My mom was the sort of reader who would make spreadsheets of upcoming releases. She’d denote the genre, if they were part of a series, whether the book was hardcover or paperback, and list all the titles by publication date. So I’m sure my organization when it comes to new releases was inherited from her.
Frequently, I’m asked how the hell I discover all these books I keep talking about, and how I keep track of them. I do work in publishing, so I think that’s part of the nature of the beast when it comes to book discovery. Nothing beats word of mouth, but I do have a few tricks up my sleeve on how you can find new books coming out and how to keep track of them all. However, you’re on your own when it comes to wrestling with your book buying budget!
GoodReads
The main way I keep track of my ever expanding TBR pile is through GoodReads. I can create shelves by genre and list books by pub date. I’ll often forget I even added a book until I go through to put together our Hide Your Wallet posts. GoodReads also sends you emails when a book on your shelf is finally available or when a book is up for a giveaway. However, if you aren’t a GR user, there are still ways to search for new releases.
GR offers a list of the most popular books released in a month. On the side, you can even change the month and year. However, there are limits. This is only for the 200 most popular titles; it’s not all encompassing. I also don’t believe the list distinguishes whether a book is a true new release, or just new in paperback.
Plus, if you look at the URL here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/popular_by_date/2015/4
You can change the final number “4” to “5” for May, and so on.
GR members have the option to put together lists. These lists run the gamut. You want M/M titles? There’s a list for that. You want YA books with red covers? There’s a list for that. So naturally, there are often lists for books coming out during certain times. Discovering these lists can often be tricky since they work off of your search terms and the tags associate with the lists. It can be hit or miss until you find the perfect order of words for your search.
I use both Edelweiss and NetGalley for digital ARCs. I want to note that both Edelweiss and NetGalley are utilized more by people in the publishing industry. Reviewers, booksellers, librarians, etc. It’s good for poking around, but be forewarned that if you request any sort of ARC, they’ll check to make sure you have some connection to the business side of things. I think NetGalley is more user friendly, but Edelweiss lets you search through publisher’s catalogs by season and add titles to an “Anticipating” or “Highly Anticipating” list. I tend to consult these lists before every Hide Your Wallet to see if any books are pubbing this month and if they’re available to request to read.
Edelweiss: Catalogs
It’s broken down by publisher or you can search for particular publishers and select whether you want catalogs within the last six months, though the time can be adjusted shorter or longer. Looking at catalogs definitely is dependent on your knowledge of publishers and who publishers what. But for you romance readers, all you have to do is look at the spines on your book collection. That should point you in the right direction on what houses to track down.
Anticipating & Highly Anticipating
When you finally find a title you’re interested in, you can add it to a list to save for later. To do this, select the option from the green dropdown menu beneath the cover image. Note: this only works in the list menu. For me, if I click on the actual book and I’m on book’s personal page, I’m unable to select the menu.
Though Amazon isn’t the most helpful resource because it’s organization could use some work, they do offer an advanced search for books. This can be accessed on the books homepage.
From there, you can narrow down the pub date, put in keywords, publisher name, etc. However, with the GoodReads lists, it doesn’t separate whether something is being published for the first time or is getting published in a new form (ebook, paperback, etc).
Word of Mouth
Like I mentioned earlier, a lot of my discovery comes from people. I follow a lot of book bloggers, authors, editors, and publishers on social media. A lot of my TBR pile just comes from picking up on what those people are talking about. Same with my fellow Bitchery. Though we do have different reading tastes, there is some overlap.
The DBSA Podcasts are also really helpful. Sarah does a good job with providing a breadth of guests, and the librarians and industry professionals always have some good upcoming recs. I’m also the one who adds all the nifty little book covers into the SBTB database, so I research and track down the titles mentioned in the podcast, which inevitably winds up with me adding at least a couple to my GoodReads shelf.
These are, by no means, the only ways to find new books, but they’re what works best for me. I’m also happy to answer any questions regarding these methods, like some good people to follow on Twitter or tips for NetGalley instead of Edelweiss.
But aside from that, how do you discover books? I’m always searching for new book-organizing tools!
I don’t get Goodreads at all. I find it completely useless and all the drama that always seems to be going down over there makes me rarely check in. I go through and star books I like but no way would I ever leave a review. I get recommendations from twitter, reader blogs, newsletters and podcasts. But by far, I have discovered most of the best new to me authors from Book Bub. Then I sign up for author newsletters so I don’t miss new releases. I rarely read anything but straight contemporary, so it’s easier to keep up since I know what I do and don’t like and do have time to go outside of that.
Darn, is there an edit button? I DON’T have time to venture outside of what I know I like.
@Kim: I don’t really do much interacting on Goodreads. I mainly use it to keep track of my TBR list. They also do some great newsletters and email alerts. If a book gets published that I had on my TBR list, I get an email. If a book that’s on my TBR list is part of a giveaway, they’ll send me a notification for that too. I’ll star books after I read them, but rarely do I write full reviews on there. I do participate in some of the reading challenge groups because I think it’s fun to earn points and incentivize my reading a little bit. So I mainly use it for my personal organization than for the community.
FictFact Book Release Calendar. It’s an awesome resource. The site is also a great way to follow series – they’ll email when a new release in one of your series is published.
Tor.com lists their books that will be coming out each month: scifi, fantasy, urban fantasy, and paranormal romance.
I have my favorite authors and tend to browse Amazon fairly frequently, checking on sales. If I see new stuff in the ‘people who liked this also brought…’, I’ll check it out.
I don’t use Goodreads either. I have a list of authors (some autobuy, some that I like certain genres they publish). I usually use a combination of author websites, Amazon, and Fiction DB.
