you just be patient. You keep delivering. If people drop

off because the product doesn't do what they need right now,

hopefully they'll come back. And we're seeing that over the

months, people go, Oh, you didn't have additions and the

ability to switch between them, I'm coming back. Or you didn't

have this, and now you have that. So I've got to be patient

on that journey too. And that's just the hardest part. Just keep

it, keeping all of those different inputs in mind, and

just, yeah, pacing myself and the product, and I think it was

a very good idea of you two early on, introduced the the

tutorial for exporting your Goodreads list, because I don't

know if I ever would have gone near it, because it'd be like

all of my stuff is over here. How am I going to how am I going

to start anew after.

Or like, 15 years of being on Goodreads,

that's part of the prioritization challenge. It's

balancing things like, when people say, I want, I want to be

able to sort my books by author, which we still don't have yet to

Can I just load in my Goodreads and give it a go? So we were

balancing Goodreads was up there because it was like, how are you

going to get people who've used Goodreads for years? And I'm one

of those people, you know, I had used it from 2012 to 2028, years

to move over when you've built up a lot of information and

organization and history and readers as particularly readers,

when you've been tracking your reading for that long, you care

about that history. That's why you track it. And so, yeah,

that's how part of the prioritization question, it's

okay. What's going to help people give it a go? What can

people survive with for now? And it's all those kind of questions

and decisions we need to make,

being able to keep people there as well.

So what kind of experience do you want people to have on the

story graph?

Two things come to mind. One is

walking into a bookshop and feeling like on the whole the

bookshop is just for you, but there's also a chance for coming

across something that's different. So I think the whole

recommendation piece being front and center, and the moods and

that kind of stuff that that we want you to feel like you're

browsing and you're seeing all these books like, wow, you know,

this just is so perfect for me. It touches all the things I like

to read and all that kind of stuff. But then we also have the

Browse book section, which is like, it's all the books on

there, and you can filter by mood and things that you know,

PACE all the sort of normal things. And so that might be

imagining this bookshop where you walk in, maybe the first

floor is just for you, and you can go to your different

favorite genre sections and say, Oh, and here's, you know, and

just whatever you pick up from the shelf, you have confidence

that you're going to love it, and you're not quite sure maybe

when you pick it up, what the elements are inside that you're

going to love but you know, you have trust that you're going to

love it. You know, take a take a lot away from it. And then maybe

there's another floor where it's like a whole range of different

books from different different subject matters, different

authors, just a whole range of variety. And then you can just

have fun and feel comfortable cozy, taking your time to look

around and find something different to read. And so that

there's that kind of experience that I want people to have, and

then I also want the story graph to feel like, and this is,

again, particularly when you are choosing that next book like

you're having a sit down with a close, trusted friend, but that

close trusted friend knows about all the books in the world.

So you can say, hey, like, how you doing? I've just finished

this. I'm in the mood for this. And they go, Bing and like, it's

the best book. So those are the two things that come to mind

when I think about the kind of experience. But it boils down to

being personal, personalized and comfortable and cozy.

I love that framework of an online bookstore, even though

it's not a store, but like being able to walk in and have those

kinds of experiences that you really can only have in person,

but also like we can't right now.

Yeah, so that's, that's a maybe a little nice substitute for for

that experience. Or, you know, even after everything's over and

you just don't want to leave your house, but you want some

help picking a book that's not just based on some things you

were researching one day and don't want to read exactly. Do

you find that people are surprised by the the types of

books that they actually read versus the kind of books that

they think that they read? We have to. We have. We have both

sides. So we have, and this is going on the evidence from what

people are, particularly what I'm seeing on Instagram stories,

we get the group of people who are like, not surprised by this,

but you know, yep, dark, mysterious, tense, fast paced,

that's me great, and great to have it validated kind of thing.

