Today’s edition covers:

• My 10 favorite book lists for January…

• What I am working on at Shepherd.com…

• What am I reading?

Ready to share your 3 favorite reads of 2024?

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Plus, your votes go into our Readers’ favorite reads of 2024! This helps other readers find books they will love and highlights authors you want more readers to find.

Create your account and share your favorites here 😀 .

My 10 Favorite Book Lists For January…

What is Shepherd building now?

Where am I at?

I am super excited about 2025! I am knee-deep in feature planning and will have a massive year-end update soon.

What am I working on?

How is the Readers’ Favorite Reads of 2024 event doing?

My ambitious goal was to have 5,000 readers submit their 3 favorite reads of 2024 by January 31st (for the Readers Favorite Reads of 2024 program).

We just hit 1,850 submissions, so it is safe to say I will miss that goal. It was an ambitious goal, and pushing for it so hard helped me learn a few things.

What am I learning?

Lesson 1: Readers need incentives

It is difficult to switch visitors from passively reading content to creating it. They need incentives and an easy submission process.

The only incentive we offer right now is that we create a beautiful page with their 3 favorite reads of the year for them to share with their friends. While that incentive worked decently, it wasn’t a home run.

I am working on an additional incentive where readers can enter one of their favorite books, and we will then show them readers’ favorite reads of 2024 that share their Book DNA. I’ll share data on this test as we roll it out.

Lesson 2: Readers need an easy UX

I’ll be looking at how I can further improve the submission process.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks is that we don’t have all the books in our system yet, so if someone wants to submit a missing one, they have to tell us the author or URL. That confused a lot of people.

I am working to improve that in 2025. It is an expensive project but one we are committed to. It will require us to either license or build a database of all books, build and pay for the infrastructure to host that side of it, and do a lot of dev work.

I am also considering a lower entry bar, such as sharing just one book. I’ll consider this as I map out improvements for 2025. I got a lot of good feedback from readers and partners this year.

Lesson 3: It is INCREDIBLY hard to introduce a new concept to readers because they only know Goodreads

I always forget this one… but I have been blown away at how many readers and authors can’t imagine anything besides Goodreads. It has made me really appreciate early adopters, as I don’t think I truly understood how rare people are who are open to something new.

What is stuck in their heads?

They can’t imagine anything other than a book-tracking app and 5-star book reviews. That model is so ingrained in their heads that it is hard to explain how we are different.

This was good to hear as I realized I need to create better hooks to explain why I am not Goodreads as I build reader features. I need to clearly show how Shepherd is different.

Highlights from the build blog:

• Build blog: How is the Readers’ Favorite Reads event performing with the new referrals & partnership program?

• Build blog: It is tough to build something new & unique... especially when the only model is book trackers 🤯

What am I reading?

I just finished...

• Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman: I am not a big LitRPG reader, so even though people kept recommending it, I didn’t buy it. What a mistake!!! This book is one of the best books I’ve read in the last two years. It is utterly hilarious, and the humor is similar to the TV show Always Sunny in Phildillpha (which I love). It is science fiction with a lot of commentary on our world, and it subverts the LitRPG genre to be a lot more approachable. And what a writer, he nails it on every single page. I read all 7 books in a few weeks and can’t wait for book #8.

I am reading...

• Natural Born Heroes (Mastering the Lost Secrets of Strength and Endurance) by Christopher McDougall - I bought this many years ago and am finally digging in. It is from the author of Born to Run, which I enjoyed.

What have I been up to outside of Shepherd?

I have been reading a lot and enjoying cozy Winter nights with my family. We’ve been playing a lot of board games in the evenings.

My son turned 8 years old, and we started watching the original Star Wars movies together. We have Return of the Jedi queued up for next weekend, which is exciting! I haven’t watched them in 25 years because I was so frustrated with the first three movies. They hold up really well, and it has been fun to share those with my son.

I’ve been listening to Will Clarke’s Midnight Mass, which I highly recommend (my favorite song is Weekend Love).

Thanks, Ben