Feature Request: Notify me when my books are in your db...

[Lee Vodra]

Hi There -

While you're growing, it might be nice to have a notification when you have the books I just listed. The advantages are several.

One is subtle branding. Unless you have the books I'm interested in, I'm really not interested in your service. However once you do have them, I'd _love_ to hear from you. Any other message from you is noise. If the next message I get from you is welcome, as in you have the books I've asked for in your database, your brand will be positive. Otherwise it's spam and vaporware.

I think BookLamp is a great idea! Good luck!

[Aaron Stanton]

That's a really good idea.  Let me ask you a question that connects to that.

Currently, we have very few books in the database, but we're going to grow that.  Hopefully, we'll grow that in sizable chunks, so that we'll add a couple hundred or thousand books at a time, as we connect with publishers and such.

While people provide an e-mail address when they register, it's not our intention to use that as a mailing list in terms of general communications with people - while in our privacy policy I reserved the right to send out an occasional e-mail regarding BookLamp, it's reserved for the occasional, rare special announcement of significant nature - not intended for simple things like notifications about when books are added to the database (you're right - any regular mailings would mostly just come across as spam, and I have no love for spam).

So here is the question - would it be useful to have a separate mailing list that can be opted into that includes occasional, non-regular updates on the status of BookLamp.org?  Would anyone be interested in this, or is the RSS feed generally enough?

As for the ability to be notified if the book you requested is added to the database, that's an excellent idea.

Thanks,

Aaron

[Mandi Taylor]

It sounds like a good idea to me, but as you already have my email for beta updates I'm not really the one to ask.
I don't use RSS feeds because...  Well, I don't really know why.  I just don't bother, I suppose.  I think I would rather check the page every day whether there are updates or not.   

[Stephen Rollins]

I use the forums nearly every day so I wouldn't miss any new information you posted about, but I wouldn't mind getting an email update about how things are going.

[Daniel Haggard]

Just stumbled onto this site - apologies for not reading all the previous posts so I don't know what has been said.

As a writer, I can't wait to use a tool like this to compare my own writing with other works.  I would pay for an application that allowed me to do this. 

As a marketing tool for emerging writers it would also be fantastic - if you allowed self-published authors to upload their work for analysis along with a link to where the book could be bought (via lulu.com or something like that).

[Jo Red]

Just stumbled onto this site - apologies for not reading all the previous posts so I don't know what has been said.

As a writer, I can't wait to use a tool like this to compare my own writing with other works.  I would pay for an application that allowed me to do this. 

As a marketing tool for emerging writers it would also be fantastic - if you allowed self-published authors to upload their work for analysis along with a link to where the book could be bought (via lulu.com or something like that).

Aaron,

If you're still looking for an answer how you can grow your database, here it is !  Here's one author who would "pay for such a service",and "upload" their work for analysis. I wonder what other authors of his level would think of this service as well

Jo

[rachel lo]

I found out about BookLamp from a review in January Magazine. It's very interesting - brings back many discussions on structuralism from my school days. Aaron, I'm curious, what's your background? Literary criticism? What made you decide to fragment books to scenes?

I'm excited about your project and look forward to more books being added to your database. I'm not familiar with enough of the current titles to decide if I agree with the algorithms.

Good luck!
Rachel

[Chris Cullop]

I agree that this feature would be nice. Having new books thrown at you is nice, but knowing that books you enjoyed are working in the algorithms as well give a bit more confidence when going out to grab the next recommendation.