Wanted: A "Books Coming Soon" Service

January 15, 2013

I’d really like to know when Charlie Stross’s next book comes out. In fact, I want to know when all his books come out. And I feel the same way about several other authors. What I need is a service that tells me when one of my favourite authors has a book coming out soon, so I can go out and buy it. Something like this, but more general.

I don’t quite get why this doesn’t seem to exist yet - it seems like something Amazon should’ve done long ago. Maybe they did, and decided to can it - I don’t know. I also can’t figure out why you wouldn’t publish that data as far abroad as you can manage - maybe some weird thing like “we can’t let the competition steal our release date!” But come on, guys. A book launch is nothing like an opening night at the opera, or an opening weekend at the movies. Unless, perhaps, your protagonist’s name rhymes with Larry Spotter. And even then, you’ve got a much longer tail than most movies.

Anyhow, being the curious soul that I am, I had a bit of a look around for the data that I’d need to build something like this. The closest I got was the GoodReads API, and even that probably isn’t quite what I’m after, since GoodReads doesn’t seem to show books that haven’t been released yet. Even so, it may do the job, assuming that newly released titles appear there reasonably quickly. And to be honest, I don’t need it to be that fast. I’d be happy with something that told me overnight, or even just on a Friday, if there was anything new.

Anyone know of an existing service that carries out this function?

(On the upside, I did find out while gathering links for this post that the new Metrozone novel comes out in March! )