Shepherd For Authors - October updates :)

Author

Ben Fox
November 08, 2022

Today I share...

  1. Early preview of the new individual book pages!

  2. Update on the new membership program

  3. Traffic for October

  4. Ben’s life updates and reading list

We talk about...

  • Book marketing for authors

  • Self-publishing and what that means at this point

  • Shepherd and what we are trying to do for readers and authors

  • How we both prevent burnout

  • And more!

Books build better humans. Do you agree?

Here is a bit more on my ethos for the website. If you want to support our mission, please join us as a Founding Member. Everything goes toward building new features and hiring a full-time developer in 2023. 

Early preview of the new individual book pages!

We are 90% done with three new pages for Shepherd:

  • A page for each book and why you should read it

  • A page for "books like" that book

  • A page that shows what book recommendation lists that book appears on

We are still fixing some bugs, but I aim to launch these publicly in a few weeks. 

Here is an early preview:

And as part of this, we are rolling out an explore this book feature that will let you explore that specific book and its book description, topics, and more!

You can preview that feature here (still some bugs we are fixing):
https://shepherd.com/bookshelf/space-warfare?show-explore

What do you think? 

Please reply and let me know what you think! I love feedback :)

How do these pages help me as an author?

  1. These pages will attract new readers to Shepherd and increase overall traffic. The more readers we have using the website, the more they find you, your book, and your book list. The ultimate goal is more exposure and more sales. 

  2. These features help readers navigate the website better and improve their book discovery experience. The more readers who love the site, the more exposure and sales for authors. 

  3. These pages lay the groundwork for many future features. 

  4. My goal for the individual book page is to help authors show their book off and convert visitors to buy it. I have a lot of testing to do, but that is my long-term goal for this page as it grows and develops. 

For now, we only create these pages for books recommended on Shepherd. The minute an author recommends your book on one of their lists, these pages will be created.

Update on the new membership program

The membership program launched in late September, and we've had 100 readers and authors sign up.

That is amazing and makes me so happy. 

This helps us financially, and I have many more perks for authors and readers. I will share more details in the coming months.

100% of your membership goes toward new features.

My goal is to hire a full-time developer in 2023. Currently, we work with a fantastic part-time developer named Marton. My goal is to hire a full-time developer in addition to Marton. This would allow us to speed up the development of new features.

Imagine what we can do with 1.5 developers, given what we have accomplished with 0.5 :).

Shepherd traffic updates

For October, we had 231,000+ visitors and 283,000+ pageviews. That is 24% higher than September and a new all-time traffic record. That is up 877% over the previous year.

Traffic from Google was up 23% month over month, which is fantastic! That will accelerate as we get more pages and features shipped. It usually takes ~3 years to rank for competitive Google searches.

My goal for 2023 is to reach a million monthly visitors and $10,000 in daily book sales.

What else is going on?

I spent October biking 1,000km along the Via Francigena route in Italy. It was amazing, and I had so much fun. The weather was perfect, and I only had a few days of rain. My favorite cities along the way were Aosta, Pontremoli, Lucca, and Siena (all worth an extended visit). 

- Ben Fox

P.S. Here are some pictures from my bike trip...