Really interesting funding story yesterday Fable: The Book Club App raised 20MM to build a platform for “book club” discussions. We shouldn’t be surprised, but there’s a whole phenomenon of “social reading” and a gaggle of booktokers (book-focused TikTokers). I was with a group of buddies talking wishing there was something like this for music.

Originally, i thought it was designed for existing book clubs, like the ones that happen in the real world over wine and not actually reading the book.

But, for Fable, you can see the product strategy:

• Find engaging “hosts” – Leverage existing audiences (or their ability to build an audience) and incent them (revshare?) to build the platform
• Engagement – Drive deeper engagement through prompts, questions, notifications
• Repeat – Create milestones and “events” to create repeat usage
• Revenue – Affiliate links via product sales and a premium experience

The promo materials on the homepage are weird, though: Sean Astin and Levar Burton mainly talking about reading and their love of books. How many shares did they get for that?