Over the last few weeks, I've (just me, never Rob 😆) wondered whether we'd ever manage to catch up with the large influx of users.

After trying a whole range of things, a tip from a friend (thanks, Andy) made us realise that the database we were working with wasn't powerful enough to handle the intensive workload we were throwing at it.
   

Most readers won't know that we used to have a group of beta testers who paid $6/month from September 2019-March 2020 to get extra features and a chance to influence the site's roadmap.

Since iterating on customer feedback is at the core of what we do, even though the paid Editor programme is over, we still have a monthly call with a small group of them.

It's a fantastic way to get a different perspective on how the site is evolving and get insight into what to prioritise next, especially given the increased volume of communication with new users.
 

 

I forgot to take a screenshot from last night's call, so here's an old one instead!

 

On the product side, I started work on improving the search functionality, including creating author pages:
 

Rather than being taken to a search of 'Kiese Laymon', you're taken to a list of books attached to him. We'll eventually develop these pages to show more about each author.

 

There's also now a bunch of new self-service options on the Edit Profile page:

 

We hope you don't want to click the last one, but it's a-okay if you gotta go. 😢

There's still work to do on search, as I laid out last week, and we hope that we can finally publish tens of thousands of new books to the filter menu to enhance the current discovery experience.

Beyond that, there's a few smaller, but hopefully exciting, things we want to deliver to y'all.

First, how about it being time to give everyone a way to search for other users by their username? 😇
 

Also, the addition of thousands of Goodreads ratings has made the book review pages rather unhelpful:
 

Let's make it easier for you to find those reviews that help you decide if you want to read a book or not!

Time for my next nonfiction! As a black woman who's lived all of the typical hair struggles over the years, I can't wait to dive into this one:
 

 

Have a great week,

Nadia

P.S. If you know a friend who's an avid reader or would enjoy following along with this journey, please do forward this email to them! Thank you. :-)
 

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