THE Group for Authors! discussion

Ask help from a 'librarian'. Did I spell that right? Seems like somewhere around here you can even access the 'librarian manuel'. Or, I emailed my problems in and got help fairly quickly. Somewhere there is a contact button for that email.

It's hard to learn your way around at first.

P.S. look below at the 'our blog' button. Very bottom.

David P wrote: "Perhaps it is just me but I find Goodreads just about unusable as an author - I can't even seem to get my own books linked to my account and usually end up with another account which I am then unab..."

You must be doing something right! You've got more than a thousand friends on Goodreads!

What exactly are the issues with the books?

If you post links to the books / author profile causing you problems either here or in the GR Librarians group someone will help

http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/220

I agree with everyone else about the lack of benefits that goodreads offers authors. You can't promote your books or contact those interested in reading them. Except communicating with other authors and exchanging ideas - what are the benefits

P&P? Paid Postage?

I had a problem with my name as I use initials, J.H.Walker. Also, I'm not a computer wiz. I contacted the Goodreads customer service and got some of the best service I've ever gotten from any customer service. They were fast, concise,and gave good information. They were friendly and solved the problem immediately. I was impressed. You might try them. I think Goodreads is an amazing site. As for being able to promote our books, there needs to be some kind of guidelines. Goodreads is primarily a site for readers. It would probably be overwhelming for readers if you could just promote any way you wanted. Anyway, try the customer service. They rock.

As a librarian, the confusion I see is the goodreads "book data pages" versus the "book product pages" authors are used to dealing with at amazon and other bookseller sites. If any of your books are added to the wrong author profile (particularly by eager fans who cannot spell or type well even to match what is on a bookcover), post in librarian group because you cannot edit another author's books. If your books are not on goodreads at all, you or any member of goodreads can add or you can post a request in librarian group to have the book(s) added to the database. Database, blanks to fill in like title, author, isbn, etc. that do not include promotional material/opportunity.

As a reader, I love how complete the book listings generally are. Particularly for series order. I use goodreads to catalogue my books and to find new reads. Authors I read or whose posts I like, I will fan/follow and don't mind hearing from. I will explore by genre, goodreads recommendations, by similar books, etc.

The day goodreads becomes another inbox to cleanout is the day I export my catalogue to a data file and leave. No one ever likes SPAM in any form.

Staus updates, blog links to update your readers/fans/followers, "tagging" your books (shelving by genre, category, etc.) so they will show in book recommendations, similar books and when exploring genres and shelves—free "promotion" authors can do. Helps to fill in metadata as well. Starting Q&A or other groups and participating within existing group promotion rules also free promotion. Giveaways and other paid promotion/ads available but don't overlook the free options or just the benefits of being social within a community of book lovers.

Goodreads does allow users to opt-in for new release notices for books on to-read shelf. Very good idea to keep publication dates accurate. Perfectly acceptable to add a book even before it is released (careful to note any draft covers as being pre- or un-published; lots of issues with goodreads database wanting all published in or out of print editions and ebook authors wanting their earlier efforts to go away unseen and only current product cover showing even if it means yanking their bookcover right off a member's bookshelf who will then freak out and contact support...no cover is sometimes better than one that won't be on published edition. Many author blogs, blog tours nd interviews get some promotional mileage out of cover reveals).

When you click on "groups" midway down right there are three official groups I would recommend you join. "official" (meaning staff involvement in a help desk type of environment) on goodreads.

Goodreads Feedback: questions, bug reporting and suggestions about goodreads in general at http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1...

Goodreads Librarians Group: book specific issues (including series and author profiles) at http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/2...

Goodreads Author Feedback Group: questions, bug reporting and suggestions about goodreads author issues and a forum for staff input/help and for authors to help each other at http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/3...

Once you claim your author profile, you have some librarian status over your own books (notably, for what I agree are good reasons after doing librarian edits a while, can't keep changing bookcovers or deleting editions to get rid of bad or unwanted reviews, can't separate combined editions to get more distinct works on author profile—and anything against publicly available under help screens librarian manual like altering existing isbns or putting promotional material in place of description/synopsis gets revoked as soon as spotted.)

