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BookTour.com has been at the center of two Mashes (neither Monster nor Potato but who's counting?) these past weeks and we couldn't be happier.
First up, Mashable featured us on Aug 20th and had a few nice things to say about our Google Earth feature and several of our newer wingdings.
Three days later, we win Mashup of the Day.
Life is sweet. Like mashed candy.
New today:
• During Place searches, pages now indicate how many results there are and how far through the results you are.
• The Stories section has received a new design.
• BookTour stories now automatically show up on author pages.
New recently:
• A bug that briefly prevented the Stories page from appearing has been fixed.
• The Stories page (http://booktour.com/stories) has been changed to add a New Stories section to the right side.
• The size of text on individual story pages has been increased.
• Disambiguation pages have been added to the site. If more than one author has the same name, their URL will now redirect to a page that lets you choose which one you want to examine. You can also report duplicates from the disambiguation page.
New today:
• A bug that allowed some incorrect postal codes to sign up has been fixed.
• The Master feature list now loads faster.
• There's a new section of the site devoted to stories about book tours: http://booktour.com/stories. If you're an author, just go to your author-editing page to add a story. Anyone can vote on stories, too; on a story's page, just click the "liked" or "disliked" link at the bottom of the page.
New recently:
• A bug that prevented some users' Profile pages from appearing has been fixed.
• The search feature has been partially re-written. Author and Book searches should be moderately faster.
• The algorithm that picks the top six authors for the front page (and sub-front pages) has been tweaked to mix authors more.
• The title of venue pages has been adjusted to differentiate more clearly between stores of the same name.
New today:
• It's no longer possible for a non-logged in user to see no events if their IP address can't be matched to a physical location.
• All Prometheus' authors' tour dates have been added.
• A new widget is available that mirrors the list of authors on the front page. Click the
• The Master List page is now much easier to navigate, with a list of features on the left.
New today:
• The ugly borders around widgets have been eliminated. Finally, they look respectable on sites with non-white backgrounds!
• All upcoming Borders events have been added.
The past few days have brought these improvements:
• The nearby events listings on the front page load faster.
• The front page (and sub-front pages) load faster.
• The FAQ has been updated.
• The wording of author request emails has been changed to indicate that it's possible to get in touch with the requester by replying.
• A bug that briefly prevented authors from adding books has been fixed.
New today:
• A bug that caused about 10 minutes worth of downtime (and error pages) related to our genre back-end transition has been fixed.
• The Business subsection now includes a broader cross-section of business authors.
• The front page now loads faster.
Today brings a complete rewrite of the site's book genre back-end (again). As a result, the following features are now faster:
• The homepage (or RSS feed) for subcategories (approx. 10x speed improvement)
• The Library page and pages linked to from it (approx. 3x speed improvement)
• Author pages that include category listings (approx 20% speed improvement)
The rewrite also makes future speed improvements much easier.
New today:
• The advertising page has been updated to reflect the authors who've previously been featured on the front page.
• The email sent to authors upon signup has been tweaked.
• The All Authors page now links properly to individual authors.
• Auto-location guessing for non-logged-in users has been improved.
• A Home link has been added to the footer.
• A bug that prevented a couple author requests from going through has been fixed.
• For British authors, if a book is not listed on Amazon.com, information is now also looked up on Amazon.co.uk.
• By popular request, referral links now go straight to the main page, rather than taking first-time visitors to the signup page.
• Australians can now sign up for the site.
Here at BookTour.com we don't believe in patting each other (and since the three of us are rarely in the same room and none of us is related to Plastic Man, can't happen much anyway). But we gotta admit, the recent launch of BookTour Canada is already paying big dividends.
Case in point: This week's winner of our featured author contest: Cheryl Kaye Tardif. Cheryl's a Canadian mystery author (we've also heard rumors she's our first registered author from Up North), has three novels to her credit and has strung together an impressive virtual tour throughout the month of August. Her additional prowess at referring authors to BookTour has earned her the featured spot today.
Well done Cheryl. And remember how it works. Each week we see who has referred the most authors to book tour (that's so far and not just within the last week). Come Saturday evening that author gets the top spot for Sunday.
Today brings several big features. First, the auto-location-guessing has been improved noticeably for many suburban locations.
Second, the genres an author has written in now appear on his or her author page, right below the name.
Finally, and most importantly, the site is now open to British authors and readers!
New today:
• A bug that caused the wrong featured book to appear next to an author on the Newest Authors page has been fixed.
• A link to the Newest Authors page has been added from the Master Feature List.
• A link to the All Authors list has been added via a More button from the Newest Authors list.
New today:
• A bug that mistakenly allowed readers to contact authors whose email addresses were nonexistent has been fixed.
• The links to track authors and venues have been moved to the top of their pages.
• A bug that prevented authors whose books don't have cover images on our site from rearranging their books has been fixed.
• A bug that broke some media links on author editing pages has been fixed.
• A typo in the Master Feature List has been fixed.
• The Add Event page has been updated with information for authors who have already signed up.
• A list of all authors on the site has been added. It's available through the "Browse our new features" button on the front page.
A bunch of cool stuff today:
• Authors can now easily format their biographies. Bold, italics, and links can be added with a single click.
• The front-page algorithm has been tweaked to change authors more often.
• A display bug that caused pop-up menus to appear on strange parts of author editing pages in Safari has been fixed.
• Authors can now drag-and-drop their books into the order they want them to appear. In addition, the book at the top of their list becomes their "featured book."
• Weekly emails have been updated with unsubscribe links. Sorry, this should have been added a long time ago.
• Dates on the site now no longer appear with a preceding 0 if they don't have to. For example, "September 09, 2007" has become "September 9, 2007."
• RSS feeds and widgets have been added to venue pages.
• The Master Feature List has been updated.
New today:
• The FAQ has been updated.
• The buttons on the front page have been tweaked to be more general.
• There's a new master feature list at http://booktour.com/events/master_list.
• A bug that caused the "Currently in your area" subheading to appear twice on sub-BookTours has been fixed.
• On Profile pages, information about Amazon account access is now contextual based on whether it's been used before.
Actually that's not quite it. That's just Adam and myself with Kristin Gore, author of the new novel Sammy's House. Kristin has been a supporter of our efforts here at BookTour since the very beginning. When she passed though San Francisco, we met up with her at her event at The Commonwealth Club and presented her with an official BookTour.com bowling shirt. We have these babies printed up for longtime supporters and friends of the project.
Kristin's new novel Sammy's House is available at a bookstore near you.
