Dec
The Evil Mage
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2022
- Messages
- 649
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- 133
IMPORTANT
This is not a "catch them all" option. It can and probably will fail to detect entries on less-known sites. You can also expect false positives.
This is not a "catch them all" option. It can and probably will fail to detect entries on less-known sites. You can also expect false positives.
Time needed: ~5 minutes.
Step 1: Access Google Alerts
- Go to google.com/alerts
- Sign in with your Google account if you aren’t already.
Step 2: Set up an alert
- In the search bar, enter key phrases related to your book, such as:
- The exact title of your novel in quotes.
- Note: If your title has multiple words, make sure you put it in the quotes, else it will use each word as a keyword and just look for matches to one or more of them generating ungodly amounts of false-positives.
- A unique sentence or phrase from your book; anything that you know is yours and only yours.
- Your pen name or author name.
- Note: This can backfire if your pen/author name is common. Expect a lot of false positive hits there.
- The exact title of your novel in quotes.
- Click Show options to refine the alert:
- How often: "As-it-happens" for real-time alerts or "Once a day" to avoid spam.
- Note: Selecting "RSS feed" will disable this choice.
- Sources: Choose "Web" for websites, but you can add "News", "Blogs", or "Books."
- Note: You can select multiple entries by clicking on them. Clicking on "Automatic" will uncheck the rest.
- Language: Set it to the language your book is in.
- Region: If your book is big in certain countries, filter for them.
- Note: Only one region per alert. My suggestion is to leave it on "Any Region".
- How many: "All results" to catch everything.
- Note: Selecting "Only the best results" will exclude everything not popular, greatly lowering your chances of finding unauthorized copies.
- Deliver to: Use your email or RSS feed for notifications.
- How often: "As-it-happens" for real-time alerts or "Once a day" to avoid spam.
- Click Create Alert and you’re done!
In my case, RSS is what I prefer. But if you don't want to or don't have a reliable way to play with it, setting the alerts to receive mail once a day is more than enough. You'll only receive that mail when something new is discovered, so there's no spam at all.
Here is an example of hits for one of the novels I helped to edit in later chapters.
Btw, I highly recommend giving it a look. Especially if you like fluffy tails
As you can see, there are false positives due to the title being a fairly common word.
But also shows what we need - RR and SH websites are listed (and only those should be in this case).
But also shows what we need - RR and SH websites are listed (and only those should be in this case).
