What will our 2024 Best Books of the Year program look like?

It includes our Book DNA review format!

Every 3 weeks, I share my notes on building Shepherd.com.

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 761 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. 

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Mood check for Friday, July 26th 🤪

I am in the second half of moving chaos, where boxes and unbuilt Ikea furniture surround us. Life is good, and we love our new home!

What will our 2024 Best Books of the Year program look like?

In 2023, we launched our best books of the year program! Authors could share their 3 favorite reads, and we tabulated the results for a big media push.

For example, here are my 3 fav reads from 2023, and the big summary page showing all the different categories for readers to wander.

For 2024, what are we changing?

We will take submissions online!

This will be the first feature using our new user system. Users will submit their 3 favorite reads online in a snazzy new form (instead of a Word document).

This will help us tremendously, as the huge rush of submissions almost broke us last year. It will also form the base of many more formats we launch in the coming years.

Switching to our Book DNA review format

The 2024 3 favorite reads format will use our new Book DNA review format.

The Book DNA format is focused on understanding why you like or dislike certain books. We use this to build a Book DNA profile to help you find books you will LOVE (not just like). Plus, this format has 280 characters to leave a short review that can be as witty, funny, or serious as you want (optional).

The testing of this format has gone well, and I am excited to see it in the wild. It is the heart of what Shepherd is doing for readers. In 2025, we will launch the ability for readers to review/rate every book imaginable.

Readers are now invited to the party! 😆

Because of these changes, we will expand to give all readers the chance to share their 3 favorite reads of the year! Last year, 1,600+ authors participated, and I hope to have even more this year.

It would be amazing to have thousands of readers participate as well.

Plus, some tweaks and changes.

• We will make some minor design tweaks to all the pages.

• We will remove the personality tags; those didn’t work well last year.

What is going on outside of Shepherd?

I am just busy unpacking and trying to get everyone settled in our new home. On top of everything, we are preparing for a trip to the USA.

What am I reading?

I just finished...

• Titanium Noir by Nick Harkaway. This is a fantastic cyberpunk book that I enjoyed. I will pick up the sequel.

• Wolf of Wessex by Matthew Harffy. This is a fun Viking adventure book with a heavy dose of historical fiction. It was a quick read, and I enjoyed it. I loved the premise for writing it (Harffy has a lot of great books).

• Time of Terror by Seth Hunter. This was a fantastic historical fiction book set in the French Revolution. It followed a British sea captain named Nathan Peake on water and land as he attempts some espionage.

I am reading...

• 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. 

• 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.

• Blitzed - A book about all the drugs the German soldiers and Nazi party were doing in WW2. Kinda insane!

• Daughter’s War is book two of the Blacktongue Thief fantasy series. Book one was one of my favorite fantasy books of the last few years. This one is slower so far, as nothing happens in the first 40% of the book. It is a beautiful world, though, and fantastic writing. I shall see where it goes…

Thanks, Ben

P.S. A picture from moving chaos!