And then we have the people who say, Wow, I never knew how. So I

think it's less surprised at what it is. But just saying, I

never knew how to talk about the kind of books I read. And now I

can say, Okay, I like emotional, reflective, slow, paced books,

and now I can go try and find more of those. So we don't

really have people going surprise, like, that's that

doesn't seem to fit. It would be more like a like, a revelation

of, ah, yes, that that makes sense, but there's still the

surprise of it. I think there is a surprise, particularly when

you just joined the site and you've imported your Goodreads,

and then you get this profile statement that kind of

summarizes all the reading you've ever done.

I think there is a pleasant surprise, I would say, and

giving people a new way to think about the kind of books that

they go for. I think people love.

Learning new things about themselves, too, and that's

definitely a way to find out, a little peek into your own mind,

to discover what you what you truly enjoy.

Spotify could take a lesson from you.

I mean, Spotify does amazing stuff with their

recommendations, and I've read a few pieces over the

over the years on how they do

their recommendations. I've been to a couple of talks. One's by

Paul Lemire does some amazing talks on

similar songs and how that some of that stuff looks behind the

scenes. It is amazing. Oh yeah. I mean, for the record, I love

Spotify, but they keep trying to make me listen to Greta von

fleet, and I just don't want I try to tell them, but

super bad. They don't have that x that we have where you can

say, Don't show me this author again, or don't show me this

book again. They only have it on their like, release radar and

discovery ones. But yeah, I love that ability to just be like,

nope. I know it doesn't make sense that I don't like this

book or song like I should like it, but I don't. So that's an

amazing thing. I don't want to turn this into a like me telling

you all the features I want, though. No, not at all. I didn't

think

that way. So you say that you're trying to be very flexible with

your vision according to what, what is happening day by day,

and what you're hearing from people. But what do you have as

a vision currently, for the story graph? If I think about,

okay, there's a like, the product vision, there's the

company mission, I guess, and then there's, like, maybe the

business side of it. So in terms of the product vision, it, you

know, being the best place to find the next book for you. And

best can be defined by the experience. So touching on, oh,

it's just so lovely going into the story graph, and this, I

look forward to whenever I have to do it. It's just such a nice

experience. And it could also be time taken. It doesn't take me

long. It's not, it's not stressful. It's, it's so easy to

just find a book, it takes me a minute or 30 seconds. So we're

not trying to, by the way, have people spend hours on the site

and and be like, we're not tracking that. And so that's not

a goal for us. Like, okay, time spent on site is, you know, this

many minutes a day, this many hours a day. We don't, we don't

want that as Rob, Rob Frieda, who I work with, said in an Ask

Me Anything session that we did on Instagram last week or so, he

said, you know, if you came to the site once a month and you

just were on it for 30 seconds, and you got your next best book,

and then you went away, and then you came back next month, and

you just spent 30 seconds. 30 seconds, and you just, it's your

go to place, and it just makes you happy. Like that would be

our dream. That would be amazing, but we just want to

make, you know, make provide that experience for readers. In

terms of the company mission, there is a wider company

mission,

which is to enhance the lives of avid readers everywhere, and to

inspire non readers to get into reading. And I think, yeah, if I

could look back at what the storygraph does, you know, going

forward, in terms of the websites, the products, whatever

it ends up doing, if we, if we're doing that, that would be

amazing. And we're already seeing, you know, messages from

people who say, you know, I used to read, I fell off the

bandwagon, and your site excited me to get back into it and

things like that, so that that is a that is a dream or vision.

And then I guess in the business side, you know, I mentioned that

we've got this, the storygraph, plus launching next month, or

launching in February. And

if we could find a way to be independent, profitable,

sustainable, such that, you know, we can, we can invest back

in the company. We can, as founders have a salary, and we

can hire people to come in and just make it even better. We

don't need to take investment or worry about needing to get

acquired or anything like that. We know the problems that come

with that, in terms of companies being shut down or going stale,

this is what we definitely want to avoid. Then that would be

amazing. So if the story graph can exist independently

in the long term, that that is a dream of ours as well. We're all

we're all about like, decentralizing things on hybrid

pub scout. So we love to see more, more publishing companies,

more apps, more places where people can go and, you know,

places where the people who are doing the actual business can

thrive as well without being beholden to other entities. So

it sounds like you're not trying to make your product addictive

in the same way that Facebook or Instagram or something like that

is. So what does that mean for maybe the social aspect or other

features of it that you're trying to keep from being like,

keeping people on the site? Right? So we're not definitely.

