Shepherd's mission has a Yin and a Yang. The Yin is readers, and here are my goals for readers. I mention that in case someone thinks our focus is only on authors. I need to write more about readers and how we are helping them find books via their book DNA (and my long-term plans there).
Are you Oprah?
I get this question a lot. I am not Oprah 😀.
We provide slow and steady exposure to your book's most likely readers; we do not yet provide a massive burst of exposure. As we grow, we will be introducing more ways for authors to get larger bursts of exposure if their book has that magic spark.
We are designed to help you hone in on the most likely reader for your book and meet them authentically through a shared love of reading (if you do this right, which we will help you with).
I like to tell authors that Shepherd is 1 of the 100 things they should do online to market their book. And I aim to be 4 of the 100 things they do to market their book within a few years.
Eventually, I would like to do even more; our main limitation is our budget. Everything you see was built with one part-time developer, and imagine what we can do with 1 or 2 full-time developers (please support us here).
What is my three-pronged strategy for helping authors?
Summary if you can't watch the video:
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Shepherd will create features to help authors get their books in front of the most likely readers for their book. We will do this in a way that delights and engages readers so they become interested in you and your book.
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Shepherd will create a platform that helps authors freely get more publicity if their book has a magic spark with readers (the video above doesn't discuss this, but now that we are further along, I will discuss this more).
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Shepherd will build a platform to foster and grow indie book recommendations. I want to give authors a wider array of book recommendation channels through which to meet readers.
How will you help authors move up the publicity ladder freely?
I've started at the bottom of the ladder.
Our five-book recommendation format is designed to provide slow and steady exposure to your book's most likely readers. By placing authors in front of the most interested readers, I want to give them a consistent stream of sales.
The sales won't be huge, but they should be consistent exposure to the readers most interested in your book. Similar to if your mystery book was in a mystery-only bookstore to help it connect with the right readers. This helps build word-of-mouth virality with the people who could be your biggest fans.
For new authors, this helps them get exposure to readers who are not family and friends. And I want to help them start getting reviews on Amazon to help drive word-of-mouth marketing through that platform.
The next step is to determine which books have that magic spark and how to help them get more publicity.
As we grow, I plan to use data from readers and authors to identify books with that magic spark and help them freely receive more publicity.
Our first step toward this is our "best books of the year" feature. I added this in 2023, and we asked 1600+ authors for their favorite 3 reads of the year. Then we split that into the "most-read books in 2023" and the "most-read books that were published in 2023". And we segment it by genre, age, and other factors. We've had 250,000+ readers visit this page, and I am aiming to make 2024 even bigger.
For 2024, we've added user accounts so that readers can now share their 3 favorite reads of the year. And we have a lot more coming to engage readers better and use their data to help highlight books that are not getting enough notice.
We are very new and need to reach one million visitors a month.
We launched in April 2021 and are still in our baby stage.
We are bootstrapped from my savings, and everything you see was built with a part-time developer (plus our small but mighty team that manages publishing).
We need your support in building this website. Please join as a member to build a better book website for readers and authors.
P.S. Do you want to help us grow faster?
I launched a membership program for founding members at the urging of authors and readers. 100% of the money raised goes toward developing new features, and my goal is to hire a full-time developer (currently, we only have one part-time developer).
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