I keep a running list (in Word) by month which has the title, author, and series info and notate the actual day of release if known. When I’ve purchased a book I then check it off. But I keep the current year’s list until after AAR’s annual poll opens so I have a quick reference guide (though usually I haven’t read nearly all the books yet, but at least I can see the ones I have).
If I hear of an upcoming release via the podcast, etc I then add it to my Upcoming Release list.
Fiction DB does have a list of upcoming releases as well, but I usually forget to look at it and just look by author name.
Barnes and Noble “Coming Soon” listings, available in many categories and sub-categories.
– LibraryReads! libraryreads.org. this is a monthly list of books coming out that month that librarians have read and recommend.
– EarlyWord.com: a great site for finding out new, hot titles, movies based on books, sequels, etc.
– Publisher newsletters
love,
your friendly neighborhood librarian
Fantasticfiction.co.uk is great. It has many of the books released in upcoming months, and you can sort by genre and subgenre. Additionally, I find the author pages invaluable for figuring our which books go in which series and which order they go in, as well as any upcoming books. Highly recommended!
I use GR to keep track of new releases–I use” new books from authors you have on your shelves.” I have a word doc, separated by month where I add title, series info, author, and the date of pub for each month. I don’t keep track of other edition types (like PB or HB) since I am blind and only care about the eBook. What I do mark is whether or not it is a book that my library will get, no matter how long it might take, and put an @ to denote if I will have to buy it. I use GR because I have for forever and other book sites suck because I don’t want to have to learn another site and their accessibility usually is non-existent. I don’t really use GR for interactions and just read the stuff other people are saying about what they are reading.
For new books I generally get them from twitter, from what my friends or people I follow are reading on GR, the pod cast, or if I am feeling bored from the “other people who bought X also bought Y book” list when I get an Amazon book.
Along with signing up for authors that I like’s newsletters I also follow them on their kindle page. That though is hit or miss. For instance I got an email telling me about Shadow’s End by Thea Harrison (December pub date) … however the 8th book isn’t out yet. Maybe because I pre-ordered Midnight’s Kiss it skipped that one and went right to the next.
That option can be bad if you have an itchy one click buy finger and it sends the email as soon as the book is available. Lol
I love using RT Book Review Magazine and going to http://www.rtbookreviews.com/. It comes in print and digital and each month’s issue releases well in advance of publisher dates. For example right now the JUNE issue is being released now. I also like the various genres they cover.
I also like using GR as well as making sure I sign up for newsletters of my favorite authors.
I live at goodreads. It’s often the first place I check in the morning. I have curated a great list of fellow readers who’s tase match and/or challenge mine. I like to Stalk their reading and to read list to add to my own list. I have also discovered a website called author alerts. I add my favorite authors to this website and check it weekly to see when new books are popping up so I can add them to my Goodreads to read list. On Occasion I hear about a good book on Twitter but for me, word of mouth is the most effective way for me to hear about books.
The same way that people don’t understand good reads… I don’t understand other book tracking sites. Goodreads seems like the easiest way to remember or track books and maybe I just follow boring people but I have never personally seen drama there. You would have to pry my username and password from my cold, dead hands.
I love the “new books from authors you have on your shelves” email that goodreads sends out once a month. I always star it in my email so that I can find it throughout the month. I always go through and mark everything “want to read” that I know I’ll want to buy. Often, goodreads will send out another email when a book on your “want to read” shelf is released. I find that handy.
I wish I had a better system for self-pubbed authors who don’t do preorders. I usually just stalk their pages. I also make sure to sign up for their newsletters and then cross my fingers and hope they send out an email when they release a new book (many are great at this… some are not so great at this… TAKE MY MONEY, PEOPLE).
Ditto on FictFact Release Calendar. The site itself is just simple read vs unread tracker so for me it work best when I just want quick glance of how many unread book in series I am following and/or is there upcoming release
I’m not generally on the hunt for the newest releases but I’m ALWAYS looking for the order of a series. I stumbled across orderofbooks.com in the search for information on Mariah Stewart I think. It’s a gold mine of information.
The link I’m posting at the bottom is to the search by author’s name page. It goes by first name, and there’s some guesswork involved in finding which page number corresponds to which group of letters and it will change as they add more authors. (You can also search by character name, I haven’t done that but it’s an option.)
They don’t have every single author but I’d say at least 90% of what I’ve searched for. Its simple, clean, just the information on the order of books in a series and standalone titles, and where there’s a difference between publication order and chronological order, they make a note of that. They also have purchasing links to “Best Price” for hardcover, paperback, and Kindle.
I’ve seen where they have the next release listed before it’s available but I don’t think they list specific date information.
I have found useful their feature at the end of an author’s page, If you like author A you’ll also like authors B, C, & D, with links to those authors’ pages.
http://www.orderofbooks.com/authors/
If you haven’t used it before, check it out, it may be useful to you too.
Happy hunting!
I find that the following websites can be useful for specific genres They list upcoming releases by month: all things urban fantasy; my bookish ways (mysteries, spec fic); stop you’re killing me (mysteries/thrillers); bookriot for YA; indiebound (selected new releases) I use feedly to mange them.
I find edleweiss to be useless. I used to be able to go to publishers websites and download a pdf of their upcoming catalogs but with edleweiss it seems as if I have to look through multiple pages to see forthcoming books- if there is a way to get pdf of publishers catalogs through them please let me know. I’ve only recnetly started using them
I read RT Book Reviews magazine, BookPage (distributed free at Books A Million), and you can never go wrong in talking with your friendly neighborhood bookseller! 🙂
GR is a great system for tracking what I’ve read and what I want to read, but much less so for discovering what to read next. I don’t go anywhere near the community stuff.
I used to get Library Journal and still peruse their Prepub Alert e-newsletters when I have time, but they tend to focus on big authors and literary fiction over genre.