Shepherd Stress + Path Forward 🏔️
Shepherd turns 3 years old next week!
Every 3 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 reach readers in fun and authentic ways.
Three hurrahs for our 660 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.
Mood check for Friday, April 12th 🤪
I am feeling a renewed sense of focus, which is much needed. I had a wonderful two-week break in Bordeaux, France, while my son was on Spring Break.
We are moving to Bordeaux this summer, and we did a tour of his future school, ate a lot of delicious food, and chaotically ended up buying a house. It was a wild first week. We are excited and hope to get the keys to our new place in June. I am super excited as the new house has a small outdoor area, an extra bedroom for guests, and it is enormous (compared to our tiny apartment now). I am also looking forward to buying a record player we have been saving for… now that we have room for it 😀.
Shepherd Stress
I’ve been pretty stressed over Shepherd and how to reach break-even on our monthly costs.
Why am I stressed?
The two monetization models I’ve been focusing on for the last 18 months hit a wall, and I realized that one of them will not work, and the other isn’t working as well as I need it to be to keep us going.
Monetization Model 1: Affiliate Book Sales
One of the big reasons there are not better book websites online is that it is tough to make enough money from books to build a website like Shepherd. This is because of the low cost of books, the low affiliate payouts by Amazon, and the nature of how affiliate systems work (as they scrub a lot of sales you send).
As I have tested and gotten data over the last 18 months, I have now realized it is practically impossible to make enough to fund our operations through affiliate sales with Amazon or Bookshop.org.
Basically, for every $1,000,000 in book sales we create, they only pay us ~$20,000. This makes it virtually impossible to fund the project fully through affiliate sales. This is also why some of the best new book websites, like Story Graph and HardCover.app, rely on user memberships.
Summary: Affiliate sales won’t make enough to fund Shepherd. They will help, but it is impossible to make them work at scale with the current payouts and systems by Amazon, Bookshop.org, and others.
Monetization Model 2: Author Memberships
I am so thankful to all the authors who have become Founding Members and joined our quest to build a unique indie book platform designed for readers and authors. Without their support, we wouldn’t be here.
But the problem is I am not providing them enough perks & benefits. I’ve seen a 30% cancellation rate from our early members and I am talking to as many as possible to look at how to improve and expand the benefits we offer them.
I am currently testing and researching the following improvements for them:
Switching our Book Boost program to advertise their books every day instead of just one 60-day burst per year. And testing how to make the matches less broad and focus purely on the highest matched readers. I am also testing different ad formats that will engage the reader better.
I am looking at how to add a separate feature to show our Founding Member’s new books in spots dedicated to new book discovery around Shepherd for the first 103 years that book is out (matching what we do for all new book searches).
I am talking to Founding Members to hear what else would help them and make the program of great value to them.
Summary: I am all-in on memberships, as we couldn’t survive without them. I am working hard to add more value for Authors who join our Founding Member program.
Monetization Model 3: Display Ads
I hate display ads, but they help us pay our bills. I don’t put many ads on our pages; many pages have no ads, and I don’t allow video ads.
I am working on how I can remove them entirely from the website and replace them with book ads from authors. I am unsure if this is possible yet, but I’d love to do it and am playing with the math.
Summary: I hate display ads and hope to replace them with book ads from authors soon. I am trying to look at how I can do this.
Monetization Model 4: Reader Memberships (Coming soon)
As we launch our reader features, I will also launch Reader Memberships for readers who want to support our quest to build the most amazing book discovery platform.
Summary: I am all-in on memberships, as we couldn’t survive without them. As I launch more reader features, I will also launch a reader membership so they can support us and get some really great perks.
So, what is the path forward?
How do I plan to fund Shepherd?
Shepherd will be primarily funded by memberships from authors and readers. That is 100% of my focus, given what I have learned over the last three years.
Plus, we will have financial support from affiliate book sales, display ads, and some fun reader/book swag I am launching soon.
(Publishers are another partial funding option. So far, my conversations with them have gone nowhere. I’ve pitched a few on offering Shepherd’s platform but branded as a section of their website and with just their author’s books (plus even build out an email newsletter for them to engage their readers). I wanted to give them a way to build their own brand and share their author’s books in a unique way, but so far, I haven’t found any publishers willing to try something new. Most of them don’t have strategies around the internet and seem intent on letting Amazon win every aspect of this market.)
What is the roadmap for readers?
As we move heavily to building out more features for readers, here is what we are working on next:
Launching our personalized book recommendation email. We ask readers what books, authors, genres, and topics they love and then send them recommendations every week or two.
Launching our Book DNA review format designed to help readers find books they love based on shared Book DNA with other readers. This is not a star system.
Integrating more community features into the website as we proceed. I am leaving this intentionally vague as we need to get #1 and #2 in place first.
Both involve launching our user system, so they are good first steps as we start building more reader-focused features 😀.
What else am I working on?
Testing our Book DNA review format with readers.
I am working with Roman, our part-time designer, to create new pages and improve existing ones. We just finished the book series page! Now, we are working on a significant improvement to the bookshelf section, book recommendation lists, and other areas.
I am working with our new part-time developer, Attila, to get him up to speed on our codebase. I am very excited to have him on board! I am working on specs for many of the upcoming work he will tackle.
What is going on outside of Shepherd?
I am biking and enjoying the great weather! Plus, we are preparing for our big move this summer…
What am I reading?
I just finished...
Midnight by FX Holden. This is book 4 in a Tom Clancy like series about World War 3 breaking out between China and the USA. It is set around 15 years in the future and is surreal to read. The drone/AI technology in the book is surreal to read. I highly recommend this series.
Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert Heinlein. This is from the 1950s, and I read it as part of a book club I am doing with my dad and brother. I enjoyed it, although it is more of a philosophical tale about freedom than a complete book. I had a great time discussing it with my dad/brother.
I am reading...
I am on book 7 in the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch. This is a wonderful series, and I wish I had picked it up earlier. It is like Harry Potter meets Sherlock Holmes (reminds me of the Dresden Files series).
M: Son of the Century - About Mussolini. I am ~65% done. I am digging it, but it is slow reading with much to think about.
Nomads: The Wanderers Who Shaped Our World - This is a fascinating account of a group that is part of our DNA, yet we don't know much about them because they didn't leave much physical evidence.
Thanks, Ben
Picture: My son and I dug a fun hole at the beach!
I'm excited to see what's next. Hang in there!