Mainebiz

O N T H E R E C O R D W W W. M A I N E B I Z . B I Z 27 S E P T E M B E R 2 , 2 0 2 4 B Y R E N E E B Y R E N E E C O R D E S C O R D E S ainebiz: What did you do before starting Bookclubs? Anna Ford: My career was in public health policy and advocacy, but I've been a book club enthusiast since I joined my first club in 2005. Even now, I participate in six active clubs. Running Bookclubs has a pub- lic health tie-in for me. Book clubs combat social isolation and bring people together. When you're reading and discussing a book together, that experience will bring you closer and highlight what you have in common. It builds community. MB: What inspired the idea for your business? AF: I was leading a book club that quickly grew from four to 40 members. We had so much fun together, but I wasn't having much fun handling the logistics. Scheduling. Figuring out who was showing up and who wasn't. What to read. Inviting new people. Setting up the discussion questions. I was drowning in email, and attendance was waning. I loved my club and wanted to make sure we stayed together. In a ser- endipitous twist, I met my co-founder (and future husband) Ian Campbell through book club friends. Ian is a programmer and developer. I pitched him on the idea of helping us, and we launched Bookclubs at the end of 2019. We're now helping over 100,000 book clubs read together. MB: What does the platform offer? AF: We take the hassle out of start- ing and managing a book club so you can focus on reading, discussing and being together. You can set up online or in-person clubs, schedule meet- ings, arrange discussions, and vote on what to read next. You can also manage members, schedule meetings, track RSVPs, conduct polls, stream- line communication, keep a digital library, share community reviews and track books, all in one central place. Bookclubs is great for building culture in the workplace, too — we see that as a promising growth area. MB: Who and where are your users? AF: e majority of our clubs are tra- ditional, in-person groups. Most are U.S.-based, but we're growing quickly in the U.K., Canada and Australia. We're serving nearly a million read- ers. Many are women, and we see an equal age distribution between 25 and 70-plus, but there are more men and young people than you'd pre- dict. We're also seeing strong growth in online the number of corporate groups, libraries, bookstores, schools and churches using Bookclubs. MB: How do you finance the free services? AF: We offer core organizing features for free, because accessibility and community building are important to us. We do this by offering more pow- erful tools through a paid subscrip- tion. About 30% of clubs upgrade to Bookclubs Premium. MB: What premium services do you offer? AF: We offer three paid tiers with lots of advanced features. e first tier is designed to streamline all club logis- tics for the admin by adding addi- tional polling options such as ranked and multiple choice; direct messaging; and automatic calendar integration. e pro tier includes all premium features plus text messaging and cus- tom branding. At the top tier, we offer more customizable management tools and the ability to host video meetings within the platform. MB: How have you financed your business so far? AF: Bookclubs was fully bootstrapped in the early days. After a small angel round, we raised our first equity round in 2022, working with Maine Venture Fund and Maine Technology Institute. MB: What's next for Bookclubs? AF: We are on track to reach prof- itability this year. We're also really excited about reaching more busi- nesses and university alumni groups. We're building technology to support more chapter clubs on our platform as many large, online and celebrity book clubs want to also foster local connec- tions. Long term, we're keeping an eye on international expansion. P H O T O / J I M N E U G E R Anna Ford is co-founder and CEO of Bookclubs, an online platform that helps users start, manage or join a book club. Mainebiz caught up with the Camden-based entrepreneur for a readout on the startup, which has six full-time employees (including three in Maine) and works with eight remote developers on a contractual basis. Anna Ford Anna Ford, co-founder and , co-founder and CEO of the online platform CEO of the online platform Bookclubs Bookclubs, pictured at the , pictured at the Camden Public Library. Camden Public Library. We take the hassle out of starting and managing a book club so you can focus on reading, discussing and being together. M

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