Add access to a directory of other authors on Ream

Feature Requests + Future Updates
1

Could you add on the dashboard panel a way to find/search

  1. other authors’ works
  2. a directory author profile pages
  3. genres?
6 Likes
2

Great questions! I will answer these as you’ve numbered them for simplicity.

  1. At the bottom of an authors tier page, it does have all of their works in their Ream. So when you find an author you can see everything they have available there. If you’re referring to something like “authors similar to this author”, Ream has a bunch of things in mind around those lines that I’m excited for.

  2. A directory of all authors on Ream is an idea on the board. I know their are some nuances to it and it’s not as simple as it sounds sadly. I can’t say if Ream will or won’t be doing that, but we will look into it!

  3. Searching for Genres is a big thing that Ream is working on! Everyone can agree we’d be dumb not to do this.

Ream is still new with a small team, so it takes time to get features working, but it’s input from authors that shape what it grows into. Please keep asking questions. I hope you say something we didn’t think about!

8 Likes
3

I can confirm searching by genres is coming and with that the ability to have browse Ream pages and stories similar to a digital bookstore. As far as other authors’ works go, we have a recommendation feature, powered by authors and readers, that we are planning to work on. But it’s a bit further down our roadmap, probably not a summer or fall release but hopefully by winter 2023-24!

5 Likes
4

I just want to check: do you plan to put those recommendations on our Ream pages (i.e. under the description/story list/community posts/in our stories)? Because I’m not sure I’d be keen on that. Much like the Amazon store page, those will be other links that distract from what I’m trying to do with the page: build and maintain my community.

I like the idea of recommendations. I just think they might be better on a search page/home page for all of Ream in a ‘Similar to authors you follow’ ticker rather than our community spaces. If there’s a recommendation on my page, I want it to be because I’ve made that curated recommendation to my readers myself.

(In all honesty I’d also be worried that less dedicated and/or more cost-conscious subscribers might see someone who uploads a chapter every day and has a backlog of dozens of books and jump ship from my subscription, which feels like more of a concern in a subscription than on a standard store page, as a subscription is more of a monetary commitment. But I could be worrying over nothing there.)

2 Likes
5

The recommendation feature will be based solely on curation if it shows up anywhere in your Ream community, and would be purely optional. For instance, we might make it easy to share as an author if you’d like other books you are reading on Ream. At the moment, we are not working on building recommendations on Ream as there are much more urgent things on our roadmap to roll out. As a larger form of recommendations, we have plans in this regard involving reading creators and book clubs that I can’t speak too much about, since it’s more of a future thing. It’s early days for Ream. But if there were to ever be an opportunity for you to share other authors, it would be based off the principles of giving you the control and you the opportunity as an author or reader to get paid for those recommendations. There will certainly be a discovery feed at some point, but that will look much different than anything you see on a retailer or other serial sites. Ream’s foundation is community. Community driven discovery will always be at our core and that would never entail place a bunch of other books that you don’t consent on your Ream page.

7 Likes
6

I love this, I know that several authors post book reviews or author recommendations on their social medias to engage with their community and share their interests. I would love to do something like that on my Ream page to help connect with my own community and introduce them to other authors that I enjoy reading as well.

3 Likes
7

I second the ability to have a paginated author directory page that people can scroll through and check out different authors on the platform. I don’t know who all the authors are on Ream, so the search is useless in that regard. It also hinders discoverability that we can’t see a page that lists all the authors.

1 Like