Archive for the ‘Service’ Category

DailyLit’s Featured Feature: Vacation Pauses

As you’re planning trips and packing your bags, I wanted to remind you that you can temporarily suspend your books while on vacation. No more installments piling up while you’re away — and you know your book will be back on schedule when you return.

Here’s how it works:
Every installment email you receive contains a link at the bottom that lets you suspend delivery of the book you’re reading. Just click on the link. You’ll see that you can set the installments to automatically resume for whenever you get back (in a few days, a week, or even a month’s time).

So while you’re suspending your newspapers, remember to pause your books as well. Make it a guilt-free vacation!

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DailyLit is the leading publisher of serialized books in digital form. Selected to be the #1 Book Website by the Sunday Times, DailyLit has sent over 40 million book installments. DailyLit’s books and series are all free and feature bestselling and award-winning titles. Installments can be read in fewer than 5 minutes and can be read wherever you receive email, including on any computer, Blackberry, or iPhone.

DailyLit Sends Over 35 Million Book Installments

We’re thrilled to announce that DailyLit has sent over 35 million book installments to readers all over the world.

No wonder we’re so exhausted! :)

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DailyLit is the leading publisher of serialized books in digital form — all available for free. Short book installments are sent via e-mail or RSS, which can be read on any desktop, laptop or mobile device (including an iPhone or Blackberry) according to the schedule set by each reader. DailyLit’s titles include bestselling and award winning titles, from literary fiction and business to language-learning and science fiction. Founded by a team of publishing professionals and technology experts, DailyLit is headquartered in Mamaroneck, New York.

DailyLit News: January 2010

Note from the CEO

I’ve been thrilled by your enthusiastic response to DailyLit and how much you appreciate our making all our books and stories free. Now it’s time to share the love. Tell 5 friends about DailyLit—pass on the word at dinner, forward installments to your colleagues, or mention DailyLit to moms at pick up. You can also now use your address book to invite your friends to read along or publish to your Facebook page. Thanks for spreading the word!

Susan Danziger
Founder and CEO, DailyLit
sdanziger@dailylit.com

Berlitz Spanish Lessons

Ever wanted to learn Spanish? Enjoy our daily, complimentary Spanish course created exclusively for DailyLit by Berlitz. Available only through May 1st. Read it here.

DailyLit’s Big Read

January is the month of Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday, so in his honor this month’s Big Read is his short story “Murders in the Rue Morgue.” It’s the world’s first-ever detective fiction—without Poe’s Auguste Dupin there might never have been a Sherlock Holmes. Read it here.

Reader Challenge

It’s a brand new decade, full of possibilities and hope. This month’s reader challenge taps into that optimism. Complete this sentence: “What I wish for the world in 2010 is….” And remember, one complete sentence only! Share your wishes for the world—literary, political, imaginary, whatever—in our Reader Challenge Forum.

New Feature: Invite a Friend

Don’t go it alone—invite your friends to join you. Now, when you start reading a book on DailyLit, you’ll be able to instantly publish what you’re reading to Facebook, Yahoo, and other sites. And if you open up your address book, you can invite any number of friends to join in one big read-along.

New Short Fiction from Laurel Dewey

Laurel Dewey’s compelling heroine Detective Jane Perry returns in this fourth original piece of short fiction. Here Jane investigates a suspicious death and uncovers secrets she could never have imagined. Read it here. (And find three other pieces by Laurel Dewey here.)

Make 2010 the Year of The Book

Always wanted to read Anna Karenina? Moby Dick? Pride and Prejudice? Make this the year that you finally tackle The Book—you know, one major classic you ought to have read at some point in your life. Take it one day and one installment at a time—you can do it! Check out our Classics for inspiration.

Your DailyLit Story

Thanks to everyone who took our reader survey last month—we loved reading your feedback (and your kind words about DailyLit). We’d like to feature stories about your experience with DailyLit and what you’ve been able to accomplish so if you have a story to share, please email us at support@dailylit.com.

