Discovering Books

Knovel's Explore feed surfaces books based on genuine reader engagement — not ad spend or platform promotions. Here's how to find what you're looking for.

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The Explore Feed

The Explore feed is your main discovery surface. It shows trending books, new releases, and recommendations based on genres and authors you've engaged with.

Trending is calculated from reader activity over the past 30 days: finishes, likes, and new followers on an author. This means trending books are ones readers are actually completing and responding to — not just clicking on.

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Browsing by Genre

Use the genre filter on the Explore page to narrow results by category. Knovel supports a range of genres including literary fiction, romance, fantasy, sci-fi, thriller, horror, non-fiction, and more.

Genre tags are set by authors when they publish. If a book is miscategorized, readers can flag it for review.

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Search

The search bar at the top of any page lets you search by:

• Title — partial matches are supported

• Author name or username

• Genre — typing a genre name returns genre-filtered results

Search results can be filtered by publication status (complete vs. ongoing) and license type (commercial, non-commercial).

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Discovering Through Community

Some of the best discovery on Knovel happens through the community:

• Author profiles — follow an author you like and their new releases appear in your feed automatically

• Reading lists — public reading lists from other users (coming soon) surface books through social proof

• Derivative works — a popular fanfic or translation often brings readers back to discover the original