[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by haertig

My biggest problem is finding out when one of the authors that I have read and liked releases (or announces) a new book in the series. I don't have a good method of handling this.

What I currently do, and it sucks, is every few months I scan through my Calibre library and write down the author names that I enjoy reading. That turns into a pretty large list. Then I MANUALLY go and check their respective websites, Wiki, "Book Series in Order" website, Goodreads, and Amazon to see if they have released/announced anything new. This is a real pain for authors where I have a lot of their books already. I have to then go through my Calibre library again, and my print books, to determine if what I am looking at is a new book, or an old book that I just don't remember.

This is horribly tedious, and that explains why I rarely do it. Which just compounds this problem when I put off doing it.

Boy it would sure be nice if there was a website that listed just about every author known to man and all their books - arranged into series and then sorted into oldest to newest - with checkboxes by each title that I could click on and save. Then when they come out with something new I would notice an empty checkbox at the end of the list and immediately realize that this was a new book that I haven't read. This website would also have to have a listing of authors, arrangeable and sortable using various criteria, with checkboxes by the authors name so that my default view would only be for authors that I care about. There could be a separate section of the website that makes suggestions, "...since you like author ABC, you might also like author XYZ". The website would have to find some way to monetize their work - maybe with affiliate links to books sold on Amazon. Or, I would pay outright for an Android/iOS app that does all of the above, giving the app author(s) the payment they deserve for good work like this.

A website/app like the above would be pretty simple to construct. The big bugaboo would be acquiring the data to keep it constantly updated. There's no central repository for that kind of info AFAIK (if there was and I was made aware of it, I'd be using it!) Acquiring the update data would be where the real work would come in.

A plug-in for Calibre to do this author tracking would be wonderful!!! The existing Overdrive plug-in has some of this functionality (it searches for books by one of your authors that are in specific libraries you configure).

At one time, getting notifications when one of my favorite authors had a new book was what I used author-alerts for. Great website. You put in the authors you wanted to monitor and it would send you an email when a new book came out. Unfortunately, Amazon decided to block them so they shutdown.

As far as I know, there is nothing out there that provides this service anymore. Amazon is basically being the dog in the manager over this. They don't want to make the effort, but they don't want anyone else to access their database to do it.

I really wish that there was such a service. Heck, I would be willing to pay for such a service. While the task is a bit more complex than you think, the real issue is getting access to a database with all the ebooks and meta data that is updated regularly. I've often wondered by a consortium of publishers doesn't put such a thing together. It would be pocket change for them.