Why Bookhead exists
Bookhead exists to help people use technology to promote literature.
We believe literature is one of humanity’s most prized creations, and technology can be used as a tool to keep this gift alive. In plain terms: we make software that helps book people do their work in bookstores, libraries, and publishing. We are here to serve book people.
Bookhead is not a startup. We are a small business that makes software. We are not looking for an exit. We love literature. We’d rather be talking about Faulkner than your bookstore’s inventory data syncing.
We work as collaborators with booksellers, and we don’t take lightly the role we play in our customers’ businesses. We are committed to their success, because healthy independent bookstores are crucial for a vibrant community. Without books, we would be nothing, and without booksellers, well…
We help people use technology to promote literature.
Our story
Bookhead started with a problem that booksellers know well: too much time spent using incomplete software to do repetitive computer work, and not enough time with books and the readers who love them.
Sam and Katelyn worked together as booksellers, back when Sam designed the catalogs, websites, and print materials. He taught himself to code and got into civic tech, but he never left the bookselling world behind. Years later Katelyn, still a bookseller, was running into the same problems Sam had: hunting down book data one ISBN at a time, wrestling with tools that were never built for a bookstore.
So they built Bookhead together to fix them. Read how our Canva app came out of this.
Where we’re headed?
Today Bookhead is e-commerce and inventory software, a Canva app for designing book marketing, and a Google Sheets add-on for using book data in your spreadsheets. Underneath it, we are building a data platform for independent bookstores: one place where your books, your listings, and your marketing all speak the same language.
We want to make software you actually like to use. Most tools for this work were not built for booksellers, and it shows. We would rather make apps that feel good, so you spend less time messing with technology and more time with books written by people and the readers who love them.
Who we are
Sam McAlilly makes Bookhead’s software and does a lot of other stuff. He is a former bookseller, and has since made software for local governments, journalists, researchers, non-profits, and libraries. He writes fiction.
Email · Resume · GitHub · Writing
Katelyn O’Brien is a co-founder of Bookhead and a working bookseller. She helps Bookhead with marketing, bookseller outreach, product, and customer support.
