What are we building right now? What is coming in the Fall?
We are getting close to launching user accounts! Woohoo!
Every 3 weeks, I share my notes on building Shepherd.com.
Why am I building Shepherd? Books build better people.
Readers - I want to decode readers’ Book DNA and match them with books they will love (not just like). And I want to create that magical feeling you get exploring your favorite bookstore (but reimagined for the online world).
Authors - I want to help authors reach the most likely readers for their books through a shared love of reading. And I want to build a platform for indie book recommendations to give authors more places for exposure (my strategery here).
Three hurrahs for our 774 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 part-time designer so we can keep building great new features for our community.
Mood check for Friday, September 6th 🤪
It feels good to be home!
We are unpacking and getting settled after our July move. Life is good.
What are we building right now?
The improved 2024 Best Books Of The Year program!
(The link above has screenshots and more info)
We’ve built user accounts into our system, and the new submission process is almost ready to be tested. This is the new way we will take in submissions instead of a Word doc.
After that, we will update the BBOY and 3 favorite reads pages with some updated design elements, and we should be ready to go for 2024.
I am still aiming for an October 1st launch date to start collecting the 2024 submissions. It is super exciting to expand this to readers this year 🥳.
Our book series pages!
Work has started, and I hope we have something to show off in late September.
The one caveat is that I am not sure our backend data around book series is good enough, and we might need some work on that before we launch these (especially if we are sending email notifications when a new book in a series is out).
What are the designer and I working on?
Improved ad designs as we expand that system.
My goal is to switch the ugly display ads on the website to book ads. I’ve been talking to many authors and publishers about what they want from this system, and we will build it in October or November.
Here is one of the new ad spots we will test with this switch.
Version 2.0 of our bookshelves!
Bookshelves are one of the big discovery points on the website.
I am working to make this a more visual exploration point and help readers find new and trending books in some cool ways. This is also an essential thing to get in place before we work this Winter to revamp our genre and topic accuracy (and expand to offer themes and tropes).
As a reader, I want these features, and this was a big motivation for building Shepherd.
I’ll share more screenshots as we nail down more details; we are still exploring some options and testing on users.
What is going on outside of Shepherd?
My son started his first day of school in France this week! It went well, which was a relief. My wife and I are still working to get our new house set up. I am hopeful that in a month, we will not be sitting on lawn chairs in our living room.
What am I reading?
I just finished...
Dark Frontier - I don’t often pick up Westerns, but this was a fun adventure by Matthew Harffy.
I am reading...
Fulcrum - This is book 5 in the Aggressor series about WW3 by FX Holden. It has been fantastic so far, and I look forward to the conclusion of this fantastic series. It is the closest to Tom Clancy I’ve found. The vision of what drone/AI warfare looks like is disturbing. It paints a picture of a war that I hope the world can avoid.
Cities in Flight - My dad’s pick for our family book club! I am slowly working my way through this one, and it is an old-school science fiction book.
Nomads: The Wanderers Who Shaped Our World is a fascinating account of a group that is part of our DNA. Yet we know little about them because they left little physical evidence. I am almost done with this one. I don’t often read paperback books as I do a lot of my reading at night, so this one has taken a while as I forget to pick it up.
A Pilgrimage to Eternity - I love books about pilgrimage routes, and this one has been lovely so far. I did part of this route on my bike a few years ago.
Thanks, Ben
P.S. We had a great trip over August to visit friends in Colorado and family in Arkansas. Picture from Silver Dollar City as we had a fun trip to take my son.