In Today’s Newsletter:

• 🐛 Book Recs from Meelworm

• 🥁 Bestie parade!!!

• 📱 What’s new & what’s next

• 🔥 Hot Worm Trends

Hi worms!

Amelia (@meelworm) here, excited to tell you about what we’re up to on Team Worm, what I’ve been reading and loving, and show off some fun app updates.

It’s been a slow start to the year for me—I’m slogging through winter blues and chronic pain flare ups. It’s meant a lot of time at home, creativity in the kitchen (I’ve tried every anti-inflammatory diet the tiktok girlies recommend), and a lot of audiobooks. Our community on Bookworm is always a bright ray of sunshine these days, and all the time at home tending to my body also meant I was able to break my reading slump! I smashed some absolute gems, almost all of which were recommended by fellow worms.

Some highlights of my 2024 reads so far

Save ‘em to your “to read” shelf—you won’t regret it!

Wormy just got 5 new besties 😻

And they are unbelievably cute and complex, each with their different tastes in books.

Who will be your wormy’s best friend? I’ve already rotated my wormy through each of the new besties—my worm is extremely popular.

Have a suggestion for a bestie? Reply right here and let me know 🙂 Drawing new besties is one of my favorite parts of this work hehe

As you may already know, you have to be a ProWorm to get a bestie for your worm. While all of Bookworm’s functionality is free, we offer sweet perks for ProWorms (like besties!).

What’s new in the app ✨ 

We’ve got some sleeeeek new designs in the app—have you seen the new book pages?! 🥵✨ And, advanced search is here! You all asked for the ability to search by ISBN, and we’re listening! Now you can do so! Same deal with quarter stars. I fear my new rating average is going to be 3.75 stars: the perfect rating for indecisive but people-pleasing worms.

What’s next: Coming soon to the app

I’m currently coding the ability for worms to add books that aren’t in our database directly to your library. Right now, it is a very laborious process to add a book to our database—after you enter a request for a new book, each entry is moderated by a human/worm volunteer, and the process simply takes too long. (We are literally months behind on these entries ☹️) However! Coming very soon, you’ll be able to surpass this step by adding books directly into your library. We still have plans to speed up the moderation step to add books to our database, but at least your library won’t suffer in the meantime!

In case you didn’t know, Bookworm is completely volunteer-run. Besides all the generously-donated labor, it costs a good chunk of change to run an app like Bookworm. Thankfully, our ProWorms help us offset that cost. But we’re not breaking-even yet! Help us stay free and independent by going ProWorm today.

Hot Worm Trends

xoxoxoxo,

Amelia Goodman (she/her/meelworm)

founder of Bookworm