How is the Readers’ Favorite Reads event performing with the new referrals & partnership program?
Happy 2025! 🥳
Every 3 weeks, I share my notes on building Shepherd.com.
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My mood is…
I am super excited about 2025!
I am knee-deep in feature planning and have a massive year-end update on the newsletters coming soon. I got a ton of rest over the holiday, read 10 books, and feel energized. I’ve been listening to Will Clarke’s Midnight Mass, which I highly recommend! My favorite song is Weekend Love.
How is the Readers’ Favorite Reads of 2024 event doing?
We just hit 1,800 submissions, which is more than the 1,707 we hit for 2023 (I keep it open through August, so it has a long runway). My goal is to hit 5,000 submissions, which might be overly ambitious… but we have a lot more marketing coming, and things are starting to speed up.
I’ve learned that readers don’t want to think about their favorite reads until the year is over, so I hope that January and February will see big spikes as readers jump in.
More on that below as I am working to provide better incentives to readers who want to take part…
How is the referral program working?
Background: We launched a referral program on December 3rd so that readers who refer a friend get entered into a contest to win a book gift certificate. We also launched a referral program so that authors who refer readers have their book mentioned underneath the readers’ 3 favorite reads of the year (so extra promotion through the readers they refer).
I am happy with this program, but there is a lot of room for improvement.
We’ve had 431 referrals so far, but not the viral growth I was aiming for. It has helped me see some areas I want to improve this year and next year (plus, these improvements feed into our future monthly program, etc).
This year, I am working to give readers more incentive to participate.
I am working to launch a personalized option where readers can share a book they love, and we will match them up with readers’ favorite read picks who match that book. We are trying to make this a quick test and working to finalize the design chunk now.
For next year, I need to lower the barriers to participation. I’ve improved some of the signup flow, but I need to go further. Thank you to everyone who has given me feedback.
How are partnerships working?
Background: The referral program allowed us to hack together support for book communities to show what their members loved to read this year (plus, it goes into the overall votes). I didn’t launch this until December 14th, so we had to scramble to pitch it. I emailed authors with large fan bases, online book communities, book influencers, podcasts, newsletters, and others to see if they would share it with their communities (I pitch it as your own NPR’s Books We Love setup).
This program has been fun, but it will take a few more months before I have enough feedback to measure the results.
Two big Subreddit’s tried it out, and that went well:
They gave me a ton of feedback on improving it for next year.
What is going on outside of Shepherd?
Enjoying Winter and finally feeling settled in our new house.
I finished my end-of-year book roundup. I read 110 books in 2024. My 3 favorites for the calendar year were:
I also re-read the Wheel of Time series for the 4th time this year. It is one of my favorites.
Honorable mentions?
Dark Wire by Joseph Cox
The Empire Of The Wolf Series by Richard Swan
Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch
Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City by KJ Parker
Artifact Space & Deep Black by Miles Cameron
Titanium Noir by Nick Harkaway
Theft of Fire by Devon Eriksen
The Space Wolves Series
All The Sinners Bleed by SA Cosby
The Raven Viking series
What am I reading now?
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 am already to the 4th book.
I am reading...
I am reading book 4 of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series.
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.
Have a great week,
Ben
P.S. Happy 2025!
