Book Notification Newsletter: July 2024

Welcome to the July edition of the Book Notification Newsletter.

Thanks to everyone who entered last months contest. We received over 15,000 entries which was just incredible. The question was “If you were stranded on a desert island, which book series would you like to have?”.

Lots of great answers, and you can read the article on it here. 10 random winners were picked. They are listed below along with the series they picked with links to those series on Book Notification:

1. Alberta L. (Bosch Universe)
2. Ben K. (Mitch Rapp)
3. foxyskate (A Court of Thorns and Roses)
4. I.Suyin L (Inspector Gamache)
5. Jamie F (Lord of the Rings)
6. JH (Mitch Rapp)
7. KL B. (Ring of Fire/1632verse)
8. lbertoli (Mitch Rapp)
9. Steve F. (DCI Logan)
10. Susie B. (In Death)

All winners have been e-mailed. We have a new question for this months contest. Details later in the newsletter.

At Book Notification, our goal is to make the site the “ultimate readers paradise”. We are striving to make the perfect website – with every possible feature, big or small, that readers would ever need.

Our work goes beyond just useful user features, however. There are numerous problems within the online book industry which negatively impact readers, and that’s something we strive to stamp out. In this edition, we’re going to shine the spotlight on an existing feature, and introduce a new feature to combat two big issues.

The existing feature is not one you’d be aware of, but it’s one of the big behind-the-scenes features of Book Notification, and one we are particularly proud of.

There are an incredible amount of books which receive an ISBN, are listed for pre-order, and then are suddenly removed from all retailers. This can be for a variety of reasons. Some of them will be re-issued under a new ISBN, others under an existing ISBN, and the mass majority don’t see a release date at all or are released years later. These are generally known as “vaporware”.

Here’s the problem: when these books are given an ISBN, they are picked up by all book sites and listed on those websites, with an actual release date. . So the internet is flooded with misinformation about books which have never actually existed, and likely won’t be. We see so many Goodreads Imports files consisting of books with release dates from many years ago, which never actually saw the light of day. And no website out there has anything in place to check for this sort of thing or amend their listings, so that misinformation is spread via various resources.

Well, almost no website out there! We have had a system in place for the better part of a year now for this exact thing. To quickly summarize it:

1. The system checks all upcoming books to make sure they are still valid, and not giving a “404 not found” error up until release day.
2. If it detects a 404, it alerts the database team.
3. The database team immediately check to see if the book is available under another ISBN. If so, they update it. If not, they remove it from the authors list and log it.
4. The system checks on a daily basis to see if the ISBN is active again, or looks to see if the book is listed again under a new ISBN.
5. Once per week, the database team do a “deep dive” into all of the logged books to see if they can find any details in regard to it. An author might post that due to illness, all pre-orders have been canceled for the book and they aren’t sure when it will be released. In that case, it’s removed from the tracking list, and if it’s ever re-listed our system will pick it up. If there are no details, it’s kept on there for six months before being purged.

I bring this up, because last week one of the newer members of the database team was doing the “deep dive” into it and commented to me “I can’t believe these “vaporware” books are listed on so many websites. Do they not care about presenting all of this incorrect information?”.

Our current list of “disappeared books” which we are tracking is at 1623, and the majority of these non-existing books are listed on the likes of Goodreads and other sites, with a release date in the past as if it was released. Heck even retailers sometimes list these books with a 2050 or 2079 release date.

This is a big feature on Book Notification that we are proud of as we’re the only website (that I’m aware of) which has this sort of functionality in the backend. We want people to be able to trust our author book lists, and so that is a big factor in it.

I’ll talk about the latest frontend feature in the “New Features” section. Thanks as always, for being a member of Book Notification. We added a new option to registration this month where new users can let us know where they heard of us. It’s been great seeing so many people answer “from a friend”. We truly appreciate you sharing the word.

Until the next chapter,

Graeme
Book Notification Founder

ARC Reviews & Ratings: One issue that has plagued book review sites for years is ARCs, which stands for Advanced Reader Copy. Readers often receive an ARC of a book via various services or publishers prior to release, so that they can write a review of a book and hopefully create a buzz of the book for the author.

The concept of an ARC in exchange for an honest review is great; the problem which arises is whether or not an “honest” review is actually provided. There are numerous communities online where people who review ARCs have noted that they haven’t enjoyed the book at all, wanted to rate it 1 star, but instead of actually posting a review sent their feedback to the publisher or company which provided the ARC instead.

There is also the problem with people providing glowing reviews of books purely due to receiving an ARC, and not being honest in their reviews. Some readers believe that if they post negative reviews, they won’t receive ARCs in the future. Others, despite attempting to be honest, just find it hard to criticize something which they received for free.

We recently spent time researching this on other book review websites. We ran data on over 200 different books, omitted any where the reviewer disclosed that they had received an ARC, and in every single instance, the overall average rating was noticeably lower.

We completely understand the predicament readers feel when they are given a free copy of a book, and they don’t enjoy it. It can be difficult to turn around, and be negative about it. It’s why we at Book Notification refuse any and all ARCs or review copies. Our rule is that if you want us to review your book, we will purchase it ourselves so we can always give it an honest review.

However while we understand the predicament, we also feel that it isn’t helpful for other readers. In some of the examples that we tested, we noticed a rating for a book drop from 4.3 stars to 2.9 stars, once all ARC reviews were removed. That is a big difference, and we feel that isn’t fair for potential readers of a new book, as they aren’t seeing an accurate rating of a book.

So due to this widespread problem within the book industry, we have introduced a new feature at Book Notification.

Now when you are providing a rating or a review of a book, the following checkbox is available where you can disclose that you received a free ARC of this book as indicated below:

And this new option is available in your settings:

With that checked, you discount any ratings with the ARC flag on the site. Meaning ARC ratings will not factor in to any of the book ratings you see across Book Notification.

We do not intend to polarize people who receive ARCs in exchange for a review. We love seeing book reviews and ratings for unreleased books, and appreciate the “buzz” this can generate for a book. However, overinflated ratings due to ARCs has been a common complaint within the book industry, and we just want to give people the option of not factoring in ARC reviews.

By default, it is turned off and the public will still see the average rating of a book with ARC ratings included. It’s by user preference if they wish not to see those factored in.

This approach is very important to us – we believe in empowering our users with the choice, rather than dictating rules or guidelines on topics such as this.

We are well aware of overinflated ratings, review bombing, and various other issues in regard to book ratings and reviews. This is one of just many features we have in place to combat that.

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:

• Top 10 Book Series to Have When Stranded on a Deserted Island
• Popular Book Releases: August 2024
• New Book Releases: July 29th to August 4th, 2024
• “It Ends With Us” Headlines August’s Hottest Book-to-Movie Adaptations!

We give away ten $25 USD gift cards to random people who reply to this email and submit feedback for the reader mailbag.

Here is the question for this month:

What authors are on your “blindly buy” list?

By that, we mean what authors will you always pre-order or buy their books without even reading the description. You trust this author, or love that series enough, that you never have to question that purchase.

To submit your answer, hit reply or use any of the contact forms on our site. Winners will be announced in the August newsletter.

Thanks to everyone for your support. It’s truly appreciated.