In 2023, as Texas lawmakers debated Senate Bill 13—a controversial bill aimed at restricting certain books in public school libraries and expanding parental oversight—Steve Wandler was among the dozen-plus parents, educators, and advocates who testified before the legislature. Wanderer wasn’t just another concerned citizen. He was a Canadian entrepreneur who had relocated to Texas the year before to found Bookmarked, a fledgling startup that promises to help school districts manage their library collections and give parents greater visibility into what their children are reading.
The legislation addressed the very issue Wandler believed his company could help solve. The bill, authored by Republican state Senator Angela Paxton, would require districts to pull books featuring content deemed by local school boards to be “profane,” “indecent,” or “sexually explicit,” and expanded parents’ rights to monitor their children’s borrowing histories and restrict what their children could check out. It was part of a broader political push that also included HB 900, which required book vendors to rate school library materials for sexual content (though a federal appeals court later blocked enforcement of the rating mandate as unconstitutionally broad).
Wandler spoke in support of SB 13, telling lawmakers it “empowers parental access” and “mandates accountability with the school districts.” His investment in the bill’s passage wasn’t merely rhetorical: Public records show Bookmarked spent at least $80,000 lobbying in favor of the measure, and later hired the powerful Texas lobbying firm Moak Casey to help promote its cause.
Still, critics saw SB 13 differently, with free-speech advocates warning the new system amounts to codified censorship. Tasslyn Magnusson, a senior advisor with the Freedom to Read Program at PEN America, says that tools aggregating and circulating lists of challenged titles can reshape library collections in subtle but consequential ways. “When you start flagging books as somehow bad or under issue in other districts and other states, you’re undermining your local community control of what a school should have available for its students,” she tells. Fast Company.
Texas lawmakers ultimately moved forward anyway. Within months of SB 13’s June 2025 passage, Bookmarked, then without any district clients, began marketing its software as a tool designed to help districts navigate the law’s new requirements, according to brochure materials provided to Fast Company. The platform promised to highlight potentially problematic titles for school boards, streamline review processes, and give parents direct access to their children’s reading histories by integrating with library systems (that checkout data is stored on Amazon Web Services). In an interview with Fast CompanyWandler describes the product as decision support rather than a censorship engine: “We’re just showing you what we find on the internet. We’re not telling you what to do.”
In doing so, the Dallas-based upstart quickly became a key player in a new and deeply contested corner of the edtech market, providing its software to more than 150 districts across Texas, according to Wandler—though that footprint is more complicated than it may appear, spanning a mix of paid contracts and free pilot programs. (Wandler says a soon-to-be-released updated version of Bookmarked would standardize pricing at $3 per student.)
Bookmarked was initially backed by angel investors and remains angel funded, according to Wandler, who says the company is now seeking additional capital after gaining traction in Texas. He describes the company’s tech as a practical solution, one that helps districts maneuver an increasingly complex legal environment while connecting families more directly to their children’s reading. He acknowledges the fears over a system that might accelerate book removals, but insists his company has been a neutral player. “We try to be Switzerland,” he says. “And it’s hard to be Switzerland.”
