What's new for July?

1. Meet Marcos (new part-time dev)

2. How do we help authors meet readers through email?

3. Roadmap + July traffic updates

4. Ben's updates and reading list 

Funsize:

• Great podcast -> I had so much fun talking about the book Native Son (by Richard Wright) on the Re-Creative podcast. I talked with them about why Native Son was such a big part of my Book DNA during high school and afterward. Plus, we talk about Shepherd and what I am working on. 

• Fun watch -> This YouTube video on how to read more books and tours of some of the most beautiful bookstores in the world. 

• I gave up on trying to link to audiobooks for now. I'll have to return to that when we have more money, as it was costing too much dev time (and not as important as key features). 

I hired an additional part-time developer.

Attila is our current part-time developer (working 10 to 12 hours a week). He is doing fantastic work, but that isn't a lot of hours, given what we are building. 

So, I hired an additional part-time developer, Marcos, who will focus on frontend features and help us ship faster. He lives in Argentina and just started last week.

What's in his queue?

• Improve the design/UX for the book recommendation pages. 

• Add book series pages to Shepherd. 

• Expand our bookshelves to improve them as discovery points. 

• Adding interesting facts & stories to help authors meet readers.

• Improve the design/UX for the book and books-like pages. 

We really need your financial support to keep Shepherd running. This is the only way to keep building new and improved features to help authors and readers. We've got some great perks for authors who join as members, and the cost is only $50 a year (learn more and join here). 

Meet Marcos 

And you can meet our entire small-but-mighty team here.

How do we help authors meet readers through email?

We just launched the beta of our new My Book DNA feature! 🥳🎉🪩

What is this feature?

We ask readers to pick their favorite books, authors, genres, and topics.

Then, we send them book ideas through your book recommendation lists every week. 

My goal is to delight and surprise readers with 100% personalized book recommendations from passionate authors, experts, and readers like you. In a world of AI, readers crave authenticity, and we are going to be there to feed them 😂.  

How does this help authors?

This puts you and your book in front of more readers.

And these are the most likely readers for your book since they are matched via book, author, topic, and genre. 

Our data shows that our book recommendation lists are incredibly effective at selling your book (and the books you pick). Email is yet another marketing channel we are building to help you meet readers. 

What's next?

We must grow the mailing list and ensure readers are delighted with the results. I am doing a lot of testing with readers to learn and evolve this system quickly. 

This beta is intentionally clumsy. It forces readers to pick 3 authors/books and 3 genres. As we learn, I will make this process a lot smoother. 

Then, I will start getting more aggressive within Shepherd to onboard visitors and convert them to subscribers. 

What are the big challenges?

• Genre and topic accuracy are not working well. We need to rebuild those systems, which we will do in October. You can read why this is such a big problem here. I've been testing an improved system, which looks great. 

• My goal will be to convert 1% to 3% of monthly visitors into email subscribers. That will require building aggressive onboarding from the Shepherd website. I have a lot of ideas there, and I am excited to start that process once we learn more (we will do this in a fun way for readers).

• I need to do a lot more user interviews to hone in on what options readers want. For example, we will likely give readers options to send this email weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly to give them flexibility. This is one of many things I am testing in the coming months. 

Here is a quick video. Try it for yourself here...

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. 

July -> What are we working on for authors?

• Improved Book Recommendation Design - This is 10% done. We are improving the book recommendation list design to delight readers even more (plus, show you and your book off a bit more). 

• Adding user accounts - This is 80% done, and in 3 to 4 weeks, you will be able to sign up, log in, and edit your user profile. This is our first step as we make the upcoming 2024 Best Books of the Year program something you submit through your account (and expand to readers while showing authors off more). 

July Roadmap Update

What are we building now?

• User accounts for Shepherd.com (80% done)

• Improved UX/design for Book Recommendation list (10% done)

What are we building after that?

• We are working to switch the "favorite reads of 2024" to the new user system. This will make it easier for us to handle the big end-of-year burst and allow us to open the awards to readers. It will also be the first feature using our new Book DNA review format. 

• Add book series pages to Shepherd. 

And then?

• Switching the Book Boost program for Founding Members to provide persistent exposure for their books as a perk to thank them for their continued support. 

• Expanding our bookshelves to improve discoverability and how they work. 

After that? 🤪

• A big update for our genre and topic system. It needs a big revamp to improve genre/topic accuracy and a lot more. This is a monster project.  

• Adding interesting facts & stories to help authors bump into readers in more cool ways. 

• Expanding to allow readers to use our new Book DNA review format with any book. As part of this, we will also look to include all books in our database and what that might look like. 

Traffic, bookstore clicks, and sales

For June 2024:

• We had 241,000+ visitors.

• We had 22,000+ clicks to bookstore partners this month 🥳. 

For a big-picture perspective:

• In 2023, we had 5 million visitors! Woohoo! 

• In 2022, we had 1.8 million visitors.

• In 2021, we had 266,000 thousand visitors (launched in April). 

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

What else is going on?

I moved from Portugal to France! We are slowly getting settled in our new home in Bordeaux. I forgot how crazy moving is 🤪.

After a mere seven days in our new home, we flew to Serbia for a week to meet my new 10-month-old nephew, Viktor! He is adorable, and we had a blast hanging out with my brother, his wife, her family, and my mom and stepdad. 

Now I am back in Bordeaux and trying to unpack more boxes... 

What am I reading?

I just finished...

• Titanium Noir - This is a fantastic new cyberpunk sci-fi book. It is a noir detective story set in a unique world. I am looking forward to the author's next book. 

• Darkwire - A crazy nonfiction book about the FBI starting an encrypted phone service for criminals. Fascinating and depressing all at the same time. I read this as part of my book club with my dad and brother.

• Book 7 of Grimm’s War - This is a fun military sci-fi series that entertains me (a good beach read). I am looking forward to book 8 as I am pretty invested now. 

I am reading...

• Nomads: The Wanderers Who Shaped Our World is a fascinating account of a group that is part of our DNA. Yet we know little about them because they left little physical evidence. I am going slow on this one as it is a hardback, and I keep forgetting to pick it up.

• I am reading book #2 in the Blacktongue Thief fantasy series. Book one was one of the best fantasy books I've read in the last few years, and I am excited to see if the second book reaches the same level. 

Congrats to Spain for a thrilling Euro Cup win! 

Thanks, Ben

P.S. Me, my son, and my new nephew!

Do you like what we are doing?

I need your help. Will 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 2023, Shepherd has helped 5 million visitors find new books and connect with authors like you. I want to do more!

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. This is great for readers and will create thousands of book recommendation channels for authors to reach different segments 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 things like:

• A special area on the front page promotes them and their book lists. 

• A special Book Boost ad to promote one of their books (soon, this will be persistent instead of the current 60-day burst once a year). 

I am working to build out a dedicated spot to promote Founding Member's new books and more!

I am aiming to launch 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.