A year of new reader friends

We grew from 0 to 70K readers this year without any paid marketing. That's the story from the outside. Here's what it was like actually doing it.

When we set out to create Pagebound, there were many unknowns. Would we be able to grow this community without any paid promotion, and therefore stay self-funded? Could we reach the scale where a user-supported business model would allow us to continue working on this full time? Our first year, 2024, we operated on belief. We spent the year building, making the bold choice to launch with far more than an MVP (minimum viable product). This meant many more months of investment and trusting our instincts before any concrete feedback from readers.

In a very crowded space—so many book apps exist that all do essentially the same thing—we knew that to build a lasting, differentiated product, we had to have all the basics that Goodreads provides while also offering something fundamentally new: a social experience that could create genuine connections between readers based on evergreen discussions about books.

It’s a choice that now, 2 years later, we know was right. 2025 has been an incredible year of growth. We launched the web version of Pagebound in January and expanded to iOS and Android in October. We achieved 10% week-on-week growth, considered exceptional in the startup space, and we did it entirely organically, as a 2-person team.

This is all easy to say in hindsight, but I want to let you know, as the person who made her first TikTok video in January and her 445th today, how it really happened.

Phase 1: Climbing out of obscurity

As someone who’d only ever had private social media accounts, I was nervous to start posting public videos online. It took me an hour to film my first 30 second video. As I sat there, repeating the same line 10 different ways and cringing, success was certainly not guaranteed. As in learning any new skill, those first weeks were full of discomfort. My screen time shot up as I had to consume more content to effectively create it. I bought a hand-held mic, a suction mount for the back of my phone, and tried to embrace this new content creator identity. Growing Pagebound was my main priority, and I had a plan.

TikTok was the obvious choice for us. A platform that valued individual video performance over follower metrics, it was possible to reach a wide audience as a “nobody.” l started posting 2-3 videos a day on TikTok, testing many ways of explaining and pitching Pagebound. Most of these videos got around 300-600 views. 2 weeks in, I had 3 videos make it to several thousand views:

Looking back now, these formed the template for content that would consistently perform well for us:

1. 30 second videos highlighting 1 feature with a compelling hook

2. 10 second videos showcasing the product, set to music

3. sharing our experiences building an indie book app

If a video worked, I would make a different version and post again. This was hit or miss, sometimes performing really well: a video of a bookshelf stitched with me asking why online libraries aren’t as colorful as real life ones got 8K views when I posted on Feb 12th and then 37K views when I posted nearly the same video on Feb 19th. At the time, we had ~10 readers joining Pagebound a day and on Feb 19th, we had 50. I still remember checking my phone and feeling absolute elation with every new ping of someone creating an account.

Any successful video was followed by many more that got 300 views. The beauty of not having money to spend on paid ads was that nothing obscured what didn’t work. Every video I posted was an experiment, and I learned quickly how to best to describe Pagebound and what convinced someone to give us a chance.

Our first viral video happened on March 3rd, International Women’s Day:

We had over 1,000 people sign up in 1 day. While I was proud of this milestone (wanting the hundred videos I had posted by that point to mean something), it felt like a fluke. I wasn’t sure I could repeat it.

Over the next couple months, it was clear that our content was better—every week, a few videos would reach 5K views and even 10-20K regularly. I was still posting twice a day on TikTok and had expanded to Instagram. Still, it was a struggle. I set weekly goals for new user growth and couldn’t hit them. In June, I changed my approach. I looked at all our high reach videos and analyzed everything about them. Viewing them as a whole, there were clear patterns. In the last days of June, I posted a video on both TikTok and Instagram that reached a new level of virality, one that pushed us into the next phase of growth.

Phase 2: Engaging with our community

We now had 20K users on Pagebound and 30K followers across Instagram and TikTok. Suddenly, many more people were making content about Pagebound. I could no longer respond to every message and comment we got, and I could see our users excited to step in and mention us, answer questions. Pagebound was no longer this small, obscure book community only I was talking about. So many people made it their own, spoke to their favorite features, spent time sharing thoughtful reviews, bothered their friends ceaselessly to join. This next phase of growth was about community, not only on Pagebound, but this love for it splashed across social media.

On my end, I had much more confidence. I focused on quality and reduced posting to 5-7 times per week. Unlike TikTok, Instagram shows your content to a larger portion of your followers. This means tutorials and longer videos can do well, not just quick clips focused on grabbing a new user’s attention. I created a series of videos explaining our features and how to make the most of Pagebound. I began sharing product updates as we started beta testing the app in September.

Another advantage spun out of constraints—since I make our content as Pagebound’s cofounder (and not someone hired just for social media), I can speak to what we are as a platform and also what we aren’t. We are not trying to grow to a million users just to have a million users or hit an arbitrary target. Our goal is to communicate clearly what Pagebound is and for any reader to decide if it’s right for them. We are not compromising our product vision for mass appeal. We think Pagebound is the perfect book tracker for someone who values discussion, who wants a book-specific social experience, who is not trying to become an influencer. Finding readers who resonate with our vision is what keeps our community authentic and strong.

Phase 3: Reaching new audiences

With the launch of the app in October, many new users discovered Pagebound. There was no specific viral moment to point to. For any product to grow, word of mouth is crucial, and our community came through for us. Viral videos can give you a burst of momentum, but it’s everyday sharing that sustains it.

We expanded to new channels to reach more people. We joined Substack and other text-based social media. The learning has started all over again now that witty one-liners are the medium instead of video. I’m recovering my writing practice with long articles like this one. With every platform we’ve joined, the audience there is a little bit different, and it’s incredible to see a whole new group of people discover and embrace Pagebound. We want to seek readers where they’re at, whether you’re chronically online or would only ever hear about us from your local librarian, there’s a place for you on Pagebound.