FAQs for Readers

1. What does Any New Books do?

Any New Books is a free new book notification. It works in a very simple way. You subscribe by providing your email and then picking categories of books that are of interest to you. We’ll then send you weekly updates about new books that are released for each given category that you selected.

There will be a maximum of 30 books per category per week. Each category will have a Staff Pick, which is a book the editor for the category (who selected the books) feels is worth recommending in particular. You can see an example of what these emails look like here.

A list of weekly picks, as well as books of the week (for the current and past few weeks), is available on the Staff Picks page.

2. Can I get the actual books for free?

This is a reputable notification service about new releases, not a piracy site. Any New Books let you know, “Hey, Paulo Coelho has a new book out”, so that you can buy it from one of the convenient links on Amazon, at a local bookstore, or borrow it from the library. We felt the need to clarify this point here, because quite a few people have contacted us before because they were disappointed to see a list of new releases instead of illicit downloads.

3. I signed up, but haven’t received any new book notifications yet. How come?

Four possible explanations, in order of likelihood are:

1. You just signed up. As book lists are sent on Thursday, you might have to wait a few days to hear from us about new releases for the first time.
2. You didn’t click the confirmation link we sent you. If you subscribed, but haven’t yet confirmed your email address, we are unable to legally send you emails. If you are having problems confirming your subscription, contact us at info@anynewbooks.com with a list of the categories you are trying to sign up for.
3. Your notification email might be in your Spam or Junk folder. Double check those folders and then consider adding info@anynewbooks.com to your list of approved email addresses, your contact list, or creating a filter that doesn’t send our emails to spam.
4. If there aren’t any relevant, high-quality books for a given category in a given week, we won’t send out an empty email for that category. This happens very often with the Calendars category, for example. You can check out the Archives section to verify if a given category had new selections during a particular week.

4. How do you select books?

A software algorithm we wrote retrieves and preliminarily sorts a list of new releases for the past seven days (since the last email for the category was sent out). This algorithm takes many parameters into account, including reported sales figures, in an attempt to provide a list of noteworthy, relevant releases. A human editor will then take this huge list and carefully select up to 30 different books to notify you about for each category.

Please keep in mind that our definition of what constitutes a ‘new book’ is a little loose. If an existing book is updated (or even just reprinted), it might make its way onto one or more of our lists.

5. Are you editorially independent?

Yes. We pick the books that we feel will be most interesting to our readers. We do not include or exclude books based on external influences.

6. Why would you recommend a book such as “X”?

From time-to-time you might see our editors include books you don’t like. Books you disagree with, books whose author you dislike, books you think are useless, books you might find immoral, and so on. We can’t please everyone. We do not offer recommendations (exception made for Staff Picks), and instead simply provide a list of new and noteworthy books.

We sometime have to include books we don’t like ourselves or books whose message we disagree with. Our job is not to be a moral arbiter of what should be read or presented to the general public. Our aim is to present readers with what they want and what they signed up for. A book by Glenn Beck in our Politics selection upsets a group of left-leaning subscribers, and so too might a book by Michael Moore annoy a group of right-leaning subscribers. You don’t have to love or even like all the books for a given category each week. Instead extract those titles that speak to you from a given list and allow others to do the same.

7. How can I update the categories I subscribe to?

At the bottom of the notification emails we send you each week, you should find a link to update your preferences. There you’ll be able to change which categories you’re subscribed too, including adding, removing, and even unsubscribing from the service altogether.

If all else fails, get in touch with our support team at info@anynewbooks.com.

8. Can you implement a certain feature for me?

We are a small team and we like to keep things simple. We’d be happy to hear your suggestions and feedback, but chances are we’ll only be able to develop a small portion of requests we receive.

9. I don’t like email. Can I subscribe via RSS feed?

Yes, you can. You can find the links to RSS feeds for each category on the right side of (for instance) this page.

