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:
👉 Survey: Would this help you with your next book launch?
Testing the UX for our Goodreads import process.
Starting to work on our mobile app.
A new perk to help you reach readers when you launch a book
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. 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.
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. Soon we will add email stats for this perk too.
🗓️ 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.
Fun Size! 🦥
For Nonfiction Authors: Most publishing advice comes too late. The Author Roadmap is designed to help nonfiction authors make the right calls early, before positioning, proposal, and structural choices become hard to undo. Twelve sessions, twelve industry insiders, two days. Join us July 16–17 online and use code BOOKDNA50 to take $50 off registration: bkauthors.org/author-roadmap
If you are looking for editorial reviews for your book, I’d take a look at Indie Reader over Kirkus. The cost is $299, and they are now one of the few review sources included in Ingram’s iPage, which can help you get in front of librarians and independent bookstores through Ingram’s platform (iPage is Ingram's industry-facing catalog and ordering platform used by thousands of bookstores, libraries, distributors, wholesalers, and publishing professionals across the country to discover and evaluate titles). If you try them, let me know how it goes.
This is similar to something I want to do long-term, and I wanted to share it with you because I like merit-based award systems that generate publicity for readers and/or exposure to agents/publishers: IndieReader has opened submissions for their 2027 Discover Awards. Every book is read by 2 pro reviewers (you get a blurb back to use as well), and the highest-scoring books go to a jury pool that reads them and picks winners. This is a year-long pool with the awards being held around May 28th. The winners get cash, free PR from WildBound PR, exposure to involved agents and publishers, and more. The cost isn’t cheap at $150, but I am intrigued by the model. If you are interested, they sent over a 15% discount code valid until June 14th (Use coupon code DISCOVERYAWARDS27 at checkout). I’d love to hear back from authors on the process and how it goes.
Got a new book coming out? Here is how Book DNA can help.
Got a book series? Email us, and we will add it to our system.
Want to meet more readers? Share your 3 favorite reads of 2025.
Survey: Would this help you with your next book launch?
I'm thinking about building something to help authors with book launches, and I'd love your input before I build it.
There are no wrong answers, and "I wouldn't use this" is genuinely useful to hear. Thanks for helping me figure out if this is worth building for authors.
Thank you 😀
Ben
Testing the UX for our Goodreads import process (and StoryGraph).
I’ve been doing Zoom interviews with users to test the UX of our Goodreads import process. We are going to start building this feature in June, and I want to make sure the user flow is super solid. I’ve found a few areas in the flow we need to improve, but overall, the response was positive.
One area we are tweaking is our mapping page, where Goodreads users map what their star system means in personal ratings. We use personal ratings as the data shows this gathers more accurate ratings and will allow us to build a better book recommendation system.
Mockups of our import process for Goodreads (working to improve this step)
I’m looking forward to importing 100+ years of my reading history this summer. 😀
Starting work on our mobile app.
I’m working with Roman on designs for a simple mobile app. We’ve realized that it is natural for many people to log their reading after finishing it, and they want to do that on their phones.
Very early mockup as we start building mobile and how it might work.
Check out our roadmap here (updated every few weeks).
Our progress this month
Our app:
~20 beta testers are actively using the app and giving us feedback.
Now through June 15th: Our focus right now is on making it incredibly easy to log and track reading (no bugs, no confusion). We are adding features, fixing bugs, and addressing UX issues.
After June 15th: We will build the import process for Goodreads and StoryGraph (roadmap), a simple onboarding process, and user folders. I’ll have more details next month on our estimated time frame for this.
Once imports and the welcome process are in place, we will start onboarding ~500 beta early users.
Our website:
71,500+ readers visited the site to discover a new book (dip due to domain move, but should recover in the coming months).
We tracked 3,100+ clicks to bookstores, including 500+ 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 am training for the summer bike riding season and am sore and exhausted. But it feels good to be getting back into riding shape. I’m going to spend the month of July in the mountains, and I want to be ready for a lot of long rides.
What am I reading?
I finished…
The Longest Battle by Jeffery H. Haskell: This is book nine in one of my favorite military-sci-fi adventure series. It is a fun old-school pulp adventure novel. If you need to turn your brain off and have an adventure, this is a great series for that.
There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm: This was my pick for our family book club, and we all enjoyed it. It is as if Memento were a science-fiction movie, and it is bonkers at times. Good read!
I am reading...
How the World Really Works? by Vaclav Smil: I’m excited about this one; it was my dad’s pick for our family book club. I’m starting it tonight!
Fleet Elements by Walter Jon Williams: This is book two in the Praxis series. It is military science fiction with a heavy dose of hard sci-fi to achieve realism in the space battles. It has the vibe of Master & Commander with old-school British officers aboard sailing vessels that happened to be in space. This is the 2nd series in this universe, and you should start with Dream Empire’s Fall before you jump to these if they sound good 😀 .
Thanks, Ben
P.S. My son is enjoying a good book from our family vacation in Crete, Greece, earlier this year 😀
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 😀.