Book Notification Newsletter: September 2025 Recap
 Hi everyone. Welcome to the September 2025 Recap! [Read Online]
A big focus this month was combatting an issue that has plagued the book industry for years: impersonation and misattribution of authors.
It’s nothing new. Someone writes a horror book, slaps “Stephen King” on it, and hopes people think it’s by the Stephen King. What’s new is how easy AI has made it. Books can be churned out in a couple of hours, while fake social profiles and fake websites are created legitimize it.
We worked with an author on the actual process just so we could fully understand it, and it was scary seeing just how simple it was. Not just the actual creation of a book, but how easy it was to upload it and have it falsely attributed to that author. There appeared to be no verification by these other book sites whatsoever.
Authors we’ve spoken to are especially concerned about these books slipping onto their Goodreads profiles. Goodreads is considered an authoritative source (despite frequent inaccuracies), so once false information shows up there, it spreads across the internet. Worse, getting those books removed is incredibly difficult, and some authors we spoke to said they had reported the issue multiple times to Goodreads over the course of a month, but the books still remain on their profile.
At Book Notification, we’ve always had strict standards when it comes to attributing books to authors. Over the past month we’ve strengthened those even further, primarily when it comes to new book releases, working directly with authors to add new verification measures and make sure their work is represented accurately.
It unfortunately adds to our workload in regard to new and upcoming books, but is clearly necessary.
This month we also added a few user requested features, completed our book club listing, and have now hit over 87,000 audited authors on the site.
We really appreciated all the feedback on the new Adaptation News feature which we added to the Tuesday “New Books” e-mail. It’s always a great feeling when we come up with a new idea that no-one has mentioned, and then receive a lot of strong feedback about it. It’s great because it benefits me as a reader too; I found out from our own newsletter that an adaptation of One Second After by William R. Forstchen for example, which was really great to discover.
With that data, we’ll now also start doing monthly posts like this: October 2025 Book to Movie/TV Adaptations.
Speaking of adaptations – I joined Care and Vince to talk about Erasure by Percival Everett, which was our book club pick. I watched the adaptation, American Fiction, last night and really enjoyed it. I really thought this was one where reading the book first simply enhanced the enjoyment of the movie, and it carried a similar sense of humour. Highly recommended reading both the book and watching the movie.
I’m currently reading James by Percival, and looking forward to reading more of his writing.
Thank you so much to everyone who signed up for the Page Turners Club last month. It is appreciated by everyone, and allows us to continue adding new features, updating and adding authors, and everything else that fuels Book Notification.
Until the next chapter,
Graeme
Book Notification Founder
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If you appreciate the work we do, please consider supporting us by signing up for the Page Turners Club.
Running Book Notification isn’t free. We have a dedicated team who are keeping authors updated daily with the latest books, auditing and adding authors, building new features to better your experience, and much more.
Unlike sites such as Goodreads, we don’t rely on unpaid volunteers to do 90% of the work. Everyone who works for Book Notification is paid for their time, because we believe in fair work.
If you value what Book Notification brings to your reading life, please consider signing up for the Page Turners Club. It’s $4.99 USD per month or $49.99 for the year, and you get an ad-free experience while supporting the hard work our team does on a daily basis.
Site Improvements & Updates
Playlists: There are a lot of authors who factor music into their writing. Some authors list a song to listen to at the start of each chapter or a background playlist to set the mood, while others have a list of songs that they listen to while writing their books. We have started compiling these in our new playlists section. We’ll be compiling many more, writing their story, and adding them to that section within the coming weeks.
Personal Calendar Overhaul: We have overhauled your personal new book releases calendar, to better match our public book release calendar. One of the biggest updates to that was having the calendar actually display on mobile, instead of just a basic list.
Author Impersonation and Misattribution: As discussed above. A vital job to ensure accuracy, and stop misinformation spreading about books authors have allegedly written. Note that as a user, you likely won’t see much of a difference. The only thing that would affect you is some new books, when they are sent into the system, instead of being added to that author’s listing, may be sent for further verification. That process takes no more than 24 hours.
Follow Series Tracking: We recently implemented the ability to follow a series instead of an author. For more information on that, see the August Newsletter. You can now see a list of series that you are following along with your reading progress, and choose to unfollow a series from your Followed Authors page.
Custom Print: We have now taken the customizable printing of author book lists out of beta status. By user request, we have also added the authors name to the top of the print list, and now includes the option to print with your tags.
Awards & Club Page Printing: By user request, we have now added the ability to print awards pages and book club page complete listings. Within the next couple of weeks, every data table within My Library will offer the ability to print as well, so keep an eye out for that!
New Blog Posts & News
In addition to adding authors, we post a lot of book news and book-related content to Book Notification each month. Here are the highlights since the last newsletter:
Monthly Contest
Last month, we held a contest inviting you to post comments on authors pages, and you would earn one entry into the prize draw per comment for 1 of 10 $25 USD Gift Cards. Thank you to everyone who entered.
Here are the winners this month:
- Arch
- cynditrout
- Denis M
- DianaB
- DSpaceNine
- dumetella
- @lindaluvsbooks
- Pam B.
- stalsma
- waterburg72
This months contest is a Reader Mailbag contest. We want to know:
What’s your all-time favorite book-to-screen adaptation?
It can be a TV show or movie. It can be because it was a faithful adaptation, or because it was good enough to stand alone.
Whatever the reason – let us know your favourite adaptation by hitting reply, using any contact form on Book Notification, or e-mailing hello@booknotification.com.
We will send a confirmation e-mail noting you we have received the e-mail within 24 hours. We will give away ten $25 USD gift cards to random people who have submitted an entry.
Members of the Page Turners Club will get an additional entry into the contest.
Thanks to everyone for your support. It’s genuinely appreciated.
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