10. How does Any New Books stay in business?

We are Amazon Associates affiliates. Each time you buy a book on Amazon through one of our links, we get a small cut at no additional cost to you. This enables us to provide this time consuming, but highly satisfying service to our subscribers for free. We also generate a little bit of revenue from the occasional ad or, fully disclosed, sponsored book placement.

FAQs for Publishers/Authors

1. How many users does Any New Books have?

The exact number of users to our service is unknown. We have about 10,000 email subscribers, a few thousand web-only visitors, an unknown number of RSS feed subscribers, and almost 20,000 Chrome Web Store subscribers.

The number of email subscribers to each category varies, from the 500+ subscribers to Calendars, to the 4,500+ subscribers to General. Most categories have one or two thousand subscribers at this point in time.

If you are interested in targeting a certain segment of our readers, we can provide more up-to-date statistics.

2. Why didn’t you include my book in your list?

There are many reasons why your book might have not made the cut in our mailings. Here are some common reasons:

1. We weren’t aware that your book was out.
2. There were many more ‘popular’ books on our radar for a given week.
3. Your book is old news. We organically include only books that came out (were released) the same week or, at most, up to two weeks beforehand.
4. Your book is in e-book only. If your book is not actually in print, we can only include it in the Kindle category. Generally speaking the Kindle category is a list of the 30 best Kindle books for the week, so your book has little chance of making it there against such fierce competition.
5. Your book has very poor pre-order and sale figures (on Amazon) or very bad reviews.
6. Our editor for a given category actually happened to read your book or part of it and deemed it unsuitable for inclusion (this does not happen often, but occasionally it may).

Consider a sponsored placement for your book instead. (See FAQ below.)

3. Can I inform you about new books we publish?

Yes, you can absolutely let us know about your upcoming books. Ideally, we’d love it if you let us know at least one or two weeks prior to their availability on Amazon.com. We offer no guarantee that we will include your books, but we’ll gladly consider them for inclusion.

You can also send us galleys, advanced reading copies, review copies, etc, of your books. We’ll provide you with a physical address in Canada where you can send them. Please get in touch by email first before sending anything.

Keep in mind that:

• Ideally we should receive the book at least a week or two before its publication date to consider a timely inclusion.
• We cannot organically include an old book in our listings no matter how good or popular it is.
• Sending us a physical copy of a book does not guarantee inclusion because we are editorially independent. That said, it does give you a certain edge because we can actually see and read your book firsthand. If it’s good, we’ll be more confident in including it or even making it a Staff Pick for the week.
• We will not write an actual review or send books back (given the amount of books we receive, this would be a logistic nightmare). We will however keep a very close eye on your book’s release date and try to include it if we think it’s a title worth sharing with our subscribers.

4. How can I market / promote my book on Any New Books?

Aside from letting us know about your new book in advance or sending us a copy, we can also help you market / promote your book to a highly targeted audience via our sponsored placement.

While we are editorially independent, we reserve the right to include one sponsored book per category each week. This book doesn’t have to be new to be included. We fully disclose that the book was included as a sponsored book, and highlight it just below the staff pick for the category as seen here.

The sponsored book is shown to our email, feed, and web users and remains in the archives of the site.

The cost for sponsoring a book in the category of your choice is a flat fee of $20. Keep in mind that the slot in a category might be already be taken by a different publisher or author for a given week. Advertising the same book in multiple categories is also OK (and an arguably more effective way to help your title stand out even further).

Please get in touch by email (info@anynewbooks.com), if you’re interested in promoting your book (or books) on Any New Books. If you are a large publisher, we will consider volume pricing deals.

5. How can I advertise on your site / mailing lists?

Aside from promoting a sponsored book, you can also advertise products or services to a specific audience. For example, if you sell digital cameras, you might want to buy a text or banner ad at the top of our Photography category. For a complete list of categories that we offer, check the Archives page of this site. Prices vary for these services. For further details, contact us by email (info@anynewbooks.com) and we’ll be happy to try assist you.