What we’re building for authors (and readers)

For authors: We help the right readers discover your book. Then, for readers who rate it highly, we identify them as fans and give you an easy way to let them know when your next book is out. Each book builds on the last, making every launch easier and helping word-of-mouth grow without adding more work on your side.

For readers: A private, personal way to track your reading and get deeply personalized recommendations. Think Goodreads, rebuilt as a calm private space to track what they read, keep notes, and get truly personalized book recommendations, like Pandora or Spotify for books.

We’re in beta. This won’t be easy, but we’re building this alongside you. Thanks for sticking with us as we figure it out.

This month:

  • 👉 What moves the needle on book sales? Insights from a children’s author.

  • A 5-minute video overview of our app so far.

  • Plus, our progress this month and what I’m reading 📚.

❝

Massive thanks to our 750+ author members! 🥳

Because of their membership, we are able to build this platform that helps authors sell their book, easily collect fans, and easily notify them when your new book is out.

Here’s what members receive:

  • ♥️ You keep us independent and fighting for authors!

  • 📚 Book Boost Perk: We introduce you to 100 to 200 of the most likely readers for your book every month as a thank you for your support! Plus, we send out stats on those ads on the 1st and 15th of every month.

  • 🔔 New book launch perk: Our Spotlight ad perk features your new book (published in last 3 years) in every new book section of the website that matches its genre, topic, or age group on our 3,000+ bookshelves. Plus, we send out stats on those ads on the 1st and 15th of every month.

  • 🗓️ Open hours every Thursday: I hold 4+ hours of open Zoom slots for any book marketing questions you have. I don’t have all the answers, but I can help with what I know and tell you when I don’t.

Thanks, Ben and the small but mighty Book DNA Team.

Fun Size! 🦥

What moves the needle on book sales? Insights from a children’s author.

I want to highlight this fantastic interview that Jane Friedman did a few months back. She talked with author Scott Reintgen about what he attributes his book's sales to, and the conversation is full of great insights.

What does it cover?

  • How Scott used school visits to sell books and how he secured those (pretty amazing what he was able to do).

  • The harsh reality of almost no publisher support when it comes to marketing, and what he pitched them on instead.

  • The balance over his career between upfront payments and now royalties.

This is a great read, especially for children’s authors.

Also, check out the Written Word 2026 reader survey; it can help you understand readers a bit better (although I think this oversamples power readers who are signed up for book discount lists).

A 5-minute video overview of our app so far.

I’ve got a 5-minute walk-through of the app, what we’ve been working on, and what we are adding this summer here.

And our detailed roadmap is here if you want to see screenshots of the upcoming features.

Our progress this month

Our app:

~65 beta testers are actively using the app and giving us feedback. We are aiming to launch publicly late this year.

We are building the import process for Goodreads and StoryGraph, a simple onboarding process, and user folders. We are also testing an improved book database versus Open Library.

Our website:

  • 221,000+ readers visited the site to discover a new book (dip due to domain move, but should recover in the coming months). We are seeing a lot of AI bot visits as AI grows (they are crawling our data and stealing it). Our stats provider (Plausible) can't block those easily, so that will sometimes skew our stats. It is a problem the entire internet is facing.

  • We tracked 5,700+ clicks to bookstores, including 2,200+ clicks to promoted books (the actual number is higher due to tracking limitations).

  • Last year, we had 2.2 million visitors (stats on our traffic, clicks, sales, and demographics here).

What else is going on?

I’ve been super sick, so I'm mostly catching up and getting back on my feet.

What am I reading?

I finished…

  • In the Woods by Tana French: This is Irish crime fiction at its best. I bought this for my mom for Christmas; she recommended it back to me, and I loved it. I can’t believe this was her debut book. I’m reading book #2 now.

  • A Parade of Horribles by Matt Dinniman: This is the latest Dungeon Crawler Carl book, and I loved it. This book truly captures something special about the world we live in. I don’t know how to describe it beyond a litrpg reality-TV sarcasm bomb that vibes with our weird world.

I am reading...

Thanks, Ben

P.S. Greece is beautiful 😀

P. S. Don’t forget…

☎️ Need book marketing help? Let’s talk!

Recently, I’ve talked with authors about the following…

  • Reviewed their Amazon listing for what could be improved

  • Reviewed their book cover and how that fits in with their genre

  • Talked about possible outside-the-box book marketing they could be doing

  • Reviewed book marketing options and what is/isn’t working

  • Talk about pay-per-click ads on Amazon and Facebook, and what to try

  • I walked them through the full-reader app we are building and how that will help authors in the long term.

  • Explained how aspects of Shepherd work and answered questions they have about the different formats.

This is one of many perks for members: membership costs only the price of one fancy coffee drink a year, and everything we raise goes toward our mission to help authors and readers (I work for free).

Once you sign up for a membership, you can schedule a time to meet 😀.

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