What's new for July?

1. What do you think of our upcoming front page?

2. What percentage of readers click on the promoted book?

3. What are we building in July?

4. Preview the improved "books like" page. 

5. Traffic for June

6. Ben's life updates and reading list...

Funsize:

• I was on the Book Marketing Action podcast with Becky Robinson about how to gain exposure for your book. Fun chat!

• What it's really like to own a bookstore? A fantastic interview with bookstore owner Suzanna Hermans (on Better Book Club). 

• Kay Freeman shared her thoughts on why advertising your book is so hard and what she is trying on BookBub (part 2 here).

• Toward the bottom of this post on my dev blog, I talk about what I hope to do to improve genre and topic accuracy at Shepherd. I've been playing with ChatGPT and I think it is going to really improve the accuracy of both. 

What do you think of our upcoming front page?

I've been working on a new front page.

Preview the new front page here.

Remember, this is a design mockup, and you can't click anything, and the data is fake. 

What do you think?

Hit reply and tell me what you like and don't like 😀. 

What percentage of visitors click on the promoted book?

(Background, I have a case study here to illustrate how we help authors sell their book by getting it in front of the most likely readers. And I share an example from an author who had a big surge of traffic to their book list.)

Over the last 30 days, 7.5% of visitors clicked an author's promoted book (from the author's book recommendation list).

(Data run on May 30th, 2023, and from Google Analytics tracking for visitors who stick around for at least 1 second. I use 1 second to highlight engaged users rather than all traffic.)

That is a fantastic conversion rate, and I am happy with how well that format works. That means that if 200 visitors go to your book list, 15 click to check your book out on a bookstore (or preview it at Amazon). 

But averages hide even better numbers.

If your book list is targeted to the right readers, that number can be much higher (especially if you know your niche and how to speak to them).

We have lots of lists hitting 10% to 20% conversion rates for the author's own books. 

How?

Because those authors are speaking to the right audience and nailed their list, plus, everything else about their book is set up correctly.

Two of our book lists in our top 100 are hitting a 33% and 41% conversion rate to the author's own book. They nailed their list, and their books are incredibly well presented.

We also have lists in the top 100 book lists hitting a 0% conversion rate for their own book. Those lists often miss the mark on matching their book with a target audience or have classic problems like the book cover is unprofessional (I hope to help authors spot this long-term). Sometimes that is outside their control, such as if their book is more challenging to market. 

This is why this method can be so valuable.

If you know your target readers, you can speak directly to them when they are looking for a new book.

This isn't just our website; this is anywhere on the web. You can apply these same tactics on Bookbub and with other marketing efforts. 

Would you like to see this data for your book recommendation list?

I hope to share this type of data with authors long-term. But building an author dashboard is a massive project and expensive, and I need your financial support to make it possible. 

Can you join the Founding Members program and help us build this website for authors and readers?

100% of your membership goes toward building new features like an author dashboard (which I want to make in 2024 if we get enough authors to sign up and support us). 

What are we building in July?

• New and improved front page (see preview above).

• Significant improvements to search. Both to integrate genre and age into the results and improve how the UX functions. 

• Integrate genres & age into the rest of the website.

Toward August & September?

We will create the new "my 3 favorite books of the year" format and get everything for its launch on October 1st. I want to make sure we finish this early, given the deadlines. 

Preview the improved "books like" page. 

I've been working to improve the books-like page (for an example of the current page, try books like "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold").

What do I want to improve?

1. I want to show why each book was picked as being "like" that book. This is something readers have requested and that I want. I want to show how humans connected this book to the other (or if we don't have human data, explain how the algo worked).

2. I want to add filters so that readers can filter the books to see only books within certain genres/topics. So if I loved Dune because it is classic science fiction, I could limit the results to only classic science fiction that fans recommend.

3. I want to improve the quality of the results. Now that we have genres/ages, we will use those to improve the results. And I want to do more to show the most recommended books alongside that one. For example, if Project Hail Mary is recommended alongside Dune more than any other book, I want to show it first.

Here is what I am playing with:

I’ve done 20+ random video tests with users to figure out a design that clearly explains why the books are connected and is not confusing. I still need to play more with it, but we are finally getting somewhere.

And here is the opening we are playing with:

What do you think?

Hit reply and share your thoughts :)

Traffic updates

For June, we had 419,000+ visitors and 560,000+ pageviews. That is up slightly versus last month, but otherwise pretty flat. That is up 319% over the previous year. 

Traffic from Google was flat in June. That is part of the process and slightly frustrating (search traffic has been flat since January). I trust that growth will return as we get further along. 

For a big-picture perspective:

• In 2022 we had 1.8 million visitors.

• In 2023 we've already had 2.5 million visitors (through June)! Woohoo! 

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

What else is going on?

I will be in rural France in July for our family vacation :). 

I am super excited and looking forward to more time with my wife and son, reading, and biking (training for a 1,400km bike tour in August). I will be slower to respond to emails and hopefully only doing about 30% of the work I usually do. 

As of last week, my son has officially graduated 1st grade! Woohoo! And he has suddenly started reading, which is fantastic to see. As his Portuguese has improved everything started to click with both languages. 

What am I reading?

• Babel by R. F. Kulang - I love it so far; a bit of historical fiction mixed with a slightly different version of Oxford and the British Empire of the 1800s (with a bit of magic thrown in). 

• If you love crime fiction, check out Brian Klinborg’s Inspector Lu Fei series, it is fantastic; I read all three books last week. Book three was the best yet, and I look forward to the next one. I found it on his list of the best books about international crime, both fiction and nonfiction.

• Savage Peace - I need to finish this one, put it down, and haven’t picked it up in a while, even though I love it. It is about the year right after WWI.

Have a great week; thank you for your continued support :)
Ben

P.S. Biking in rural France with my son!

Do you like what we are doing?

Please help us create an awesome book website for readers and authors :)

How do we help authors?

In the last 12 months, Shepherd has helped 3.8 million visitors find new books and connect with authors like you. 

I want to help you reach new readers, sell more books, and build a larger fan base.

• 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?

I am launching three new formats in 2023.

The goal is to help you meet readers and sell more books. 

1. Share your 3 favorite reads for the year and meet more readers.

2. Share interesting facts and sell more books.

3. Introduce your character and sell more books. 

Click those links to learn more and signup here to take part.

What else?

• In July, Founder Member will be featured in a special front page section.

• We will launch a premium feature in September or October to help authors launch their new book! We will show your new book throughout the website to get exposure from readers most interested in it. Founding Members will get one new book launch each year. 

• More perks coming!