The alert that arrives on release day, not eleven months later

A notification is a small violence. Someone decided their thing was more important than what you were doing, and a rectangle in your pocket agreed with them.

So I've been careful here. The whole app exists to send you notifications, and I still think most notifications are bad. That tension produced roughly every design decision on this page.

Five things worth telling you about

• A new book is out. The main event. The reason you're here.
• A pre-order opened. Order now, get it at midnight on launch day, forget you did it, receive a delightful surprise from your past self.
• A release date was announced. The book exists on a calendar. Real. Confirmed. Happening.
• A release date changed. Moved up, moved back. You'd want to know, especially if you already told your friends.
• A release is coming up. A nudge before launch day, so you can finish the previous book first.

That fourth one gets me every time. A date slips by six weeks and nobody announces it, they just quietly change the number on the listing. We diff against what we saw yesterday, so a silent change isn't silent anymore.

Pick your channels

Four ways to hear from us, and you control each one independently:

• Email. The reliable one. Works on every device, survives you switching phones.
• Browser push. A desktop notification, even when the tab is closed.
• Phone push. Through the mobile app, for the people who want it in their pocket.
• In-app only. No interruption at all — just a badge waiting for you when you next visit. The polite option.

The right number of notifications is the number you'd choose on a good day, not the number an app chose for you on its best growth-metrics day.

And your cadence

Three speeds, and honestly most people should not pick the first one:

• Instant. The book goes live, your phone buzzes. For people tracking two series and waiting hard on one of them.
• Daily digest. One email, everything that happened. The default for a reason.
• Weekly digest. One email, Sunday-ish, the full roundup. For people tracking sixty series who want a reading list, not an interruption.

I run weekly. I track a lot of series, and a daily email about them turned my inbox into a slot machine. Weekly turned it into a small pleasant ritual. Your mileage will genuinely vary.

What we will not do

No re-engagement emails. No "we miss you!" No "here's what you're missing." No streaks, no badges for opening an app, none of the sad little casino mechanics that got bolted onto software over the last decade.

If nothing happened in your series this week, you get nothing this week. Silence is a feature. Silence means the system is working and your authors are typing.

There are also reading reminders if you want a gentle daily, weekly or monthly nudge to pick a book back up — off by default, because a guilt notification about reading is a special kind of cruel.