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November 22, 2021

#107 - Product Polish

Dreams of making the product even more slick and intuitive, exciting new community features, and our first ever book club!

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#107 | 22 November 2021

Product Polish

 
Following on from the last issue, I cannot wait for the day when all core functionality is intuitive, slick, and a joy to use.

Lately, the focus has been on new features (see below for the latest exciting update... 👀), and there are a handful of other things on the roadmap for the rest of the year, but after that we want to take some time to focus on enhancing the awesome functionality we already have.
 
A screenshot from a reading challenge page on The StoryGraph. There is a green small subtitle which reads "Challenge prompts", and underneath that are two white boxes stacked on top of one another. Each box represents a challenge prompt. The first box is titled: "1. A translated fantasy of sci-fi novel". Underneath that is italicised text which reads: "Books you've added to this prompt:". Then there are 10 book covers in two rows. The pane underneath is titled "A book by a Black woman in translation" and feature 6 covers, and the the pane is cut off in the screenshot.
Adding books to reading challenge prompts is something people often find clunky! 😅 

This was originally a product goal for the end of the year, but with 6 weeks to go it's looking more like a focus for January! 😆
 

Since last time...
 

We've been talking about upcoming Community changes for a while now, but the ability to add Friends on The StoryGraph is finally here! 🎉
 
Screenshot of my notifications page on StoryGraph. There's a green heading top left reading "Notifications". Then there is a subtitle in black reading "Earlier". Underneath are two notifications, one on top of the other. The first reads "rob has sent you a friend request about 19 hours ago". There are two buttons: Accept and Reject. The second reads "ab_reads has sent you a friend request about 24 hours ago". There is a green label underneath reading "Accepted".
Shall I leave him hanging? 🤔
 
 
The thing we're proudest of is that if anybody doesn't want to enter the world of friends and friend requests, if they do nothing (i.e. don't toggle any of the new settings), then nothing will change. The product will operate exactly as before! 😁

We also now have a way to send in-app broadcasts to users, further reducing our need to send emails (of which we currently send so few anyway)! 🙌🏾

Stay tuned for the first one later today. 😌
 

Next two weeks


The next big feature is buddy reads! We really want this out before the end of the year, so let's see what the next couple of weeks has in store. 🤞🏾

Hopefully we recruit 100 more volunteer librarians too!

If you'd like to find out more about this low-/no-commitment way to help us to improve our book data, please drop us a message at support@thestorygraph.com. 🙏🏾

(We're not accepting reapplications yet!)
 

What I'm reading right now


Later today I'll be starting The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende for our first ever book club (run on Instagram).

I'll also be interviewing the author live on December 18th at 9am PT/12pm ET/5pm GMT, so definitely save the date and get involved if you can!
StoryGraph book pane for The House of the Spirits. The cover is to the left and features an orange floral pattern. To the right is a white pane with all of the book information, including the title and author. It has the following tags: fiction, historical, literary, magical realism, emotional, and medium-paced. It is marked as 'to-read'.

Have a great week,

Nadia

P.S. Know somebody who's an avid reader or would enjoy following along with this journey? Please do forward this email to them! Thank you. :-)
 
Haven't tried The StoryGraph yet? Check it out today!
Love the app? Consider upgrading to our Plus plan!

Want to volunteer? Apply to be a Librarian!
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