Welcome to the March edition of the Book Notification Newsletter.
This edition is being sent out ahead of schedule. We usually send them out on the last Saturday of the month, however the team has been working extremely hard on our new feature and couldn’t wait to share it with you as soon as the beta testing period was over with.
It’s the most requested feature since Book Notification launched – and we are thrilled to announce that as of today, we’ve implemented book search on the website.
Details about that are in the New Features section below.
Last month, we ran a contest where every comment you make on an authors page will earn you entry into a draw with 10 $25 Amazon gift cards as a prize, and will run that contest again this month. Note: Each comment counts as an entry, and it’s possible to win multiple times. We received over 200 comments within the last month. Thank you to everyone who contributed – you are really helping us out, and it’s great to see so much discussion going on. Here are the winners this month:
- azangie
- Cheryle Fisher
- Jessa
- Larry B
- Pam
- skmc529
- stalsma
- Terry Hickman
- waterburg72
- waterburg72
You should have all received an e-mail confirming your e-mail address for the gift card.
Now let’s get right onto talking about book search.
Until the next chapter,
Graeme
Book Notification Founder
New Features
This month the big feature the team worked on was the book search. This was a big challenge due to having over 650,000 books on the site, with that number only growing every day. As it’s not just about the ability to search books, but also providing instant results and direct links to the authors who wrote the books.
Here is how it works. I’m using the desktop site as an example, but mobile functions exactly the same way.
By default, you will see the usual “Author Search”. However beside it is a new icon, as indicated below.
Hover over that, and the below popup appears where you can now select between “Author Search” and “Book Search”. When you select one, it will remember your choice until you change it.
As you start to type in the search bar, a list of books will instantly appear matching your search:
You can then either click on the book title and it will take you directly to the book on an authors list, or click on the authors name and it will take you to their page.
If a book is written by multiple authors, they will be listed as well, as indicated below:
The search has went through an extensive beta testing period, but if you notice any issues, or have any suggestions for improvement, please don’t hesitate to hit reply and let me know.
Visit Book Notification and check it out!
New Content Added
At Book Notification, we do more than just add authors – we post news and write some fun blog content too! Here are posts in that category from the last few weeks:
Contest
Having quality content and discussion is always beneficial for our website. This month, I am again asking you to write a comment on an authors page. It can be whatever you want. You can write about how they are your favourite author, or what their best book or series is. You could write about an adaptation of their book. Any and all comments are welcome.
And don’t worry – we are planning on mixing the contests up soon. There is a new feature in the works which will see the contest change to support that and help get it off the ground.
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
You can find the comment form at the bottom of every authors page, titled “Author Discussion”.
Thanks to everyone for your support. It’s truly appreciated.