I am running very behind; please forgive me!
Updates on the new book launch ad!
Every two weeks, I share my notes on building Shepherd.com.
Shepherd is like wandering around your favorite bookstore. We make exploring and discovering your next book magical (while helping authors get their books in front of the most likely readers).
Please join our Founding Member program and build a better book website for readers and authors.
October 20th to November 17th
I am running very behind; please forgive me!
I worked most nights and weekends in October as I tried to process as many of your favorite-3-reads submissions for the best books of 2023. We finished 1,000 of the 1,500 submissions, and that was a lot of work.
My apologies if I appeared cranky at times; it was an intense experience. I am going to take some time next week to think about how to do it better next year.
Then, I flew to the USA from November 2nd to the 15th to visit family. I was hoping to keep working while I was there, but between jet lag and maximizing time with family I haven’t seen in 5 years, I didn’t get much done. And that is ok 😀.
Plus, Serita (our part-time editor) is taking some much-deserved vacation, which means we are processing book list submissions much slower than normal (since I am the only other person who can do that).
I am working to catch up on everything 🫣
I hope to catch up this week on emails, tickets, and BBOY submissions.
3 favorite reads and tickets by the numbers…
1,428 submissions in 2023 so far…
1,021 have been published.
113 are scheduled for publishing on Monday, November 27th.
47 authors are waiting for me to make changes or schedule their submissions.
~200 submissions are pending editing, and we hope to send those to authors to review soon.
~70 authors were missing info and are waiting for me to respond to their emails with that needed info (from there, they go to editing).
~130 authors have book recommendations around a genre/topic/mood that are waiting for us to edit and send to them to review.
Plus ~50 random tickets.
So hopefully I can catch up this week…
Update on the new book launch program
Background: https://forauthors.shepherd.com/new-book-launch-program
This is 99% done, we are just waiting to fix the last bug in how click stats are tracked.
I’ll share more with Founding Members as soon as I start running tests and adding their books to the system. I am hoping we can crush this last bug by end of week.
Here is the area where we select what topics, genres, age groups, and authors to target with the Founding Member’s book.
Here is an example of the stats we see on the backend (testing, so this isn’t real data):
This ad is shown across the website in places where the content matches the filters above. The smart ad will look like this:
What else am I working on?
Frontpage & search update
I got the spec to our part-time developer. He and I are going to chat about it later this week and plan it out. This is the next thing we will be revamping.
What is going on outside of Shepherd?
I hadn’t seen my dad, stepmom, or sister in 5 years, and it was fantastic to visit them and hang out. It was only 2 weeks, and I wish I had more time. I am excited that my dad and stepmom are visiting in 3 weeks for Christmas too.
What am I reading?
M: Son of the Century - About Mussolini, just started.
Smaller and Smaller Circles - Crime books baed in the Philippines that I found through an author’s favorite 3 reads picks for 2023.
Thanks, Ben
P.S. From a bike ride last month.
