Goodreads Authors/Readers discussion

Does anyone have any experience with sites like (or similar to) Self Publisher's Showcase? My social media networking and promotion skills are lacking and I was looking at paid services such as this to help get the word out. That said, I have a suspicion that most of the people who follow sites such as this on Twitter and Facebook are also just self-pubbed and indie authors hoping to get the word out, so I don't know how much value they have attracting real readers.

If anyone has any experience with such sites I'd love to hear it before I shell out $$$ that I don't really have.

Thanks for your time.

I wonder if readers would go to a site with a title with the words 'Self-Publisher' in it?

I always look at SimilarWeb when evaluating sites like this. The results for Self-Publisher's showcase say that the site got around 7K hits in November, with approximately 65% of those coming from the US.

For comparison, Goodreads received 59.7 million hits in the same month.

Ask readers what sites they use to find their next book and you'll be surprised. Very few use any of these so-called book discoverability sites (which seem to be authors pitching to authors). I ask readers and at the most they use GR, Amazon buy recommendations and Bookbub.

I figured sites like that were all authors, no readers. Thanks for the input. Of course, I just get lost amid hundreds of thousands on titles on Amazon and Goodreads, but better that than spending advertising money with no result I suppose.

Thanks, Luke, that's very useful.

Chris wrote: "I just get lost amid hundreds of thousands on titles on Amazon and Goodreads"

We all have the same problem. But before you spend any money you need to identify where your target readers are hanging out. There might be a really popular blog for your genre with hundreds of followers and you'd be better to buy a sidebar ad there. Or maybe there is a discussion forum that offers advertising. Personally I think it's better to spend my advertising on a site where my readers are more likely to see it.

When I shop for books I browse Smashwords. I never look at advertisements so I have the idea that they are absolutely worthless. It is my belief that the only hope for broad appeal is word of mouth. How to generate word of mouth, I have no idea.