More of Your Questions Answered

–When I click on “Home” it doesn’t take me to the front page-maybe that could use some clearing up?
The “Home” tab on the landing page–signified by a small house icon–does take you to the landing page. The “Settings” tab takes you to a page that allows you to manage your profile and the books you’re reading, create Booklists, and more account management features. Hope that helps clear things up.

–I would appreciate having a selection of books that were available for immediate download, as opposed to a “daily dose.”
The goal of DailyLit has been to provide a unique reading experience–just a small bite a day.  That said, you can read full books in your browser using the “preview” function of DailyLit (just click the “Preview” button on any book’s page). If you’re also interested in downloading full books there are numerous websites that allow you to download entire classics at once and many ebook retailers that provide the same for more contemporary books.

–Been getting a lot of garbled type in your emails and copy…impossible to read.
Hm, not sure what the problem could be here. If you ever have problems with your DailyLit emails please contact us at support[at]dailylit[dot]com so we can work out the issue.

–Keep up the good work. Can we suggest books?
Thanks! And yes, you can suggest books in our Book Request Forum.

–Please provide DailyLit access to the rest of the volumes of Remembrance of things Past.
Unfortuantely Swann’s Way is the only part of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past that has an English translation freely available. (Volumes I-IV are available online in the original French.) If you have an interest in reading the full work (in either English or French) you might try your local library.

Question of the Week #58: What I Like About You

What do you think about DailyLit? Tell us what works for you–and what you’d suggest for improvements–in our Question of the Week forum.

Your Questions Answered

Here’s the first of a series of blog posts answering questions you left for us on our recent reader survey. If you think of other questions you’d like to see answered please send them to us at support[at]dailylit[dot]com!

I would enjoy longer selections…the pieces of the story that come are so short…could you opt to have longer ones?
You can opt to receive installments that are two times or four times as long as the “normal” installments, which are 1000 words each. Just click on “Manage the books you’re reading” link at the bottom of any installment, click on “More” next to the book title, and then set “Installment length” to your desired length. And of course, you can always use the “send next installment immediately” link that appears at the bottom of each installment.

Thanks for the wide variety of book topics! I was curious if you ever do anything strictly visual [eg an art or architecture book]?
We’re getting more into images these days. Check out our Wikipedia Tour: Masterpieces of Western Art and our Shoes, Bags, and Tiaras series from the Victoria & Albert Museum.

I keep getting missed installments! What’s up with that?
I love this concept but for some reason, the two times I’ve tried to read a book via DailyLit, I don’t get all of the installments. It’s rather sporadic. But, I’ll keep trying because it’s such a cool idea.
Emails sometimes don’t appear because they’re blocked by your ISP (Internet Service Provider), company spam filter, or they’re trapped in your own spam folder. First thing to try is to check your spam folder. If they’re not there, they may be trapped at a higher level: there are a lot of aggressive spam filters out there that block messages even before they get to you (hence they don’t even show up in your spam or junk folder). First try resending installments to yourself as described in our FAQs. If you do receive some installments and not others and cannot even resend the missing installments, then you either have to have your system administrator whitelist books [at] dailylit [dot] com or you need to use a different email account. If you are only missing installments occasionally, then you might choose to view installments online.

DailyLit News: December 2009

Note from the CEO
DailyLit is now 100% free! That’s right. You heard me. It’s a new era for DailyLit—we’ve ditched the books for pay but will keep our focus on offering you the highest quality books and stories. And with the holidays upon us, remember, you can send any DailyLit book or story (maybe one with a holiday theme?) as a fun free gift to your friends (with your own personalized message in each installment). And if you go away, you can temporarily suspend your book and have it automatically resume for when you get back.
Happy Holidays!

Susan Danziger
Founder and CEO, DailyLit
sdanziger[at]dailylit[dot]com

DailyLit: Now 100% FREE
We’ve been listening to our readers, and it’s clear that you most appreciate the books we’ve made available for free. So starting now, every book, story and series featured on DailyLit will be 100% free. We’ll be relying on sponsors to help support DailyLit so let us know of any sponsors who may be interested at sponsor[at]dailylit[dot]com. And please pass it on—DailyLit books are now 100% FREE!

