Your Favorite Author's Latest Book

January 25, 2022 4:02 AM

Bookfeed.io is a no-frills way of following your favorite authors. You provide a list of writers you like, and Bookfeed generates an RSS feed with their new books.

Goodreads (and its parent company Amazon) offer similar functionality, but I like the fact that Bookfeed gives me this info independently of the Amazon ecosystem.

That said, Bookfeed gets its title and author info from Google Books, so you're not entirely free of Internet giants. As Bookfeed's creator ( Metafilter's own Lukas Mathis) warns, "I’ll do my best to keep this running, but I don’t have any control over Google Books, so don’t yell at me when this goes down, or misses a book. Thank you."

posted by yankeefog (11 comments total)

Thank-you! Am always conflicted using Goodreads. And it seems that it's recomendation system is just getting worse over time for discovering new books.
posted by rozcakj at 5:10 AM on January 25, 2022

Thank you - this is the one major piece of GR functionality I haven't satisfactorily replicated for myself anywhere else, this will be very useful!
posted by Stacey at 5:28 AM on January 25, 2022

I've been using this for awhile and it's great. I've got it at the top of my Google Reader NewsBlur homepage.
posted by gwint at 5:32 AM on January 25, 2022

Amazon is the worst at this. I just want to know when a new book by an author comes out, but Amazon will tell me that the new book will be coming out in eleven months. Gee thanks, I'll try to remember that....
posted by Umami Dearest at 5:33 AM on January 25, 2022 [4 favorites]

Following a few authors here for a while. If your RSS feed reader lists in order by time date, some of these new releases will appear "new" (or fresh) in the past in your feed. Probably based on actual book release date instead of, as RSS gets it, when the entry hits the feed.
posted by filtergik at 5:50 AM on January 25, 2022

This little tool looks cool!

Someone seriously needs to make a Letterboxd clone for books, so we can all ditch Goodreads forever. The Letterboxd app and site are both so thoughtfully and elegantly designed. Goodreads is a cluttered, clunky mess.
posted by oulipian at 8:57 AM on January 25, 2022 [2 favorites]

The Storygraph, which I probably heard about here, makes a pretty good Goodreads substitute
posted by box at 9:13 AM on January 25, 2022 [2 favorites]

Brilliant.
posted by adamrice at 9:54 AM on January 25, 2022

I learned there are a lot of authors named William Gibson out there.
posted by craniac at 10:53 AM on January 25, 2022 [1 favorite]

Interesting minimalist approach to security/authentication. Rather than having user accounts, anyone who has a link to a page can edit it, but URLs are long.
posted by acb at 11:18 AM on January 25, 2022 [1 favorite]

Ooh, Letterboxd looks cool, oulipian! If it also let you track tv shows I’d be sold. Right now I just have a list in my iPhone notes app.

Second the frustration of not knowing a new book is coming out near the time it comes out so this is great!
posted by Bunglegirl at 8:34 AM on January 27, 2022