Well, here we are. After more than a year of planning, fundraising, building and many an existential crisis wondering what I had got myself into, you’re actually reading this on our new website, which means we’ve finally managed to push it live. Deep exhale.

The idea for this website first started taking shape almost three years ago, growing out of the parts of Bookety Book Books that people had come to love most. I started talking to friends and people across different industries about how they were running content-based businesses, trying to work out the best way to skin a cat (I feel I should clarify that this saying is most likely about catfish, not actual cats). Those conversations eventually led to a nationwide crowdfunding campaign that raised the money we needed to get started, followed by a year of building the website and the enormous decision to close the retail side of Bookety after six years of selling books. It’s been a lot, and I am incredibly glad to finally be sharing it with you.

When I launched Bookety Book Books six years ago, I managed to get the whole thing up and running in about three months, all while juggling a full-time job and another side hustle. Almost every spare hour went into it, and I gave very little thought to the fact that I wasn’t being paid for any of that work. Having studied fashion, I’d always loved the creative process, particularly the challenge of taking an idea and turning it into something tangible. I had the freedom to throw myself into it completely, and at that point in my life, the only thing I was really giving up was my own free time.

This time around, I have a daughter relying on me and a household that depends on my financial contribution. Spending countless hours on a project that takes time away from my family without contributing to the household income has, at times, felt inherently selfish, and I’ve struggled to reconcile my ambitions with the realities of family life. I don’t have any particularly profound advice to offer, but I’ve had plenty of conversations with friends about this over the past year, and I know I’m far from the only parent trying to work out how to pursue something I’m passionate about without feeling guilty about everything else that needs my time and attention.

This was only compounded by the fact that, as with most things I throw myself into guns blazing, I had wildly underestimated just how much work would go into building a website from scratch. I’ve built and rebuilt my Shopify website a few times over the years, but that has nothing on creating something completely custom. Every feature and function has needed to be thought through, designed, built and tested, followed by the enormous task of filling the thing with content. Every book needs uploading, every purchase link has been individually sourced and added by yours truly, and after making what feels like a million collages, my RSI has never been worse.

While I’ve been busy learning my way around an entirely new website and filling it with content, Jess and Jesse have been doing the enormous amount of work involved in actually building the thing. They’ve been endlessly patient, kind and immensely generous with their time, and I genuinely couldn’t have asked for two better people to work with. It’s easy to talk about a project like this as though it’s something I’ve built myself, but the reality is that it wouldn’t exist without their hard work, expertise and willingness to get us to the finish line.

Through all of this, I’ve had to keep reminding myself why I wanted to build this website in the first place. I fiercely believed, and still do, that there is room for a fun, accessible literary website that contributes something new to reading culture. Of course, brilliant literary publications already exist, and there are plenty of people doing thoughtful and important work around books, but I think we sometimes forget just how intimidating the world of books can feel, particularly if you’re a new or reluctant reader, someone trying to find their way back to reading or even a lifelong reader who has never felt particularly comfortable in literary spaces.

Walking into a bookshop filled with thousands of titles can be overwhelming when you have no idea where to begin, and I think the same can be true of conversations about literature. I want Bookety to help break down some of those barriers without sacrificing the opportunity to have deeper discussions about books. You should be able to come here and read an in-depth conversation with an author, learn something about the publishing industry or work out what book you should take on holiday, without feeling intimidated or shut out of the broader conversation surrounding books.

Authors also need as many spaces as possible where people are actually talking about their work, and unfortunately, those spaces are becoming increasingly difficult to fund. Here in Aotearoa, we’re seeing the effects of cuts to arts funding at the very time when books seem to be enjoying an extraordinary moment in popular culture. Books are colliding with fashion and the world of celebrity; Dua Lipa has a book club, famous faces are sharing their reading lists and it feels like every book known to man is currently being adapted for the screen. But I don’t think all this attention means we’ve reached a point of saturation. If anything, it demonstrates just how much appetite there is for books and the conversations surrounding them, and why we should be encouraging more independent spaces to contribute to that conversation, rather than fewer.

