Bookclubs, a company that offers an online platform and app for book club management, has raised $1.07 million in new funding from nine investors, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing from July.
CEO and co-founder Anna Ford said in an interview her company is continuing to actively raise funds and won’t close the round until September. She said the new tranche includes seven follow-on commitments from previous investors.
Ford plans to use the new funding to accelerate user growth by refining the company’s core product and grow its marketing and sales. She said the company wants to invest more in its Join a Bookclub marketplace, a forum open to anyone that invites readers to follow their interests and find a club that’s the right fit for their tastes.
“It’s home to 300 clubs, online or location-based,” Ford said of the marketplace. “Anyone can find the perfect club for them. You can search by book, look for clubs that meet virtually and by size. We want to invest on the product enhancement side [for the Join a Bookclub marketplace].”
The company also has features that help bookstores host and manage book clubs as well as a Bookclubs for Business platform that allows business leaders to utilize book clubs as a professional development tool and to grow corporate culture. The Bookclubs platform also now hosts several author-led book clubs, where writers share their reading lists and connect with their audiences in new ways, Ford said.
“We have so many bells and whistles we want to add,” Ford said. “We aim to be a one-stop shop for all things books, from discovery to procurement and consumption. We have a product roadmap with probably 150 things.”
With a small team of six full-time employees and a cadre of consultants and technologists, fleshing out the product will take time. But the company grew by leaps during the Covid-19 pandemic, as the public flocked to online engagement and their bookshelves during lockdowns and quarantines. By the end of 2021, Bookclubs said it was home to more than 40,000 clubs.
Ford, who is based in Maine, founded the company in 2017 with Nancy Brown and Ian Campbell. Brown is based in Richmond and the company has participated in the Startup Virginia incubator and Richmond’s Lighthouse Labs accelerator. Other members of the team are based in Richmond and the D.C. area, Ford said.
The new round brings Bookclubs’ lifetime funding to $2.6 million, according to Crunchbase. At the start of the year, the company changed its name to Bookclubs from Bookclubz.
