BookTour Blog

Independents Day:

We love independent bookstores here at BookTour and see them as vital to the continuing success of this project. So it's with great pleasure today that we now include BookSense searches for all books and authors in our database.

What this means: You can now click on the "Independent Bookstores" link under the "Other Stores" tab of each book on BookTour and be directed to a list of independent bookstores in your zip code powered by BookSense, a nationwide directory of independent booksellers.

Try it out. We're way excited.

Feature Update 9/12/07

New this week:
• A bug that didn't show BookTour stories for certain authors has been fixed.
• A bug that caused parts of the Stories page to sometimes appear blank has been fixed.
• All known bugs have been fixed with the Search feature. Work continues on speed and accuracy, but error pages should no longer appear.

Feature Update 9/04/07

The past few days have brought a number of improvements:
• The "nearby events" section of the front page now loads much faster. For certain postal codes, the improvement is as much as 15x.
• Profile pages have been improved. Authors can now choose between which portion of their Profile pages to look at: the author-editing section (the default) or the individual-settings section. In addition, spacing issues have been fixed.
• The Stories page has been redesigned.
• The FAQ has been updated.
• A Section of the site for UK authors has been added.

Feature Update 8/26/07

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.

Feature Update 8/26/07

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.

Feature Update 8/21/07

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.

Feature Update 8/19/07

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.

Feature Update 8/15/07

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.

Feature Update 8/14/07

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.

Feature Update 8/13/07

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.