Social media has been instrumental in growing Bookety and connecting us with readers, but I was also craving a space away from the demands of algorithms and the increasingly narrow ways they dictate how we create and consume content. After years of building Bookety on platforms where we’re ultimately at the mercy of a handful of tech billionaires and their ever-changing algorithms, the opportunity to create something independently has been incredibly liberating. This website gives us the freedom to publish what we think is interesting and worthwhile, in a way we enjoy, rather than constantly considering what an algorithm might reward.

Beyond technology and celebrities reading books, there is a much bigger reason why I think spaces that champion books and reading matter. We are facing a literacy and reading-for-pleasure crisis, and while there is an enormous amount of work to be done to improve children’s literacy, I think we need to be having a much bigger conversation about the reading habits of adults too. We can’t expect schools and teachers to shoulder the entire responsibility of raising the next generation of readers. Children need to grow up surrounded by adults who read, who talk about books and who demonstrate that reading is something worth making time for. And if we’re losing adult readers, we’re also losing some of the people who should be passing that love of reading on.

Of course, the literacy crisis is a complex puzzle with many pieces, and a website alone isn’t going to solve it. But I believe that creating spaces where people of all ages are encouraged to read, discover books and talk about them is one small but worthwhile piece of that puzzle. It’s an area we’re particularly interested in exploring further, with plenty more content planned beyond what you’ll see on the website today.

And part of encouraging people to read is giving them opportunities to connect with other readers. For such a solitary activity, reading has an extraordinary ability to bring people together. Over the past few years, Bookety has helped readers form book clubs and find book pen pals all over Aotearoa, and the new website is an extension of what we’ve already been doing. We’ve made room for readers to discover literary events, join our community forum, find a book pen pal or connect with a book club. Bookety has always been about connecting readers with books and with each other, and this website gives us more ways to do exactly that.

It would also be disingenuous of me to launch this website without talking about the realities of making something like this financially viable. We’ve already put hundreds of hours into this project, and the costs of building something completely custom have far exceeded our original budget. We’ve had to put some plans on hold, including an independent bookshop directory and interactive map, which we hope to introduce in a second phase of development once we’ve established a sustainable financial foundation.

There are a few ways you can support us. We have affiliate links throughout the website, which means that when you purchase a book through one of our links, we may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. For the first time, readers from around the world can support Bookety this way, with links to booksellers in New Zealand, Australia, the UK and the US, as well as options for audiobooks and ebooks. Importantly, we’ve chosen affiliate partners that support independent bookshops, so your purchases can help sustain the wider bookselling industry too.

We also have advertising space available, and publishers, brands and businesses can work with us on book-related content and campaigns. We’re actively looking for partners who recognise the value of what we’re building, because the reality is that independent cultural publications need money to exist. If we want spaces that champion authors, commission original writing and contribute meaningfully to reading culture, we need to find ways to pay for that work.

One of our hopes is to keep Bookety free from paywalls and accessible to everyone. I know so many of you have already contributed generously to our crowdfunding campaign, and I’m incredibly grateful for the support that has brought us this far. If you’re in a position to help us continue, we’ve added a donation option in the top right-hand corner of the website. Every contribution helps us keep Bookety free and continue creating content for readers.

Finally, I want to thank every single person who backed our crowdfunding campaign and took a chance on an idea that, at the time, largely existed in my head. To our founding sponsors and supporters, thank you for helping us get this project off the ground. To Jess and Jesse, thank you for all the hard work that has gone on behind the scenes. To my family, who have had to live through my many existential crises along the way, thank you for always believing in me and supporting me. And to every person who has sent a kind word or told us how excited they are about what Bookety is becoming, those messages have meant more than you probably realise.

Despite all the challenges of getting here, I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve built, and I’m excited to see how it grows and changes as we learn what our readers want from it. We’re launching with a relatively modest amount of content, but there’s so much more planned, and our focus now is on growing Bookety into something much bigger than just me talking about books, with more writers and perspectives contributing to the conversation and a much broader range of content than what you’ll find here today. We’ve spent the past year building the platform, and now comes the exciting part of making the most of what we’ve created.

It’s certainly a very different version of the business I started back in 2020, but after six years of running Bookety as a bookseller, the reason for doing it really hasn’t changed. I love books, I love talking about them and I want more people to read them.

Mandy
Founder & Editor, Bookety Book Books