For authors: We help the right readers discover your book. Then, for readers who rate it highly, we identify them as fans and give you an easy way to let them know when your next book is out. Each book builds on the last, making every launch easier and helping word-of-mouth grow without adding more work on your side.

For readers: A private, personal way to track your reading and get deeply personalized recommendations. Think Goodreads, rebuilt as a calm private space to track what you read, keep notes, and get truly personalized book recommendations, like Pandora or Spotify for books.

We’re in beta. This won’t be easy, but we’re building this alongside you. Thanks for sticking with us as we figure it out.

Fun Size! 🦥

It took a while to finish all the legal steps, but Márton is now officially a co-founder at Book DNA and the guy who makes it all work 😃

Márton is the developer I hired in the early days of Book DNA to build the platform, and we’ve worked together for a long time. He is a great guy, and I can’t think of anyone better to help us move forward as we build this app!

If you want to meet our small but mighty Book DNA Team, go here.

The app is coming along nicely, and we have ~100 early users using it (if you want to help us test, join here).

Goodreads and StoryGraph imports are almost ready!

I’ve been testing the import process, and things are looking good. Today I am going to start testing really big imports and make sure we have squashed all the bugs we have found. Next, I’ll sit down on Zoom with 5 early users and test the process with them.

User folders are also nearing completion, and we should have them by next month.

I’m really excited about this feature because it is something I’ve wanted for a long time. A way to organize what I’m reading and put a bit more purpose behind it (as otherwise I will happily fall into near 100% fiction even though I enjoy some heavy nonfiction).

Improved book coverage (especially book covers)

This is going slow, but mostly because we are working with large companies and they move slowly (especially over the summer). We are looking at Nielsen and Ingram to improve our book database and book cover database. We got some good quotes back, and I’m hoping to test Nielsen further this coming week along with Ingram.

We would like to make a decision next week… but I’d be happy if we get things picked by early September as well. Big companies move slowly.

We are aiming for a soft launch in late Fall / early Winter. First, we want to finish the current batch of work (imports, user folders, and book database improvements), then add a simple mobile webpage to buy us some time before we build a full app.

This simple mobile webpage will make it easy to log your read, log what you are reading/listening to next, and add books to your TBR. Plus, it will let you record notes and search for books.

After that, we just want to get a few minor things in place, and we will be ready to soft launch and accept public signups.

I’ll do a big video update next month, but I wanted to share what is coming after the current batch of features.

Plus, for users who want it they can opt into tracking book format. Most of our users prefer to just log the book, but enough wanted to log the format; it was an easy option to add.

I’m excited to get our first version of the individual book pages up 😀

This page will evolve a lot as we grow; one of the first things I want to add is to show how readers like you felt and match you with similar readers. Readers want overall ratings, but they're much more valuable when they are personalized to your individual tastes.

And similar for book series pages 🙂

And for author pages so a reader can see all your books and which they have read and haven’t read 🙂

Our Smart TBR autosorts your TBR in some fun ways; we are going to add a “Authors new to me” area so you can see which books in your TBR are from authors you haven’t read yet. And then the same for “Authors I’ve read.”

We're also expanding the author dropdown so you can see how you rated those authors’ books in the past.

And we are doing similar within the TBR card so you can see how you liked their past books 😎

And our detailed roadmap is here if you want to see screenshots of the upcoming features.

Our app:

~100 beta testers are actively using the app and giving us feedback. We are aiming to launch publicly toward late fall/early winter. Exciting 😎!

Our website:

I spent July up in the Spanish mountains working and biking as much as possible. Unfortunately, I crashed and hurt my knee pretty badly. I had to rest for a few weeks, but I’m back on it now and training for a big bike tour later this month.

I finished…

I am reading...

Thanks, Ben

P.S. From a beautiful ride in the Spanish Pyrenees in July, unfortunately, I crashed at the end of this ride.

P. S. Don’t forget…

Recently, I’ve talked with authors about the following…

This is one of many perks for members: membership costs only the price of one fancy coffee drink a year, and everything we raise goes toward our mission to help authors and readers (I work for free).

Once you sign up for a membership, you can schedule a time to meet 😀.