We don't want to make any kind of dark patterns, and we don't

want to make anything unhealthy. So we don't want anything where

people feel like, oh, I need to take a break from the story

graph, or I'm burnt out from the story graph. And so that's

partly part of our decision, also, to not have commenting and

chat and notifications. We're trying to create a site that is,

you know, as as I say, a quieter, safer space on the

internet. That's our that's our goal.

And so when we think, when I think about how that impacts the

community side. So, so, so what I want to say on that is,

despite that, though, we still have people who spend a lot of

time on the site, but the way they communicate about the time

spent on that site, it feels very much like it's a choice,

and they're they're enjoying it, and it's giving them something,

because they get value from browsing books or seeing what

their friends are reading. So it's spoken of not as, I need to

get a story graph. I it's more like, oh, I had a wonderful time

exploring. So if that happens, that's fine, but it's not our

goal. And so we definitely want to distinguish between

the dark patterns and the addictive in a way that is

unhealthy, and people feel like, Oh no, story of tricking me or

it's a trap I need to get out to. We have a whole range of

people, the person who just pops on once a month to check in, and

the person who chooses to spend a lot of time because they're

just enjoying them, it's, it's, it's, it feel, it's like, it's,

I don't want to say healing, but like, it's like, wholesome,

soothing, it's, it's therapeutic, whatever it is,

it's helpful to them. And so then going into community, so

some, because we don't have the commenting chat notifications.

You know, it's some people say, Oh, that's it for community or

social and storygraph. And we say, No, we just want to try and

be a bit creative about it. So there are certain things that

that's cut, that we want to do, that that's coming. So for

example, for example, being able to easily see, you know, people

that you're following see what they thought of a book first.

That's a standard thing that's been on the list forever, but

also things like someone messaged me recently. I want to

see, you know, I'm doing a reading challenge. I want to

see, first the people who I follow, what they might have

added to this challenge if they're also doing it. So I

think we can be smart around

how you feel, the sense of community around you when you

browse the site like this is, this is my circle, whatever. And

then also, I think there's ways to do groups without chat. So

imagine an interface where there's a group of people, and

maybe you see your shared ratings or your shared like

progress in a book, or there are things that we can do. And

finally, a feature that we're going to, we started working on

slowly, that we're going to bring out, is the ability to

find readers similar to you. And obviously, because we have a lot

more information on topics, themes, tropes, things like

that, we can really, hopefully help you say, hey, here are

these people that you don't know about. You can follow them and

find new books. And because it's not commenting chat, you don't

end up having random messages from strangers trying to friend

you. You don't really know about it. And also, we do have privacy

settings, so you can say, I want my purpose to be private so no

one can find me, and I'm not matched with no one. I don't

show up as a recommendation for someone to follow. So you can do

that too. But the focus, yeah, we want to basically you

community as a way, not for chatting or whatever, because

there are other spaces to do that, but as a way to enhance

book discovery.

And finally, because we aren't having chats and commenting on

the site, we definitely have things on our roadmap to help

people have conversations elsewhere, so perhaps

integrating your Twitter or your Instagram profile so that people

can say, oh, okay, you did this review. Let me come and chat

with you about it on Twitter or in other spaces. Essentially, if

people want to, if people want to,

so you're talking a lot about your relationship with the

readers and the users. What relationship, if any, do you see

between the story graph and publishers, booksellers,

authors, other people that are more on the production side of

books, I guess, than on the receiving side.

We definitely want to eventually work with all of those groups

that you've mentioned. We have had some of them reach out.

There's just a lot to do. We still got a lot that we want to

do first for the readers, before we start introducing the other

publishers, booksellers, but we have a range of ideas with

helping them better connect with readers. And it could be things

like, yeah, how can you run a page or a space on the story

graph

which people can follow and buy into? So when I was doing my

original research, before I started building the story graph

in that space between, oh, this app isn't quite it, but I want

to work in books, and actually starting to work on what became

the story graph. I went to a lot of

and while I was talking to a lot of readers and book bloggers, I

also went to lots of publishing events. I went to the London

book fair, and I went to some panel discussions, and I

remember one.

