An ethical, independent alternative to Goodreads

We’re making book discovery better for readers and fairer for authors by challenging the ever-growing influence Amazon has over our reading choices.

Download our app to join the waiting list.

Challenging the Amazon stranglehold

Already a superpower, Amazon's influence over the book industry continues to grow with a virtual monopoly over online book sales+, its own large competing publishing house, and unique access to valuable reader data via Goodreads.

We know there are already a few Goodreads alternatives out there with fresher designs and additional features, but we're not interested in simply redesigning their platform. We're rebuilding book discovery from the ground up to allow niche and small press books a chance to find an audience, and present readers with a genuine choice.

Leveling the playing field

We're not in this to sell books. Our mission is to help readers discover great books and support the creators, publishers, and booksellers who nourish the writer-to-reader chain.

Readerly provides a much needed counter-balance to the power of marketing and algorithms designed to get you to make a purchase. Every book you see is one that has been recommended by a like-minded reader, and every time you take an action on a book—save, hide, or mark it as read—we remove that book from your feed. This dampens the dominance of bestsellers, creating space on the platform to widen your choice by showing you books you may have missed and new hidden gems.

Ending the generic 5-star rating system

It's 2021, and the world is still using a 5-star rating system to grade highly subjective work. Too many excellent books go undiscovered because they weren't written for the majority and received below the dreaded 3.5 star average.

We treat readers as individuals, tailoring the platform to your unique tastes. Instead of giving books a single rating, we show the percentage of people similar to you who recommended the book.

Remaining accountable & independent

We are a publisher, a writer, and a programmer who believe in the transformative power of great stories and the value of the people who write them. We offer a subscription to readers who want to support our mission so we can keep their interests at the heart of the platform.

+ for many global publishers, Amazon is their biggest buyer and therefore able to demand huge discounts, making it difficult for indie publishers and booksellers to compete

Founders

Gill Evans​

Gill is a publisher and editor of nearly forty years’ experience. She began her career in a printing house and has been Deputy MD of Reed Children’s Books, Head of Children’s Publishing at Random House and Editorial Director and Fiction Publisher of Walker Books in London. Her authors have won many prizes including the Carnegie Medal, the Whitbread Award and The Guardian Children’s Book Award. Gill was shortlisted for the British Book Awards Editor of the Year and won a British Book Awards Nibby for Innovation and Design.

Mary Heitkamp​

Mary is a writer and editor with an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She believes in the importance of reading literature as a mindful alternative to internet noise, and in 2019, co-founded fresh.ink, a short story platform that aims to increase the reach of beautiful and thought-provoking writing while ensuring authors get paid for their work. With tens of thousands of users, fresh.ink has been featured as an Apple App of the Day in both the US and UK.

Matt Brindley

Prior to Readerly, Matt was a co-founder and CTO of Litmus, a software company that empowers email marketers by giving them the tools to test campaigns before they go out the door. Now in its thirteenth year, Litmus has grown to 180 people with offices in Cambridge, San Francisco, and London.
Ready for his next challenge, Matt founded Readerly in 2020 with Mary and Gill to bring together their experience and improve the lives of authors and readers.