Pretty much any book issues you are having are welcomed in the librarians group and handled within the hour unless someone had to ask for or research additional information. There's a brief author FAQ at top of group that includes the info preferred when adding book (but can be added with just title and author).

Oh. As a reader, I would not pay P &P charges. When the book is free, everything should be free. Plus how does that even work?

Frederick wrote: "I agree with everyone else about the lack of benefits that goodreads offers authors. You can't promote your books or contact those interested in reading them. Except communicating with other author..."

Except that of all the social networks, Goodreads is the only one that has given me a significant sales boost.

The thing is, you don't get that boost from advertising, spamming groups, adding quotations to your author page, or even directly through giveaways (although the giveaways do make your book visible to more people, a few of whom will buy).

Goodreads works when you join groups and talk to people (not about your book). After a while, they want to know who you are. Then, assuming you put the effort into producing a good book, people will buy it and read it and recommend it to their friends.

Word of mouth. It never fails.

I think the message here is don't rely solely on Goodreads or any other site for book promotion. It is one of many and it covers a segment of readers, probably slightly different from Amazon, B&N, AuthorAdvance, Facebook, linkeddIn,SavyAuthors or Author's Den. Then there's blogs, twitter and the list goes on. Don't just depend on one site.

I wasn't aware goodreads ever sold books?

Whether or not accounts are linked, a lot of readers are likely also on the usual-suspect social and bookseller sites for what it's worth.

It's unfortunately a very glutted marketplace. Not glutted with equally good reads; but, definitely glutted with so much promotion and hawking...

Even goodreads (who does profit from paid and other promotions) will tell you that word of mouth is the best sales pitch. Tis and other social sites just give that word of mouth another form of expression.

David wrote: "Debbie wrote: "I wasn't aware goodreads ever sold books?

Whether or not accounts are linked, a lot of readers are likely also on the usual-suspect social and bookseller sites for what it's worth.
..."

I, too, was unaware that Goodreads sold books. Learn something new every day.

I think the commercial product pages and being a commercial site versus book data pages and a non-commercial site with book data pages and social/forum features get into different business and legal requirements. Communities of internet users with shared interests (love books)are completely different business entity (even if company mking a profit) than a retail site.

No clue what plans are. Certainly seems to be more interested in monetizing what they can (more space given to ads, the odd paid promotion bit that shows upper right of book page noting things like going to goodreads goodreads author page, ...forget what that's called; might be the premium account mentioned.), heavy promotion of to-read shelving statistics that included the newish green button. That button rollout had lots of bugs, more shelving mistakes put books on to-read (any book shelved needs to be on an exclusive shelf that can be customized but used to fall on read shelf more than "to-read"), and an odd recent bug thread had staff noting for recent tests to work out some green want to read button kinks that the green button "outperformed" beige button — doesn't take experienced programmer to know there's no way one color is faster than another so the general member consensus on that one is that performance=to-read-shelvings. Very big on those to-read stats lately.

Possibly en route to some sort of adult content filtering (groups with settings saying 18+ material recently without notifying group moderators locked out anyone without birth year information or birth year saying under 18). Could be compliance requirement for commercial options.

Who knows. If does go to being a commercial site, even if free to members, or if becomes another inbox to cleanout—I'm exporting book data and moving on.

I love lots of aspects as goodreads; but, I settled here from the now defunct Visual Bookshelf and migrated data into quite a few workable book cataloguing sites including goodreads and explored around. Every member has different needs and enjoyment; I read so many series I wavered between goodreads and other series oriented sites. Goodreads had more thorough series actively updated and seemed less commercial and less likely (don't laugh) to set members up to be marketing and promotion targets.

They did sneak an email option in when they merged "become a fan" with "follow" on author pages. Members who don't notice can find themselves signed up for email notices without realizing. Not quite "opt-out" site addition but rather close the way it's buried. I hope it's not the first step to mailing/contact lists for authors. MailWasher cleared out more than 8,000 messages yesterday from my main email (admittedly, I keep strict settings and only certain senders get thru) — quite a few from goodreads (mostly my fault because I sometimes miss unchecking "email me when someone comments" on the discussion threads).