Welcome everyone to the February Book Notification newsletter.
Quick note: if you are a librarian or work in a library, please hit reply. Just one quick question for you all!
It was another month where the majority of the notable work on Book Notification was behind the scenes. I mentioned last month that we were doing a backend overhaul, but this leaked into February, as we ended up redesigning certain areas from scratch.
It was frustrating as we wanted to work on some significant new features for the front end this month. However, it was well worth it. It’s mostly complete now, with just a few minor additions to take place. Tasks such as going through new books take half the time now, and authors in our backend with many books (i.e., Stephen King, James Patterson, Michael Anderle) load up instantly now, as opposed to the 15 seconds it took before—hats off to our development team for some incredible work.
Thanks to everyone who has listened to the Book Notification podcast so far. We’re really enjoying covering the top new books of the week on it. Our episode covering the best new books for this week is up – check it out!
I had the chance to interview the bookstagrammer fullof_lit, in our latest Booktalks. Be sure to check it out and give them a follow on Instagram – it’s one of those very positive feeds that I enjoy seeing every day.
I’ve only been able to watch one episode of the new Reacher series so far. Based on the books by Lee Child, of course. I enjoyed it a lot. It’s based on Persuader, which is easily my favourite Reacher novel, so it’s exciting to see it play out on the big screen.
We have a couple of minor enhancements to the site this month, listed in the Features section. And we’re looking forward to a big announcement in the March newsletter.
Last month, we held a contest where each comment you made on an author’s page earned you one entry into the prize draw for 1 of 10 $25 USD Gift Cards. Thank you to everyone who did this.
Here are the winners this month:
- Amy C.
- DianaB
- Donna (email begins with elst)
- jo (email begins with djlov)
- Larry B
- @lindaluvsbooks
- Mac
- Peggy (email begins with jpm)
- Ronchon
- stalsma
We’re running the same contest this month. Details are later in the newsletter.
Until the next chapter,
Graeme
Book Notification Founder
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Site Improvements & Updates
DIsplay All Authors/Books by Default: For speed reasons, when you view your followed authors or books read, it only displays 20 per page. We had a few people request the ability to display all authors or books by default. We’ve now added that ability to the Websites settings area.
More Stats Data: Previously, in your stats area, we listed data such as “Total Books Read in 2023” or “Total Books Rated 8/10”, but with no way to actually see which books you had rated 8/10, unless you went through My Books. We’ve now added links in the stats area, so you can quickly see which books you have read in a specific year or what ratings you gave a book.
Thanks to everyone who requests features such as these. While they may appear minor, they help improve the overall user experience, which is our ultimate goal.
New Content Added
In addition to adding authors, we post a lot of book news and book-related content to Book Notification each month. Here are the highlights since the last newsletter:
Monthly Contest
Quality content and discussion are always beneficial for our website. This month, we are asking you to write a comment on an author’s page. It can be whatever you want. You can write about how they are your favourite author, what their best book or series is, or about an adaptation of their book. Any and all comments are welcome.
We will give away ten $25 USD gift cards to random people who have submitted a comment from the day this newsletter was published, up until the beginning of the next newsletter. Each comment earns you an entry (or ‘ticket’) into the draw, and you can enter multiple times so comment as much as you want!
The comment form is at the bottom of every author’s page, titled “Author Discussion”.
Thanks to everyone for your support. It’s genuinely appreciated.
