What's new for November?

1. Update on the Best Books of 2023! 🥳

2. October traffic, clicks, and sales.

3. Ben's updates and reading list...

Funsize:

• The new book launch program is ready! I will email Founding Members this week so we can add their books to the program (we have click and impression tracking as well). You can see a preview here!

Update on the Best Books of 2023 launch! 

Where are we at on publishing? 

We've received 1433 submissions from authors with their favorite-3-reads! Woohoo! 🥳

We were able to publish 884 fav-3-reads submissions for the November 1st unveiling. While we could edit ~1,000 submissions in October, we could not have all of those ready in time. 

Every week, we edit and email more authors. By this Monday, we will be up to 1,186 fav-3-reads submissions published.

We still have ~250 waiting for editing and formatting. I am sorry for those still waiting; we can't go faster with our small team (more info below). 

What did Ben learn from this?

I knew this would be around 5x our normal workload, but I wasn't sure how that would work.

What went well?

• We were able to add all the books authors picked very quickly.

• We were able to add all the author submissions to our platform quickly. 

• We handled the increased email load pretty well.

What did not go well?

• Using our mailing list software to email authors, the template didn't work very well. Many authors didn't get that, and next year, I'll need to find a better solution. 

• Editing and preparing the submissions for publishing is not a quick process. I realized too late that even with my help, Serita (our part-time editor) would be overloaded. I didn't have as much time to help as I was handling the missing info and author changes tickets. I hired two part-time temporary editors to help, but training them was time-consuming. Unfortunately, one temp-editor was not a good fit for the position, and the other temp-editor is doing great but doesn't have much time available. 

What else?

I worked most nights and weekends in October, and by the end of October, I was exhausted. I also had a trip to visit family in the USA from November 1st to November 15th. The timing wasn't great, but it was a great visit. 

And Serita is taking some much-deserved time off for 3 weeks, so we are running slower until she returns.

What am I going to improve for 2024?

• I will get a temporary editor trained well before October 1st so that we are in better shape to handle the enormous surge. 

• I will look at how I can make the editing process more efficient. We have some text formatting issues that I can improve on. 

What's next? Publicity!

I will start doing more publicity/marketing. I am excited about that! as I get caught up this week.

Feel free to hit me up with questions,
Thanks, Ben

Wanted: Courageous and scrappy authors who want to build an indie book website that helps your fellow authors sell books. Join Shepherd's membership program on this hazardous and long journey, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success. 

Traffic, bookstore clicks, and sales

For October:

• We had 337,000+ visitors and 486,000+ pageviews. That is up 51% over the previous year. 

• We are on track to sell ~$800,000 worth of tracked book sales. That is likely quite a bit higher, but we don't get credit for many of those. 

• We had ~35,000 clicks to bookstore partners this month.

For a big-picture perspective:

• In 2022, we had 1.8 million visitors.

• In 2023, we've had 4.1 million visitors this year! Woohoo! 

Detailed stats on our traffic, clicks, and sales stats page.

What else is going on?

Not much, just working hard to catch up. 

What am I reading?

• M: Son of the Century - About Mussolini, just started.

• Smaller and Smaller Circles - Crime books based in the Philippines that I found through an author’s favorite 3 reads picks for 2023.

Enjoy your week!
Ben

P.S. From one of my last warm bike rides in Portugal this year...

Do you like what we are doing?

I need your help. Can you join our Founding Member program for $50 a year to help me create a better book website for readers and authors?

How do we help authors like you?

In the last 12 months, Shepherd has helped 5 million visitors find new books and connect with authors like you.

We have a two-pronged strategy to help authors in the coming years. 

1. Shepherd will create features to help authors get their books in front of the most likely readers for their book (and do so in a way that delights readers). 

2. Shepherd will create a platform for authors and book lovers to build a fan base around book recommendations. Not only is that great for readers, but it will create thousands of book recommendation channels for authors to reach different slices of readers. 

• Here are my longer thoughts on how I plan to do this.

• And why I am using a big chunk of my savings to get this started. 

• And a timeline showing our history toward this goal!

What are some of the perks of joining?

Founding Members get to use our new book launch program to help you meet readers! And once our new front page launches in January they will be featured there as well. 

And I am launching two new formats in 2024.

Meet readers by...

1. Sharing interesting facts and selling more books.

2. Introducing your character and selling more books. 

You can sign up here to take part.