Shepherd.com – An Exciting Alternative to Goodreads

I have added my latest book, The Visitors, to Shepherd.com, a new alternative to Goodreads. The service is free to authors and readers and is growing each month. The site’s income comes from referrals and a small amount of advertising, with value-added features planned for the future. The website owner provides authors with monthly updates on the growth of the service and future developments in an open manner. I posted about the service when I added my previous book, Another Life, but here is a recap. The author creates a page under a unique heading of their choosing. The page promotes a preferred book from the author’s publications, which appears ahead of up to five recommended books chosen by the author. The author’s nominated book will always appear at the top of the page. The author defines a topic or theme for their book list, typically including ‘The Best’. This can be narrow or broad and can reflect the author’s personality. It is best to create an eye-catching phrase to attract readers searching for books. Ideally, it should be relevant to the author’s work to match the reader’s interest. Authors are invited to submit their photograph and a paragraph to introduce themselves and the theme of their list. They also choose a single book of their own to feature, together with a description or blurb. You can include three author profile links. These can be websites or social media links and are included as buttons next to the author’s name. Finally, you list five recommended books, describing each and the reasons, in 50-130 words. The idea is to share why you recommend the book and connect with readers. Shepherd claims that half of the books bought from a recommendation list are the author’s own book. Readers can browse by topic, favourite book, or author. Within topics, the reader can browse bookshelves (‘the best books about…) and best book lists (‘book picks from passionate experts…‘). The latter lists links to authors’ lists. When a reader browses by topic or keyword, a list of recommended books is displayed with a link to the author’s list on which it can be found. This allows the reader to find more books of possible interest. Once a book is found, the reader can click to order it from bookshop.org or Amazon. It is a valuable tool for readers and authors and is available at no cost. https://shepherd.com/best-books/accessible-first-contact-sci-fi