MITCHELL DAVIS

摘要

LJ: How did BiblioBoard get started? MD: We launched BiblioBoard as a his-torical content consumer business, [but] we didn't have the money to become a consumer company. So we pivoted and said, this could work in the library world. We launched our library product in 2013. People loved the interface but immediately asked, "Are you going to get content other than this?" So 18 months ago we started licensing traditional content. How did SELF-e enter the mix? In the last 15 years...millions of books [were] self-published. Librarians know there are good books in there, but they don't have the bandwidth to sort through [them]. So it seemed like a perfect mar-riage for LJ to become a readers' advi-sory service for self-published books. I think that solves a really huge problem for librarians: it lets them make self-published books available with confidence and without a lot of hassle. It also solves a problem [when] local authors want their book in their local library and libraries have had to turn [them] away. Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL) told us they were getting multiple emails a week and would have to say no. SELF-e lets the librarian say yes and engage their writing community more viscerally.