ReadersGuild press kit
Fabio Jonathan Arifin, fabio@echoforge.to. @readersguild
Fact sheet
- App
- ReadersGuild
- What it is
- A social reading app for iPhone. One tap starts a timer that runs while you read, and up to twenty friends can read alongside you in the same room.
- Price
- Free, with a 10-book library cap. Premium is $6.99 a month, $39.99 a year with a 3-day free trial, or $129.99 once for lifetime access. Prices are localized and vary by territory.
- Platforms
- iPhone and iPad, iOS 15.5 or later
- Release date
- Launching 2026
- Developer
- Fabio Jonathan Arifin, working solo, under EchoForge. Based in San Francisco.
- App Store
- Not yet listed
- Beta
- TestFlight opens soon. Email for early access ahead of the public build.
- Website
- www.readers-guild.com
Description, in three lengths
Use whichever fits. No attribution needed, and no need to ask.
One sentence
ReadersGuild is a social reading app for iPhone, often described as Strava for reading: it times your real sessions and lets friends read alongside you in the same room.
One paragraph
ReadersGuild is a social reading app for iPhone. You start a session with one tap and the timer runs while you read, so your hours come from real reading instead of what you remembered to log. Open a fire and up to twenty friends drop in with a six-character code, everyone bringing their own book. It is free with a 10-book library cap, and Premium is $6.99 a month or $39.99 a year.
The full story
Reading trackers ask you to remember. You finish a book, you go and log it, and the record is only ever as good as your memory of a thing you did three weeks ago. Every number in that kind of app is an estimate wearing the clothes of a fact.
ReadersGuild starts from the session instead. One tap begins a timer, it runs while you read, and when you stop, that is the entry. Nothing is reconstructed. The hours are hours you actually sat there, which is the only version worth being proud of.
The second half is that reading alone is the reason most people stop. A fire is a room you open with a six-character code, and up to twenty readers sit in it at once, each with their own book and their own pages. It works like a silent book club with nothing to organize: no club to found, no schedule, no assigned chapters.
Around that sit the parts a reader keeps: a daily deck of ten picks that each name the book of yours they came from, a reading path that breaks a book into named stops rather than due dates, and a wrap in the spirit of Spotify Wrapped. Reading data is never held hostage. Your Goodreads library imports with its shelves, ratings and dates read, and it can leave the same way.
Key features
- A fire is a reading room. Share a six-character code and up to twenty readers sit down together, each with their own book, reading their own pages at the same time.
- Sessions are timed, not logged. One tap starts the clock, so the hours in your profile are hours you actually read rather than a number you estimated afterwards.
- A deck of ten book picks lands every day, and each card names the book of yours it came from and which of your friends have read it.
- Every book you are reading is broken into four to seven named stops sized to its length, so progress is a place you have reached rather than a schedule you are behind on.
- The Reading Wrap recaps a month or a year in books, every hour and every genre, ending on a single card built to share.
- Your Goodreads library imports with shelves, ratings and dates read intact, and your reading data is always yours to export again.
- Reading earns shillings, a soft currency spent decorating a shelf that is yours to show off. Reading is the only way to earn them.
- There are no leaderboards ranking readers against each other, by design.
Images
Full device resolution, no marketing frames and no captions burned in, so they can run as editorial images. The zip holds these plus seven more and the app icon.
FeedSessions from the readers you follow.
A fireUp to twenty readers, each with their own book.
Timing a sessionOne tap starts the clock.
The reading pathNamed stops sized to the book.
Crossing a stopWhat reaching one looks like.
Next readTen picks a day, each naming its source.
LibraryReading, finished, TBR and set aside.
ProfileIdentity, shelf and reading rhythm.
The globeWho is reading right now, worldwide.
The shelfDecorated with shillings earned by reading.
The Reading WrapA year in books, built to share.
Share cardWhat a finished session posts as.
About the developer
ReadersGuild is built by Fabio Jonathan Arifin, working alone in San Francisco under EchoForge.
This is the second time he has built it. An earlier version had real members who kept their books, their sessions and their year in it, and he shut it down. Everyone who was on the first one comes back as an Elder when this one opens.
Contact
Fabio Jonathan Arifin, fabio@echoforge.to. @readersguild
Happy to answer questions, get you into the beta early, or pull the numbers a different way if it is useful.