Today’s guest on the Morning Media Menu was Valla Vakili, CEO of Small Demons. His company is building an online literary database that collects and catalogs thousands of references to music, movies, people and objects mentioned inside of books.

Press play below to listen to the interview on SoundCloud. Vakili explained how writers and readers can build book collections using the new Storyboard feature, bringing together books on digital shelves. He offered this advice for writers:

One of the things that I always want to know as a reader (and I think other readers feel the same way) is we love to know the inspiration behind things. Collections is one way of doing that, of saying “here are all the places that influenced this book.” There are authors who frequently say when they are coming up with characters, they associate them with some kind of music. Basically, being able to give a peek into the creative process and how it relates back to the influences behind a character, storyline, or series. We think collections can be a really great way to do that, as well as show off the things that interest them within the world of books.

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