Building Book DNA: All my 2026 reading data is in the beta! Woohoo 🎉
Notes on building a smarter, more personal way to manage your reading life, with recommendations shaped by your Book DNA.
Every 2 weeks, I share notes on building Book DNA.
Join the rebellion and help me create a smarter, more personal way to manage your reading life, with recommendations shaped by your Book DNA. Think Goodreads, but rebuilt for readers who want a private space to track what they read, keep notes, and get truly personalized book recommendations (like Pandora or Spotify for books). It is also designed from the ground up to help authors. We are on track to start testing the beta in February (apply here to be a beta tester).
Three hurrahs for our 750+ members who keep us alive! Readers and authors can become members (both get special perks, and more perks are coming as we grow).
I am feeling…
The jet lag is crushing me this week. I keep getting one night of 4.5 hours of sleep, then a good night’s sleep, then another night of 4.5 hours of sleep… hopefully tonight breaks that pattern.
I was in the USA for 10 days visiting my adorable 2.5-year-old nephew (and family). I had a blast, and now I need to retreat into a cave for a month as it was a TON of people time.
All my 2026 reading data is in the beta! Woohoo 🎉
I am celebrating because I am not using the app's beta instead of my normal spreadsheet to track my reading this year!
Adding my 2026 reading went really smoothly, and I only hit one bug with a pretty rare book (and that bug is now fixed).
And a close-up of what I read in March and private notes.
And now Marton and Elo are adding our design motif, so it is getting prettier every day.
My initial goal here is to build a private book diary that isn’t some giant public social network. And then let you choose what data you want to share with family/friends (if any).
We’ve got a few bugs to knock out, but we are ready to do Zoom user tests with 5 early users next week.
What do we hope to learn from the first user tests?
Test UX and feature flow, and make sure this is easy to use.
Test our assumptions on what features are “must-haves” for users.
Find any bugs or areas for improvement in what we have so far.
What will we likely add next to the app?
Simple audiobook selection
Adding a genre filter
Adding public reviews
Adding a user folder system so you can organize how your brain works.
Adding an import system from Goodreads/Storygraph
Once we get a solid foundation, we will start working on what makes us unique, our deeply personalized book recommendation system based on your Book DNA.
What is going on outside of Shepherd?
Not much now that I am home from my trip. The sun is visiting after a long winter. I am looking forward to a bike ride this Sunday that might be considered “slightly warm.” 😀
What am I reading now?
I am reading...
Book 3 of the Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson. I read books 1 and 2 long ago, but I am finally reading through the entire series now that it has reached book 5.
The Devil In The White City: Amazing book, thanks to Ben for the recommendation! It is a nonfiction book about the Chicago World Fair, the birth of the modern world, and a serial killer. It is hard to put down.
Have a great weekend wherever you are in this mad, mad world.
Ben
P.S. Photo from my recent trip to Florence, Italy. What a stunning city.
