Today’s edition covers:

• We've started building our app for readers! How does this help authors?

• Need 1v1 book marketing help? Chat with me!

• 99% done with our new bookshelves!

• July roadmap & traffic updates

• Ben's updates and reading list

Fun Size! 🦥

• I made a video to help you break down the basics of book marketing. I’ve gotten good feedback from it (please let me know what you think).

• We are up to 2,350+ submissions for our Readers’ Favorite Reads of 2024! Please share your favorites and join the club. If you need any tech support, just let me know 😀.

• We now have 3,309 book series published on the website, and we are working to add 3,318 more. If you want us to add your book series, please email [email protected], and we will bump it to the top of the list.

We've started building our app for readers!

What is the app for readers? I’ve got a full breakdown on our roadmap, but it is basically like Goodreads, but smarter and more personal.

What will the app do for readers?

• 📚 Bring your to-be-read pile to life with smart, automatic organization.

• 🗒️ Keep private notes on books you’ve read (or want to read)

• 🧬 Understand your Book DNA and get deeply personalized book recommendations (find more books you love).

•  🥳 Celebrate the books you love and help other readers discover them (and help your favorite authors).

What are we starting with?

We have started building the full reader app and are starting with some backend pieces first (it made sense since the frontend mockups won’t be ready for another 30 days).

We are building a big book database for the app. Why is that so important?

Shepherd currently only has ~100,000 books in its database, as we only add them when a reader or author picks one of them to share. This means that when we roll out a feature like our 3 favorite reads of the year, readers often have to click “Add Missing Book” and tell us what they want to add.

So, we are looking at Open Library’s data and using it to populate a bigger database of books. With this first version, we aim to have the book readers want to add ~90% of the time. As the app grows, we will work to improve that percentage even further.

How does this app help authors?

Imagine if Goodreads also helped authors; that would be pretty amazing, right?

Imagine that for authors with a debut book, Goodreads helped them get their first few readers who were not friends or family. And if those readers rated the book well, they helped a few more people with similar Book DNA to find it.

Or, imagine that Goodreads helped authors with a new book coming out. They would showcase it to the author’s existing fan base on Goodreads within the app and do more to help that book launch.

These are just some of the things I want to help authors with as we grow. You can read more about my 3 goals for authors on our project page at a very high level.

But to achieve these goals for authors, Shepherd must build a strong relationship with readers and delight them with our app. Once we have a solid user base within the app, we can do more and more for authors (a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem).

I hope you will join us in this mission as a member ($50 a year membership). We need your support to keep this project going and accelerate it. We cannot build this overnight; we will be working on this for the next 10+ years. I hope you will join this mission and help us create the book platform that authors and readers deserve.

Need 1v1 book marketing help? Chat with me!

This is normally only for members, but if you are thinking of joining, you can book a time using the link below.

My hope is that after we chat, you will join as a member and help us build Shepherd 😀. Membership starts at $50 a year, and every dollar goes toward building this platform.

Recently, I’ve talked with authors about the following…

• Reviewed their Amazon listing for what could be improved

• Reviewed their book cover and how that fits in with their genre

• Talked about possible outside-the-box book marketing they could be doing

• Reviewed book marketing options and what is/isn’t working

• Talk about pay-per-click ads on Amazon and Facebook, and what to try

• I walked them through the full-reader app we are building and how that will help authors in the long term.

• Explained how aspects of Shepherd work and answered questions they have about the different formats.

Click here to find and book a time!
*If there isn’t a good time for you, please email me and I’ll find a spot.

99% done with our new bookshelves!

Reminder: Bookshelves are discovery points centered around genres, topics, and age groups (full details here and what we are improving).

What is left to do before launch?

We have a few more bugs to crush (really nasty mobile one), but we should be ready to launch this publicly next week. I will let everyone know when they are live.

My July Roadmap Update (For Authors)

What are we building now?

• A massive upgrade to our bookshelves, which group books around genres, topics, and age groups. (99% done)

• We are upgrading our Book Boost perk for members and adding a paid marketing program for authors who want it. This will also add a stats email for our Book Boost ad for members. (1% done)

• Our full reader app (like Goodreads but smarter and more personalized). This is a massive project, and we are working to launch the MVP toward the end of 2025. (1% done)

What are we building after that?

• We will improve the navigation within the book and book-like sections (it will look similar to the new book series pages and be much easier to navigate).

• We are revamping our genre and topic system. It needs a significant revamp to improve genre/topic accuracy. We are also working to add themes, tropes, moods, and more!

Browse our full roadmap here.

Traffic, bookstore clicks, and sales

For last month:

• We had 174,000+ visitors.

• We had 12,700+ clicks to bookstore partners this month. 

• Of those, 2,000+ were clicks to an author’s promoted book.

Last year, we had a total of 3.2 million visitors.

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

What else is going on?

I am biking in the Black Forest as much as possible! My bike is out of commission due to a brake failure, but hopefully it will be fixed soon 😀.

What am I reading?

I just finished...

• I am working my way through Harry Sidebottom’s Warrior of Rome series. I read the first 5 books, and they are fantastic. Harry is a scholar, and the books immerse you in a period of Roman history we don’t know much about.

I am reading...

• The Amber Road by Harry Sidebottom is book 6 in the Warrior of Rome series, and I look forward to seeing where Ballista goes next.

• They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933 - 1945, by Milton Mayer. I am doing a long-running deep dive into the rise of fascism historically this year. This book has been disturbing to read; so much of what the Germans say sounds similar to what I hear from many Americans. I should finish it this week.

Thanks, Ben

P.S. From my gravel rides in the Black Forest…