New! Book Channel
DailyLit Selects—our series of excerpts from new and noteworthy books—is becoming DailyLit’s Book Channel. We’ll be featuring pieces from special guest contributor Sara Nelson, author of the bestselling So Many Books, So Little Time (and former editor in chief of Publishers Weekly, currently the Books Director for O, the Oprah Magazine). And we’ve also got book recommendations from “Gotham Gal”, hailed as the “woman around town.” All free, of course. Read it.

DailyLit’s Big Read: A Christmas Carol
The choice for this month’s Big Read is a natural. Join us in celebrating the season by reading Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol. Need I say it? It’s FREE. Read it.

New Reads (All Free!)
—The Book of the Shepherd: Just in time for the holidays comes The Book of the Shepherd, a parable for modern minds that comes “highly recommended for anyone interested in personal spirituality.” Read it.
—New story by Laurel Dewey: In Anonymous, the third original Jane Perry story, the heroine encounters a woman with a harrowing story to tell—and a mystery that runs far deeper than Jane at first realizes. Read it. (Missed the first two Jane Perry stories? Find them here.)

Reader Challenge—Guest Judge Anne Rice
With the holidays upon us and angels getting their wings in re-runs of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” this month’s creative challenge centers around angels. In exactly 50 words, tell a story of an encounter with an angel. Anne Rice, whose book Angel Time recently debuted, will be our guest judge this month. She’ll select her three favorites, each of whom will win a signed copy of Angel Time. Post your encounters in our Reader Challenge Forum no later than 11:59pm EST on December 31st.

Take Our Survey (you could win advance copy of major novel)
We need your help in supporting our move to be 100% free. Please take our short reader survey, which will help us attract new books and sponsors to our site. To sweeten the deal, we’ll be giving advance reader copies of internationally best-selling author Henning Mankell’s new book, The Man from Beijing, to five people who complete the survey. Take the survey.

Pausing Your DailyLit Books for Holidays

The holidays are one of the busiest times of the year. So even though DailyLit comes in bite-sized pieces, you may not be able to find those five minutes in your jam-packed schedule these days. To make things easier we’ve built a feature on DailyLit that allows you to suspend your books and set a date for them to resume automatically. So if you’re traveling over the holidays or are just too busy with family (and food!), click on the “Suspend” link at the bottom of any installment then pick the date you want your book to resume. Your book will pause until your days are back to normal. Just one way we’re trying to help make your holidays happier.

Winners of Profile Picture Drive

In our November newsletter we encouraged our readers who hadn’t yet uploaded a personal profile picture to do so. We love our readers and want to make our community as friendly as we can. And, it didn’t hurt that we promised we’d pick five readers at random who did have a profile picture by our deadline (November 22) and send them a copy of John Grisham’s new book, Ford County (you can check out one of the stories from the book here).

Lots of you responded and we’re delighted to announce that californiaaaaa, dalelyles, flu9604, DirectorJ and SaraJO123 will all receive a free copy of the book. Check out their profiles to see their pics–and what they’ve been reading.

Thanks to all of you for helping make DailyLit a friendly place to chat about books. We hope you’ll keep it up!

DailyLit Announces Move to All Free

We are thrilled to announce that DailyLit is now 100% free. Starting now, any book, story or series featured on DailyLit is being made available for free.

DailyLit has always been about responding to our readers – any feature we’ve launched or change we’ve made has been in response to readers’ requests. We’re now listening to our readers once again, and it’s clear that they most appreciate the wonderful books, stories and installments available for free.

DailyLit depends on the support of sponsors to continue to offer high quality books and stories for free. We’re thankful for such sponsors as HarperStudio and Random House as well as Diane Von Furstenberg (who’s giving the gift of her favorite book, free through January). If you’re interested in our sponsorship program, please contact me at: susan[at]dailylit[dot]com.

With the support of our sponsors, we’ll do our best to continue to present series of the highest quality and will strive to continue to earn the reputation we’ve recently received as the #1 Book Website (as selected by The Sunday Times).

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