There are maybe a dozen or two authors that I enjoy enough that I’d like to read a new book by that author whenever one comes out. But I don’t always know when they publish something new. I’d love to have a list of authors somewhere, like Goodreads or Amazon, that’ll send me an alert when NK Jemisin or Daniel Abraham or any of my other favorites have a new book available–but looking around those sites, I can’t find any such function.
Am I missing a way to do this? Is there another site that can do this? Or am I out of luck?
Book Buzzes looked promising–but it’s dead. Author Alerts is also dead, apparently listed for sale. Boo–these are exactly the sorts of services I wanted! Are they dead because their functions are subsumed into larger sites, or because nobody used them?
Amazon regularly sends me notifications when an author I’ve bought before has a new book available for preorder. I just got one for Skyward by Brandon Sanderson. It may be a Prime perk, though.
Wait–I just figured it out! If I go to Amazon and surf to an author, there’s a “follow” button under the author’s name. They’ll send me alerts when the author publishes something I like.
I tend to use my wife’s Amazon Prime–I’ll have to remember what my own non-prime account is, so the alerts go to me, not to her :).
You can set up Google alerts, but that will also give you news on anything the author does. It’s also not smart enough to know which person you’re talking about. I get alerts on the author Stephen King, but also the criminal Stephen King arrested in Tennessee.
Do you have a kindle? I receive notifications from Amazon via my kindle. Also, I’ve combined my library with my gf’s so that we can share our books. I haven’t bothered doing anything similar with my Amazon Prime account (is it even possible?).