One panel I went to. I mean, I can't remember who was on the

panel, but there was the discussion about publishers and

community and brand building. And someone on the panel, he

said, you know, publishers

still have a way to go in terms of connecting directly with the

readers. So he said people tend to know a record labels that

they like or

film studios that they like, but publishers. It's not the same,

like if you were to go to someone and say

which publisher produced this book you're reading, his

guess was that there would be a few proportion of people that

would be aware of publishers that they who published the book

they were reading, or publishers that they loved in the same way

that people are with, oh, you know, this film studios just

released their next film. Or this, I love this record label

they, you know, they've got a new all the artists that they

tend to sign really resonate with me. And so that got me

thinking about, well, with a story graph, can we be that

place where, you know, you put in the kind of moods and the

things and stuff you like, and then a publisher's back catalog

will end up having a profile, right? So can we, you know, can

we do stuff? Yeah, it should. Maybe they don't speak with

imprints, right? They should. So can we match people? Can we, can

we introduce people to publishers that they haven't met

before, and it get people to that point where they're like,

Oh, I love this imprint. I love this publisher. New book out,

great.

And there's other things, which is like, how can we

give insights into what readers are looking for? Like, Oh, is

there a shortage of dark,

dark, funny, science fiction that features strong character

development, whatever it is, and to help publishers with what

they're commissioning. You know, yeah, and we definitely want to

be careful about that, because we don't want to, you know,

we're very we don't do anything with our users data, and we want

to make sure that whatever we do is like, anonymized and opted

into. So that's something that would involve a lot of thinking

about. But can we do? Can we help basically, readers and

publishers alike, with stuff like that? And finally, we have

thought about, Oh, do we license our recommendation technology?

So do we say, Hey,

you're a publisher? Here's Here are ways that you know you

powered by the story graph. Maybe, like, it's kind of like,

Here are ways that you can recommend books that are in your

catalog or in your library or in your store. So we've got a range

of ideas, and with authors, you know, definitely, we want to

have services for them to manage their books and things like

that. And maybe profiles with enhanced features, similar to,

maybe the publisher idea, where it's like people can follow

authors and things like that,

similar to just how we've done it with readers. Though, we need

to sit down with representatives from each of these places and

figure out what's missing, what's their biggest pain point,

and then go from there. That's fantastic. I know that when I

was doing more acquisitions work, I would have loved to have

been able to like, show my boss the data

is to like, look, this is extremely, you know, this is

trending, and it's got these keywords, and this is what

people are interested in.

So that's, that's could be, that is the potential to be extremely

helpful. In my opinion, from what I've heard, that also

momentary soapbox for publishers like remember that you need to

stick with a niche to do a good job and to brand better.

That's that's for me.

So what are the different ways that our listeners can engage

with the story graph currently? And I do want you to talk about

the story graph Plus program too. Okay, part of this. So

okay, so we can do within the product and like outside of the

product. So within the products, we've got two things. So okay,

I'll start with the Plus plan. So we are launching in February,

a paid offering. The as we always reiterate, the bulk of

the site will be free. It always will be free. You're still going

to be able to have a great experience, get personal

recommendations, all that kind of thing. But if you, if you, if

you're Plus member, you get, so like I said, unlimited

recommendations as many times as you want change like, fill out

that filter menu and get perfect recommendations just for you.

You'll be able to do the stats comparisons. You'll see you get

a couple of extra charts unique just for you when you compare,

like year by year or month by month. And then there'll be

similar books. And we don't have similar books yet on the

website, but we will have a free version, which will be similar

to what you are used to on other websites, but hopefully ours

will be really good.

And so you'll be able to say books similar to this one, but

if you're a paid member, we wanted your book. Do a

personalized version, so almost prioritize based on things that

you like. So what we know about you from your survey or things

like that. So let's assume you're looking at a book. You're

seeing similar books, but you also have an interest in I'll

use the example

Robbie's recently like, which is.

