Book series pages + personalizing the Best Books of the Year...
We are humming along 😎!
Every 3 weeks, I share my notes on building Shepherd.com.
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My mood is…
Things are humming along 😎!
How are the new book series pages coming?
We are getting close to launch!
For launch, we are skipping the email notification system. We will add that once we make sure that the system we build is delivering accurate results.
The goal with this page is to showcase an author’s book series to readers and if they are already reading it help them find the next book in the series.
Plus, we want to connect them to book lists that include that book if they are finished with that series and looking for something new.
How are we personalizing the “Best Books Of The Year” results?
This is something we are playing with but I am not sure yet when we will add it.
The feature works by asking readers to share a favorite book or author and then we how them personalized results based on similar readers.
And then we would return results with a mix of books and book lists.
This is where we are headed broadly in the future as we build out more personalization for readers based on what they like.
What is going on outside of Shepherd?
I am headed to Serbia to visit my brother and his family today. I am looking forward to playing with my 17-month-old nephew!
The 10 days have been rough, as my son had a bad case of the flu. A lot of low sleep nights and intense days while his fever was raging. He is headed back to school today and I am glad he is feeling better. It is a small miracle my wife and I didn’t get hit (knock on wood).
What am I reading now?
I just finished…
Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman: I finished the entire series in two weeks, and it is one of the best book series I’ve read in the last two years. It is utterly hilarious, and I can’t wait for the eighth one. So good!
The Big Empty by Robert Crais - One of my favorite series and it didn’t disappoint. It is a detective series based out of LA.
I am reading...
Camino Island by John Grisham - My dad picked this as our book club book this month. It is good so far, I like that it is a bunch of authors talking throughout the book.
Curious by Ian Leslie - I am interested in the nature of curiosity and so far this book has been fascinating. I hope to spark people’s curiosity with a lot of future features at Shepherd and I am hoping this teaches me a few things.
Have a great weekend,
Ben
P.S. From a small town in Spain this summer…
