Merry Christmas! We had some great press for our Best Books of 2023!
Big 2023 breakdown coming in the new year...
Every two weeks, I share my notes on building Shepherd.com.
I believe that books build better people. I am on a mission to help readers explore & discover books in new and unique ways. I want to create the magical feeling you get wandering around your favorite bookstore but for the online world. And I want to do this while helping authors to expose their stories, personalities, and books.
Three hurrahs for our 546 Founding Members who keep us independent and fund new features. My 2024 goal is to reach 1,000 members to fully fund our part-time developer and designer so we can keep building great new features for our community.
December 18th to December 29th
Mood check 🤪
I am burned out, but I am using the holidays to recover.
The October/November favorite-3-reads program was intense. I am recovering over the holidays and will take January & February to plan what we can do in 2024 with our small but mighty budget. I’ll share more as I figure out what we can do. I will catch up on tickets in the coming weeks.
We had great press for our “Best Books of 2023” feature!
We got featured on Hacker News and two large email newsletters. That resulted in big traffic spikes to our Best Books Of 2023 page.
Because of those spikes, we saw days with a spike of 30,000 visitors, 60,000 visitors, and 35,000 visitors. We usually have 10,000 to 14,000 visitors each day.
And I am proud to say that we sold more books in December 2023 than in 2022. that is always great to see!
I’ll share a big 2023 breakdown next week…
Have a great New Year’s Eve, and talk to you in 2024!
What else am I working on?
I am working to set up all the Founding Members with our new book launch ad! We got a massive burst of submissions, and I am working through them this week 😊.
I am working to organize and catch up on all the work I ignored in October & November while we were working so hard to launch the Best Books of 2023 feature.
I am working to streamline a lot of our internal processes. I want to improve how they work for our small team and for authors.
What is going on outside of Shepherd?
My dad and stepmom are visiting us for 3 weeks. It has been fun so far, and I look forward to more day trips around Portugal.
What am I reading?
M: Son of the Century - About Mussolini, slowly getting going.
The Bullet That Missed - I am 20% through the 3rd book in this series about four pensioners solving cold murders. I found it through the best books of the year, and it is fantastic.
I just finished Strength to Strength and am reading it with my brother.
Thanks, Ben
P.S. We had a great Christmas, and I hope you did as well 🥳 (note: many of those presents are ones my son wrapped random objects around the house as he likes to wrap random objects for friends/family).