And wizards. Maybe there's a book within that list that

features widgets and wizards. So that will be at the top, because

it's not only is it similar to the one you're looking at, it

also has this this topic that you really like. So we're trying

to work on that and and there'll also be a discord, so a

community forum where people can chat with other plus members.

They can talk directly to myself and Rob about what's coming up

on the roadmap and weigh in there. So that is a would be a

great way to engage with the story graph and also to help

shape a bit more the where the product is going. We

also have another community that's building slowly, which is

our volunteer librarian community. So this is for if you

want to help us

tidy up our book data. Book data is a, I'm sure you know, this is

a, there's no like, there's no it's just a whole complicated

space. And so there's a we now we've particularly got

auditions, and we've got nine, 19 million books on the site.

There's a lot of mess of things that should be the same book,

family aren't different names, different authors are spelt

differently. The same author, their name, two different

versions of their name, or more. And so we need people who can

help us handle that up. And it's volunteering. So we have an

onboarding process because, you know, we need to make sure

people have attention to detail and they care enough to because

it's quite, you know, important editing books on the site that

all of our users are going to see. But beyond that, there are

no expectations on time, so you could become a librarian and

then never edit a book or do anything. But we do have a

discord there too, so it's a great place for people to talk

about

the librarian work they're doing, ask questions, give

feedback on the product. But we also have like, a channel where

we discuss books and things like that, so that's a nice community

there as well. So we

often have people saying, oh, I want to do the Plus plan, but I

I can't afford it right now, or it's not quite for me, but I

want to help. And so we say, well, you know, really, with a

Plus plan, we we want that to be the avenue for I see value in

this. So, you know, it's at the minute, it's pre orders, it's 49

$99

US dollars, and we'll see how our first year goes and what

happens and how that develops. But that really, we want people

paying that because they're like, I see value in this. And

when it launches, we'll have a, you know, $5 a month kind of

thing that you can try and cancel and all of that. But we

want people to do that, not because they want to support

because they're like, Oh, I these features look like they

will enhance my reading life. So I want that. So if it's more

support and help, we'd love people to, you know, become

volunteers. They really help improve the experience for

everyone, just giving some of their time. That's incredibly

valuable to us. And then outside of the story, really are

Instagram and Twitter. If you use either of those platforms

and you use a story graph, or you're curious to know more,

definitely follow us on there. Because an Instagram I'll do

stories now and again, pieces to camera, explaining what I'm

working on. I'll be do polls. I'll do question boxes and say,

Hey, we're thinking of doing this that I also share my

reviews there as well. So like, there's a bit of like, what I'm

reading and that, that that element of it, and connecting

with people as a reader as well, and on the Twitter, it's a

similar thing. There's not a lot of the videos of me, but there's

like, you know, there'll be questions and updates. So yeah,

those are all the different ways that people can, I kind of

engage, connect with the story graph, get involved with the

roadmap shaping and what features are coming up next, and

all of that. And what are your social media handles? Good

point. Instagram is the dot story graph. Someone already had

the story graph, so we've got the dot story graph. And on

Twitter, it's the story graph, just all one word, no, yeah. And

what are you reading right now? So on my Kobo, I've got Samantha

Irby. We are never meeting in real life. I've not read any of

her stuff before. I've seen her around Bookstagram, as they, as

they as it's called. And so I wanted some kind of light

hearted, fun, funny essay. So I've gone for those. I'm

enjoying it 20% of the way in, and I'm about to pick up the

final

book in The eleano ferrantes Neapolitan novels. So I've been

working my way through those slowly. Read the third one not

too long ago. It was excellent, and I'm excited to see how it

all wraps up. Wonderful. All right. Thank you so much. Is

there anything else that you want to add? No, that's it. All

right. You can find us on Instagram at hybrid pub Scout

pod, on Twitter at hybrid pub Scout, Facebook, hybrid pub

scout. You can go to our website and get all of our notes.

Hybridpubscout.com as well. Thanks for giving a rip about

looks. You.