THE Group for Authors! discussion

I just finished my first blog for A Dark Night in Aurora, but when I come to Goodreads.com as a viewer there appears to be no obvious specific information about where to find blogs. Searching "Blogs" gets thousands of hits, and searching the title doesn't say anything about a blog. How do visitors, especially inexperienced ones, find an author's blog or Q&A?

In addition, when I looked for a way to ask a question that wasn't in the Help/FAQ list (namely this question) there was apparently no way to contact a real person (all the group experts I searched had put up "no messages" notices).

Authors Guild, etc., have easy, real-person support for these occasional short questions. Am I missing something??

Thanks!
Bill Reid

I think they just click on the author's name next to their book and it takes them to the author's page; then they just scroll down to find the blog if there is one. (Someone will correct me in this group if I am wrong so read additional answers.)

William wrote: "I just finished my first blog for A Dark Night in Aurora, but when I come to Goodreads.com as a viewer there appears to be no obvious specific information about where to find blogs. Searching "Blog..."

William,

Keep up with your blog posts. As more and more Goodreads members become curious and then familiar with the content and your personal blogging style, a loyal following will evolve. The difficult part is being patient. It takes time.

Steven is correct. If so inclined after reading the blog post, some members' curiosity will lead them to click upon your picture and learning more about you from your author profile.

I wish you success.

Thanks to you both, but do you mean that the blogs are only for registered Goodreads members? That seems a little odd, since one would expect blogs to be available to the public, whom we want to read our books. Otherise the blogs are just a website mutual admiration society.

Or can a nonmember click on the author name and see his/her blog. I think I tried that and it didn't work, but I'll try it again as a non-member visitor.

Clarification? (And thanks again.)

Hi William!

As Steven and Jim correctly state above, members can view author blogs by visiting author pages and then scrolling down to the blog section (if the author has chosen to write one). Other site visitors can also view these when not logged in.

If you need to contact us in the future, please feel welcome to use the contact form here, email support (at) goodreads (dot) com or post in this group!

Sorry, but that's just not true in the case of nonmember site visitors (at least when I test it by PC, iPad and iPhone). MEMBERS signing in and visiting an author page immediately see the blog update info but those who don't sign in never (so far as I can tell) see anything about a blog. (If it's there, it's well-hidden!) I tried (visiting as a nonmember) searching on my author name and looking at my author page, looking at the book title page, etc. The most I could ever see was the Q&A (with a message to join in order to ask a question). There was no mention of author blogs either generically on the home page or specifically on the author page.

Bill

William wrote: "Sorry, but that's just not true in the case of nonmember site visitors (at least when I test it by PC, iPad and iPhone). MEMBERS signing in and visiting an author page immediately see the blog upda..."

I can see your entire author page, including blog, on my iPad when I’m not logged in. It’s identical to what I see now (logged in.) It’s right below the list of your books.

Thanks, Miss M! That really helps. Thanks for taking the trouble to test both methods of access. Maybe the last on non-sign-in access is unique to my ISP or somethind.

William wrote: "Sorry, but that's just not true in the case of nonmember site visitors (at least when I test it by PC, iPad and iPhone). MEMBERS signing in and visiting an author page immediately see the blog upda..."

William,

I too have searched for your blog and had no trouble accessing it or any other information pertaining to your author profile and published works.

The adage "Patience is a virtue." came about because being patient is seldom easy. Any serious, long-time blogger will attest to the fact that attracting a devoted following requires patience, determination, and effort. It is often very frustrating. Hang in there and don't give up.

True, Jim. And I don't really anticipate a huge blog readership. Just glad the book is doing well in Amazon preorders -- release is Monday. I've written or edited 17 books and editions, but this is my first for the mass market. Exciting.

I have a feeling most author bloggers have their main platform elsewhere and just use GR as one venue to show their blog. Nothing wrong with using GR as your ‘home base’, although I would guess you would get more online visibility if you have your own author website or blog site. I’m not an author but I do see a lot of discussions from authors on balancing up how much time they spend on various social media and trying to figure out how much is worth it.

I get obsessed with it, and I have a great publicist assigned by my publisher! Maybe life's too short to worry about this stuff . . . :-)