Shepherd's new "best books of the year" format!

Author

Ben Fox
March 03, 2023

Today I share...

  1. New part-time web designer! ðŸ¥³

  2. Anonymous supporter matching March signups! 

  3. Share your 3 favorite books of the year (sign up)

  4. Update on genre/age integration

  5. Traffic for February

  6. Ben's life updates and reading list

I did a video interview with Kathy at Better Book Clubs about my goals with Shepherd and walked her audience through the website. I was very tired, so hopefully, it is comprehensible :).

P.S. Try to ignore my giant blue exercise ball.

New part-time web designer! ðŸ¥³

We have a lot of new features coming, and I realized we have a bottleneck in building the web designs for those features. So I hired an additional part-time web designer to reduce the bottleneck. 

His name is Roman, and he is based out of Ukraine. I will introduce him in the next few weeks ðŸ¥³. 

What are the two P.T. designers working on?

Anonymous supporter matching March signups!

An amazing supporter has offered to match any money we raise from the Founding Member program or donations for the month of March. 

This is a really amazing offer, and I am so thankful to them. 

If the timing is right for you, please join Shepherd as a founding member and help build a better book website and keep us independent. Everything we raise is matched for the month of March.

What are the perks for authors?

Here is an example of just one perk we are offering...

In Q3 2023, we will launch a premium feature to help authors launch their new book! We will show your new book throughout the website to readers who would be most interested in it. Founding Members will get first access and one premium book launch per year.

Share your 3 favorite books of the year! (sign up)

Every year millions of readers search for the best books of the current and previous year.

I want to give them great book recommendations while introducing you and your book. And I want to build this into a huge event to celebrate books, reading, and authors.

For the last 13 years, I've been picking my favorite 3 books that I read and sharing why I love them. This format is near and dear to my heart. From experience with my friends and book buddies, I know it is powerful and meaningful.

How will this help me sell books?

We will use this format to connect you with readers via genre, age group, and some topics and help readers meet you and one of your books. And this will be our first step in creating author profile pages. 

When will this feature launch?

It will launch on October 1st, 2023. From October 1st to October 31st, 2023, I will collect your 3 favorite books you read over that "book year." Then on November 1st, I would publish the best books of that year.

Why is the "book year" such a weird period?

I am making the "book year" from September 9th, 2022, to September 30th, 2023. Why are you so crazy, Ben?

Here is a graph of search engine searches for "best books 2022" by month...

That huge spike is from November to January.

I don't want to publish in January when readers no longer care. I want to get this in front of readers in time for holiday book sales and when they really want a new book. 

Authors who are part of our Founding Member program will get first access to this program when we launch it. 

Also, be sure to check out the other formats coming in 2023:

Update on genre/age integration

We are done with the work on the backend!

Check out these draft bookshelves for:

But we can't publish these yet. 

We still need to finish the improved web design.

The designer and I are working like madmen to finish the web designs for the new genre and age integration. It will be April before this is ready to unveil to readers (a little later than I hoped). 

Traffic updates

For February, we had 406,000+ visitors and 531,000+ pageviews. That is 2% higher than last month and a new daily traffic record. That is up 592% over the previous year.

Traffic from Google was up 4% month over month. Growth hit a plateau in February, a normal part of the process but always annoying. We've got a lot of features coming that will help accelerate growth in the coming months. It usually takes ~ three years to rank for competitive Google searches (we are 22 months old).

My goal for 2023 is to reach one million monthly visitors. 

What else is going on?

Just enjoying life and trying to better balance work, rest, and health. I am excited about Spring and looking forward to warmer bike rides soon.

What am I reading?

  • I finished the first two books in the fantasy series Empire of the Wolf. It is some of the best fantasy I've read in years. 

  • I am reading Redwall. I've heard good things (fantasy but aimed at a younger audience). 

  • I am reading Savage Peace: Hope and Fear in America, 1919. I love history, and I recommend this book. It goes through the course of the year and zooms in and out. I like the approach, and the details have been eye-opening. The changes in our society and government between 1920 and now are blowing my mind. I'd like to know what our society would look like without the Russian revolution and the red-scares. Ann is working on a list for Shepherd, which I look forward to. 

Have a great weekend!

Thanks, Ben

P.S. A sunny day from my October 2022 bike trip in Italy.

I have no Scrooge McDuck Money Bin. 

Want to build a better book site?

By becoming a founding member, you help keep us independent and building new features.

What are the perks for authors?

Check out our full list of perks for authors here! Here is an example of just one perk we are offering...

In Q3 2023, we will launch a premium feature to help authors launch their new book! We will show your new book throughout the website to readers who would be most interested in it. Founding Members will get first access and one premium book launch per year.

100% of your membership goes toward new features.

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 :).