Our 3 goals for authors
Our 3 goals for authors
Reach your most likely readers
You shouldn’t have to pay to get your book in front of the right readers. Shepherd connects your book with the readers most likely to love it—in a way that builds real interest in you and your book.
More publicity for trending books
When your book has that magical spark with readers, we help that momentum grow—not just to support your book, but to help more readers discover new books and authors they will love.
Grow your fan base
As Shepherd grows, we're making it easier for you to collect, grow, and tap into your fan base. This is my biggest frustration with Goodreads—and I am going to work my ass off to make it better for authors.
These goals are our foundation.
They influence everything we build and our future roadmap.
How does Shepherd help me?
How does Shepherd help me?
Reach the most likely readers of your book.
We currently have two formats that put you in front of the most likely readers for your book. We are working to add more as we grow.
Format #1
Recommend 5 books you love around a topic, theme, or mood that is close to your book.
The goal is to get you and your book in front of the most likely readers by sharing five similar books that share a similar vibe. Then, alongside each book you explain why you love that book with a short 50 to 130 word recommendation. This drives interest in you and your book by exposing your personality, passion, and expertise.
Here are two great examples, one list by a nonfiction author and one list by a fiction author.
How does this sell my book?
It puts you in front of the most likely readers for your book (when done correctly). We promote you and your book at the top of the page, and then your book again at the end of the list.
The trick is that we get readers interested in you and your book by exposing your personality, passion, and/or expertise through your personal book recommendations. We want to create "this person sounds interesting and I should try their book" moments.
What does the data say?
The average conversion rate for users who view a book list and click the author's featured book is 7.5% (full breakdown). But averages hide even better numbers.
If your book list is targeted to the right readers, that number can be much higher. We have lots of lists hitting 10% to 20% conversion rates and some as high as 40%.
How long do you promote my list?
Forever!!! This isn't a magazine or blog, your list lis part of our discovery platform and we are constantly working to connect it with the most likely readers and invent new ways to achieve that goal.
How do I take part? How long does it take?
To take part, email forauthors@shepherd.com and ask for the Word doc template. To make it easy for authors, you just fill out the doc and return to us via email. We handle the rest 😄. We will email you once it is ready for you to preview and you can make any tweaks then.
My hope is that it takes about 45 minutes to fill out (some authors take longer of course).
Where can I learn more?
I've got a full breakdown and video walk through here.
Format #2
Share your 3 favorite reads of the year.
The goal is to smartly put you and your book in front of your fan base during the holiday buying season through your favorite reads of the year. Plus, your recommendations plug into Shepherd's entire ecosystem to help you bump into readers.
This is a great way to engage your fans! You can invite them to share their 3 favorite reads of the year and if you use our referral link, your book is promoted at the end of all of their lists as well.
Here are two great examples with Mark Lawrence's favorite reads of 2024 and Louise Blackwick's favorite reads of 2024.
How does this sell my book?
It puts your book in front of your fan base and smartly reminds them about it during the holiday book buying season. Readers love it, and you can encourage them to share their favorites.
What does the data say?
The average conversion rate for users who view a "favorite read of the year" list and click the author's promoted book is ~5%. But, averages hide much better numbers, many of our authors see conversion rates of 10% to 50%.
A lot of this depends on your audience and if you read in the same genres you write within. As we grow we will do a better job of putting your list in front of readers who match your Book DNA as well (working on adding this for next year).
How long do you promote the list?
Forever! Although these lists get a lot more traffic in the year they are published. But like all our lists, this goes into our discovery platform and we are constantly working to connect it with the most likely readers and invent new ways to achieve that goal.
How do I take part?
Everything is online and go here to take part (email support@shepherd.com if you need any help).
As an author, I recommend you write personalized book recommendations for your 3 favorite books of the year. If you don't, we can't promote your list as well on the wider platform.
Where can I learn more?
I've got a full breakdown and video walkthrough here.
What future formats are you working on?
Meet readers through interesting facts and stories (nonfiction-oriented).
Meet readers through your characters (fiction-oriented).
How do we get readers to your list?
How do we get readers to your list?
We promote you forever.
I want to stress this point, we are a book discovery platform and every format you create is one that we work to get readers to forever. We are constantly improving existing featuers and inventing new features to achieve this.
We promote your list within our network.
Once you create a list, we work to get it in front of the most likely readers. This depends slightly on the format, but here are all the ways we work to expose it. We are constantly working to create new ways as well.
How do we do that internally?
We are constantly trying to help readers who land on our front page or bookshelves find a list that speaks to them. Here are some of the ways we do that 😄.
- ✉️ - We promote your list on our 100% personalized book recommendation newsletter for readers. This isn't a one-time thing; this is personalized per reader, so your list is constantly being shown to readers who sign up as their tastes change.
- 🐇🕳️ - Under each list, we feature similar lists using our recommendation engine. Readers can keep following their curiosity as they explore books.
- 📚 - On our Bookshelves, Books Like, and Book pages, we show your list and pull readers toward it when it corresponds with one of the books on your list.
- 🕵️♀️ - Our search engine is built to connect readers to lists based on books or authors they like, as well as genres, topics, and age groups.
How do we do that externally?
- Search Engines - If your list is a good fit, we work to rank it within search engines so people who are searching for books about that topic, theme, or mood find it.
- Author's Social Media - We give authors the tools to share their book lists on social media. Not only does this help authors engage their audience and sell their book(s), but it also helps readers find our website and our entire author community. This is a virtuous circle as we help people to find better ways to find books.
- Partnership programs - 2024 was our first year to do this, but we started working with online book communities, influencers, and fan bases to give them tools for their communities. And as part of this we help those communities discover your lists.
Are you Oprah?
Are you Oprah?
I get this question a lot.
I am not Oprah 😀.
We are slow & steady exposure to the most likely readers for your book.
We do not provide a massive burst of exposure. Shepherd is designed for slow and steady exposure month after month and year after year. But that exposure is to the most likely readers for your book (if you do this right).
I like to tell authors that Shepherd is one of the 100 things they should do to market their book. I hope to be four of the 100 things they do within a few years.
As we grow, I will help authors get more and more exposure if their book has that “magic spark” with readers. Our Best Books of the Year feature was a step in this direction, and we have a lot more planned.
How much traffic will your book recommendation list receive? Here is a data snapshot with details (eventually, I hope to build an author dashboard). As Shepherd grows, so does this traffic, and our ability to help authors.