Launch TBR Magic: Bring your to-be-read pile to life!

What does this feature do?

We want to become the platform super readers use to explore and track their to-be-read pile. How will we do this?

• Make it easy to add a book to your TBR pile.
• Make it incredibly easy to sort your TBR pile by genre, topic, theme, trope, mood, age group, author, and much more.
• Make it easy to do things like "show me all the science fiction books in my TBR list that readers loved for the characters.” And other personalizations to help you figure out what you want to read next.

I'll share more of the magic soon 😉!

Once a book is read...

• We will make it easy for readers to log what they read. My focus is not on being a book-tracking app, but that is part of what we will do. I think Hardcover.app and Story Graph are doing great work as apps focused on detailed book tracking for readers who want to log their pages every night (or the specific edition of the book). I have no plans to do that; I purely want to make it easy to record what books you read and why you loved them.
• We will make it easy for them to rate the book using our Book DNA review format. This improves our personalized book recommendations for them and readers who share their Book DNA. We will also encourage them to leave a review on Amazon to help authors, as I know what a slog that is for authors.
• We will make it fun to celebrate the books that mean the most to them. I've wanted to build this feature for a long time, and I am looking forward to it.
• As we launch more of this, we will expand our focus to create the most beautiful pages for readers to celebrate the books they love (toward 2026).

What are we adding?

Mockups are coming later this year... if you are interested in beta testing this feature, please email ben@shepherd.com.

Status

We have not started building this feature yet.

Why is this update important?

• This is one of our three goals for readers and is massively important to our mission. We want to be the platform that brings their to-be-read pile to life. Why? Because book discovery is the heart of what Shepherd does for readers and authors.
• The data we collect from readers will power most of Shepherd's features. It creates a flywheel that allows us to provide better and better book recommendations for readers.