BetaList features the newest startups. Today, we look at ShelfJoy which helps people discover great books. Submit your startup to get featured too.
What is ShelfJoy?
ShelfJoy helps people discover great books to read by hand-curating books on specific interest areas. By narrowing down the interest areas, our editorial team is able to discover hundreds of books that are worth reading on that topic.
We are looking at ShelfJoy as the online equivalent of meandering through your favourite bookstore, where you can discover books that you hadn’t even heard of. Serendipity is a wonderful thing and we plan to resolve that online.
Where did the idea come from?
We are #booknerds themselves. On our travels, while we could happily miss the most common tourist attractions, we would never miss taking a trip to the independent bookstores in the city.
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Every trip to the independent bookstore would leave us bittersweet. We would be gleaming with the new books that we never even heard of, but we would be sad that there was no way we could continue to discover such great books, without having to explicitly search for them.
That is when the idea of hand-curated books on interesting niche topics came about. We got around talking to people like us, whose life revolve around the current books they are reading and managed to curate hundreds of shelves on various topics.
What has the feedback been like so far?
The feedback has been encouraging. We’ve heard back from users that they’ve been able to stumble upon books from entirely unrelated areas and they like that experience of not seeking out specific information and just being open to discovery.
Our user base is growing steadily and after launching on Product Hunt, we got a lot of support (200+) upvotes and 1,000+ users. We’ve recommended 12k books to our users so far! Out of all, we have a favourite testimonial too :)
A user who discovered a graphic novel she loved said “Curation should be your middle name”. I think this testimonial is able to capture the essence of what we are attempting.
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