Support for Indie Authors discussion

I was not able to find if this had been discussed before, so please direct me to that thread if it has.

My questions is about getting my book on goodreads. I am publising through KDP and still in the process of setting it all up. Is it possible for me to add the book to goodreads before it's available to purchase? I would like to start promoting it on my social media, but want at least a goodreads page up before I do that so people can start adding it.

I have tried to look through all of goodreads author program information for this, but could never find anything that answered my question. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

You can do this, if you can find a librarian nice enough to help you. At least that's what I did. There's an entire group of them somewhere on the site, but I can't find it right now.

Thank you! I think I've been on the librarian group (and might even be friends with a couple of them) so I will check there.

You don't need a librarian to do it.

Search for your book name, even though you know it is not already listed.
Click on "manually add a book"
Enter the details and upload the cover file.

Thank you!

I always set up my own books in advance of publication. As long as you have an author account, you have editing privileges and can add your book from your author dashboard. The only changes you need a librarian for is to add your books to a series.

Thanks, Christina!

Christina wrote: "I always set up my own books in advance of publication. As long as you have an author account, you have editing privileges and can add your book from your author dashboard. The only changes you nee..."

If you add it, how do you ensure that the Amazon auto-add bot doesn't add a duplicate? Just adding the ASIN?

I usually add my book before I even get an ASIN. Then I'll add that later. I've only ever once had a book show up before I was able to add it and when that happened, I just corrected the info that was wrong on the auto-ad. They won't automatically duplicate a book that already exists.

Christina wrote: "I usually add my book before I even get an ASIN. Then I'll add that later. I've only ever once had a book show up before I was able to add it and when that happened, I just corrected the info that ..."

okay thanks :D

Are there rules for how far out you can post a book on Goodreads prior to release?

EDATE was up for over a year and a half before publishing, so I would say no.

Cool! Any advice on what is the best timing? What about what's too long? Is there a point where it's been up there too long and that somehow kills the launch? And is it a bad idea to put up say a whole series at the same time? That is, if you've got several in a series coming out relatively soon, does it hurt your launch and/or sales of any of them, if the later books have been up there for a while? Is it better to spoon-feed folks? Just hoping someone has some experience with these variables. Thanks!

Thank you. I just put up my forthcoming book very easily thanks to the explanation here.

Thank you all for the help! I was able to get it up with no problems and now I'm waiting for my author account to be approved.

This has been really helpful. I was wondering when I could put the info about my new book coming up next month but now after reading this I see that I can. I will probably put the details up today or tomorrow. Thanks for your help.

So glad I saw this before it got buried in the notification list. Just set mine up too! Waiting on my email confirmation :)

Very helpful for me too, thanks for the advice. My book is due for release at the end of June, so some pre release publicity is key!

Me too. My book is also due for preorder by the end of June. This group is so helpful.

This was awesome! I had the same exact question lol! Now...if I could just figure out how to do ARCs...

ohh if i would have known it before my book release.waiting for my author account to be approved.

Well, that was fast!!! Added my book, submitted my author info to be approved for my author profile and about 10 minutes later, I'm in. Thanks Goodreads!!! And thanks to this board for the advice and info to us newcomers 😘

This has helped me too. I'm going to add my coming release now.