Notification of New Books in Series or by selected authors

A friend asked whether LibraryThing can send a notification to a user who wants to know when another book in a series is published. Or whether LibraryThing can send them a notification when a book by a certain author is published.

That seems like a big job, but it might be useful to many people.

Asked many times before, but LT does not have that information.

LT only knows about a book when it is entered. If somebody enters a book that shows as a new work on the author page it might be a new book. It might be something planned but not available on a wishlist, it might be something old that didn't combine. Someone might have entered several books as one entry. It could be a new translation in any language.

Similarly, a new book on the series page could be anything that anybody decided to add to the series. A book, but also maybe a short story. And it could be some time after a new book was available before it got added to the series page.

Any such notification feature would end up sending more false notifications than true ones.

Luzme (https://luzme.com/) claims to send notifications when there's a new title (edition?) of an author's books, but I haven't used the site in years and rarely hear anything from them. Following an author on Amazon is also poor; I've often received notifications 6 months after purchasing a new title - when I get one anyway. (As I no longer purchase Kindle titles from Amazon, I don't bother.)

>1 vwinsloe:

If your friend is interested in a particular author or series, the logical thing to do would be to follow the author's website or social media.

>4 lilithcat: Well, obviously. But my friend reads widely, and is interested in many authors and series. I did find this

https://www.booknotification.com

I don't know if it works as I have not personally tried it. It appears to be an "Amazon Associate."

>2 MarthaJeanne: Interesting that LT only knows about books that are entered by users. I guess I had assumed that all of those automatic recommendations were coming from recently published books.

>5 vwinsloe:

Here's how the automatic recommendations are generated: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/Recommendations

>6 lilithcat:. I see. It appears that the automatic recommendations are selected from the collections of other LT members. Not as helpful as I thought. Thanks.

Many of my "new" recommendations are for old but obscure books as they are added to the catalogs of other users. I do sometimes find out about new volumes in series I am reading from LT recs, though.

>7 vwinsloe: Why would recommendations of older books not be helpful?

>9 jjwilson61:

The OP is looking for new books in a series or new books by a specific author.

I use https://www.fantasticfiction.com/ for notifications about new books by authors I like (you get notifications when they are added to the site which is often when it gets announced). No ability to just cherry pick series but still…

Works for me and the way I read.

>10 lilithcat: Exactly, thanks. >9 jjwilson61: my friend wants to get notified about new books or new books in a series from more than a dozen authors across several publishers.

>11 AnnieMod: It seems like that site would do it for many authors and genres. Looks like you need to "follow" an author there and then select for getting an email when the author has a new book out?

>12 vwinsloe: Yes - follow the author and it sends you mails. You can follow up to 200 authors - which should be enough for most people. :) It has notifications for both books being added and books being available (I use the first; the second option is newer and may be closer to what you want). It has a few other nice features as well.

>13 AnnieMod: Excellent. Sounds just like what I was looking for. Thanks.