How Book Notification helps readers follow favourite authors
Graeme McGaw is the founder of Book Notification, a service that helps readers follow authors, get alerts about new books and manage their libraries. This conversation looks at how audited reading lists, reader feedback and a paid membership have shaped the service, and how search and AI referrals are changing customer acquisition.
A useful reader service starts with understanding how readers actually manage books, not simply adding features. Book Notification’s audited lists and new-book alerts address that need, while its membership model reflects the value and cost of maintaining free features.
What’s the short story of how your business started, and what makes it genuinely different from the other options your customers have?
I wasn’t happy with what was out there for readers; websites with disorganized lists, no good way to keep updates on books by readers favourite authors. So I launched Book Notification. What makes it stand out is all of our lists are actually audited by us, and organized by series and in both publication ahd chronological order. Our core feature is that users can get notified of new books by their favourite authors.
How did you win your first customers, and where does most of your new business come from today?
I had prior book websites and promoted it via the newsletter on those sites. The majority of our business comes from both search engines and AI referrals.
What’s one decision that changed the direction of your business, and one mistake that taught you the most?
The decision that changed the direction was offering up an ad-free membership experience called the Page Turners Club. We keep our core features free, but offer enhancements and exclusives fore members. This has really motivated us to offer new features and the best experiences.
The biggest mistake was making everything free from the beginning. There are numerous completely free features which take up a lot of time and resources and given the opportunity to go back, we’d put them behind the Page Turners Club membership due to their value.
What has changed in your industry or in what your customers expect over the last couple of years, and how have you adapted?
AI has greatly changed everything, both for the better and the worse. We would receive a lot of traffic from people searching for authors lists. Now, AI is providing those lists to people from our site without the user having to click. However a lot of our core features such as new book notifications are still AI proof, and on the flip side we receive many new users thanks to AI referrals.
If you were advising someone starting out in your industry today, what would you tell them to do first, and what would you tell them to ignore?
I see lots of sites launching in this space thanks primarily to vibe coding, but none of them really "get" it. I would tell those people to really get in touch with the readers, and understand exactly what readers want. There are many potential features I have wanted to launch but when I talk to readers about them, find it’s just not what the core userbase is looking for.
Thank you to Graeme McGaw and the team at Book Notification for sharing what actually worked with Leaders Perception readers.
Want to tell the story behind your business?
Leaders Perception publishes interviews with business owners and leaders every week. Five questions, about ten minutes, no calls. It is free and every completed interview gets published.