Calling all authors and book blog owners
Are you an author looking to promote their work, or a book blog owner looking for traffic? We offer special features for you!
As an author, you will get full control over the contents of your group, promotional materials, and moderation tools. Reach your audience in new and exciting ways.
As a book admin, you can edit the detail page of your book in any manner you choose. Your profile will be updated to show your works, and whenever someone searches for you they will see your new profile. If someone likes your books, adds you as a friend, or has your works on any of their lists (bookshelf, wishlist, or group page), they will see all the updates that you make. Users will also have the choice to get notified when you update your blog, when you publish a new book, or when you schedule an event.
All new authors get a featured spot on the first page, with more sponsored placements available.
As a blog owner, you gain access to readers that will be interested in what YOU write. Your blog will be matched with books by genre, and will be displayed as 'blogs you might like...' to potential readers.
Check out this page for an example (look in the right bar) : http://www.bookspy.net/details/9781401230005
If you are interested fill out one of the following forms, and we will have you set up in no time!
Form for authors: Claim a page
Form for blog owners: Submit your blog
Have a great day!
-The Bookspy Team / http://www.bookspy.net/
New book search, book labs, and book community features
As we move out of beta, we have added a lot of additional features that users have been requesting. Keep the suggestions coming in!
NEW FEATURES:
- Full international price search, price alerts, and the ability to set destination country and currency
- Import your existing book list from nearly anywhere, such as google books, libranything, or your own excel or csv file. If you have trouble, just contact me and I'll sort out whatever format you have
- Sort your bookshelf and wishlist by pub. date., author, title, and more. If there is any additional particular data point you would like, just contact me!
- 'Labs' section added. Visualization of your books, such as total pages read by author, favorite authors, most read books, etc... Taking suggestions for more visualizations, these are pretty fun!
- Get notified when your favorite author updates their blog or publishes a new book.
- Integration of author's blogs into book pages (if you know of one you want included, or are an author yourself, contact me)
- Full customization of book pages, author pages, and special promos for authors
- About a dozen additional booksellers added to price search
- Book groups updated to allow a wider range of customization options. Full HTML editing allowed.
- Probably a lot more that is escaping me at the moment, been working too hard on this
Come check out all the new features at Bookspy.net!
Get notified when your favorite author posts
Now you can get notified when your favorite author updates their blog. Just click 'Notify me' by the 'Author's blog' section of any details page. If you know of an author, or are an author, that has a blog, and you want it included, just send an email with the path to the RSS for the blog to support@bookspy.net.
Come check is out at Bookspy.net!
More features than you can shake a stick at
We've added a lot of new features based on user feedback. Keep the suggestions coming in!
- International price search and price alerts are in. You can set your current country, as well as your preferred currency when searching for prices
- You can import your library from nearly any other book management site on the web. If you have any trouble, just contact us and we'll get it sorted out
- Authors can now add their blog RSS to our site. Just contact us to have it added. Authors also get full editing control of their page, and a special 'Author' page for them to write about themselves, offer promotions, and manage their books on Bookspy
Come check is out at Bookspy.net!
New site design is live
We have completely overhauled Bookspy to make it easier than ever to find the lowest price on the books you are searching for. We have added a new book chat, the ability to leave your own reviews, and smarter search features. Stay tuned for new tools for book scouts, including and iPhone app!
New Book Price Comparison Google Gadget for iGoogle or Google Desktop
We've recently added a new feature here at BookSpy.Net. A gadget version of our popular book price search site is now available through Google Gadgets.
Using the BookSpy.Net Gadget
The BookSpy.Net Google gadget lets you quickly search for textbooks from your desktop, iGoogle page, or even your own web page or blog. To use the gadget, simply enter a title, author, or ISBN, and click 'Search'. Entering an ISBN is the fastest and most accurate way to search, and you will be taken straight to the lowest four prices from dozens of vendors. From the results page you can go straight to the vendor and purchase the book for the lowest price! If you entered a title or author first, you will first be taken to a list of search results. Find the book you are looking for and either click the title or click 'Compare Prices' to be taken to the results page.
Here is a preview of the gadget, resized to fit this page:
Adding the Gadget to your iGoogle page or Desktop
You can add the BookSpy gadget anywhere you can place a gadget (ie iGoogle, Google Desktop) with the following link: 
. Alternatively, you can go to your iGoogle page, and add the gadget by searching through the directory.
To add a gadget the Desktop via the Desktop Sidebar:
- At the top of the Sidebar, click Add.
- Type the URL for a gadget spec into the Search gadgets text field and then click Search gadgets. If the gadget is found, its title is displayed next to an Add button. Click Add.
Adding the Gadget to your webpage or blog
You can get low book price search results on your webpage or blog by following this link. From here you can get the code for the gadget and even choose its size to match your requirements!
Cell Phone Book Scout Tools Fixed
I would just like to thank a user who recently contacted me about problems viewing the mobile bookscouting tools on certain cellular devices. All errors were fixed, and the site has now been verified on both older Nokia and Samsung phones, as well as Verizon smart phones with Windows 5. Please let me know if you run into any more bugs.
Book Scouting
Book scouting can be a profitable business, either buying for yourself to resell, or working for someone else. The tools of the trade can be quite expensive however, and may put a few first time book scouts off. You may see such tools as hand held bar code scanners that look up the price of the book. These scanners generally come in two flavors, the standalone version (very expensive) or the kind that attaches to your cell phone (less expensive, but still pricey). There is, however, a third option that you may not know about:
You can look up book prices right from your web enabled phone.
If you have internet access on your phone you can simply go to your favorite site and look up the book of interest. The problem with this approach has been that generally, it takes a long time for a web page to load on your phone. Also, if you do not have a phone with a full featured web browser, you were generally out of luck.
At BookSpy.net we have implemented a search feature just for book scouts that alleviates this problem. In addition, most mobile phones with data access should work. Just point your mobile device to http://scout.bookspy.net/ to access the mobile version of our site. You can enter an ISBN, Title or Author and get concise, easy to read results. You will receive the Amazon Sales Rank
, and the lowest prices from a number of vendors including Amazon, eBay, Half.com, Alibris and more. Best of all, as part of our grand opening, we are providing this service for FREE to users of our site.
Hopefully this will help prospective book sellers get up and running, and keep your business profitable!