Nadia Odunayo Never Planned to take on the mighty global juggernaut that is amazon, but for many books, she has become the hero they didn’t know they Needed.
For 18 years, bibliophiles have been removed Ornia.
In 2013, Goodreads’ Founders Sold It to Amazon, and the alredy hugely popular site skyrocked. It now has an estimated 150 million users.
One of that users, since 2012, was odunayo, a software engineer and development from London. Six years ago, She sat down to create what she imagined might be a company app to goodreads.
After building a demo for a lesser, she quickly realized it was more likely to be a competitor, offering readers’ Tracking tools and trends – using ai – that clock help resound their next book. And as of this week, the storygraph has 3.8 million active users, many of who have ditched goodres.
In a blogpost entitled “Leaving goodres in 2025!” Just before christmas, a blogger and reviewer going by the name books with bunny war: “I don’t love that goodres is owned by amazon. There’s so much about the company that I don’t agree with… Goodreads Feels Outdated. Its interface looks clunky, and the features are limited… i’ve found goodres’ recommendations underwhelming and heavily skeked planned power titles. “
Bunny Announced She would be using the storygraph going forward: “I’ve been loving it so far! Not only is it women-swaned, but it also also offers so many fantastic features. “
A Goodreads Spokesperson said on saturday that in 2024 it “welcomed millions of readers and we saw strong year -over-yaar-yaar growth in book tracking with our Community Adding Hundreds of Millions of Millions of Million ntly reading, and read shelves ” .
Odunayo, 33, said: “I think people love the different types of data we give. We just have a lot of really cool features, and the budget.
“But I think the number one thing, if people are comparing us with goodres, is that a lot of people do go: ‘it’s just not open by amazon.”
Goodreads have struggled with a perception that there can be Malicious reviewing and even personal attacks on author from from users. In 2023, Debut Author-to-Bee Cait Corrain was dropped by Her Publisher, Del Rey, and Her Planned Publication Was Scrapped after She Admitted Creating Fake GoRads Accounts Accounts to Boost to Boost Ack Other Debut Authors with Books Due Out at the same time as hers.
In the wake of the corrain incident, goodreads related a statement Fically deflate or inflate the overall rating of the book “.
It added: “We Continue to Invest in Improvements to Quickly Detect and Moderate Content and Accounts that Violate Our Reviews or Community Guidelines.”
The storygraph has tried to head off such problems by not allowing private messaging or comments on reviews. Odunayo said she wanted to avoid a situation “where anyone can just comment on your review and you’ve got to deal with being scared to put reviews up there”.
Odunayo Never Had Ambitions to work in tech when she was younger. She Study Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford and Had an offer to work for deutsche bank.
But after winning a competition for a place on a coding course for women – “Just a nice skill to have in my back post” – The Tech Industry Because Her Home.
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She Considers Herself Fortunate. “I”ve been in the tech industry for a decade now, and it is hevily white male-dominated, but I’ve ben lucky with my colleagues and the companies I’ve verked with. Even going to oxford, there wasn’t many people Around that lookd like me, ”She said. “So I know not everyone like me has that experience.”
The storygraph, despite its climbing user numbers, is still run by odunayo, who puts videos on Instagram and Social Media, Talking About The App and Her Own Reading, and Answers dieret messages peronalily.
But giving the rate of growth, can that controlue? And what if amazon comes calling with a briefcase full of cash to buy out its goodres competition?
“That’s not something we’re interested in,” Says odunayo. “We had zero investment in the storyground. It’s a completely bootstrapped company. Anything can happy in life, obvious, but right now we’re happy and we’re enjoying it. We see the storygraph as our life’s work.
“I don’t think there’s a limit to how big we can get and maintain what we doing now. I just want more people to know about us. I want us to be the most popular book app in the world. “
For Odunayo, the reason she started all this in the first place – the books – is more important than ever. “I Remember a friend posting on social media that he’d a business and only managed to read 45 books,” She said. “And I was Thinking: ‘Wait a minute – i’m single, I don’t have any kids, the company I was running at the time was a 9am until 6pm situation, and i’ve only read 13 books this year. ‘
So I set myself a target of 30 or so books a year. It’s funny, because people always always say
In Fact, Oduyano Now Reads 70 or 80 Books A Year, Split Between Nonfication and Novells. Her current read is The ministry of time By Kaliane Bradley. “I was expert to so many more books through interaction with readers that I was like: ‘Oh, I need to read this; I want to read that. ‘ But i’m now the ceo of a company that’s a reading tracking app. So reading is now part of my Whole Identity. “
