THE Group for Authors! discussion
General Discussion
>
Confused about how to use Goodreads
date
newest »
newest »
Marty wrote: "It's been some time now since I crated my Goodreads author account and linked it to my book's blog site (http://byathreadthebook.wordpress.com). Every day I get updates from this site of authors' d..."I'd say the best tool for new authors on Goodreads is the First Reads giveaway program:
http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway
You can give your copies away not just to other authors but to the people you should really be trying to reach -- readers. This is a great way to get the word out about a new book. We encourage everyone who wins a giveaway book to review it, so you should get a few reviews out of the deal, as well.
In general, I think a good way to use the site is to join a few groups about subjects that interest you. The groups are good places to meet people who might share your interests. Keep in mind, though, that you shouldn't be joining these groups just to sell them on your book or even to raise your own profile. Join them because you actually want to participate. Talk about the books you love as a reader. As you make friends and develop more contacts on the site, you will gain more readers. Once you have a little bit of a following, you can even start your own discussion group focused specifically on your books.
For more ways to use the Author Program, I recommend checking out this how-to document we put together a few months ago:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/how_to
That really lays out all the various things you can do on Goodreads (including using widgets to promote your books from your blog or website).
And you might want to have a look at the author guidelines, since they do a good job of explaining what kind of behavior is encouraged and what is discouraged on the site:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/guide...
And you can always send me a personal message if you have a specific question. Good luck!
Thanks, Patrick. I will explore the links you gave. I have already given my book to seven readers, who in turn provided reviews (all of them good), but I don't know how to get those reviews read by anyone! I can't seem to drive any traffic to my blog or website. I thought that since indie writers do such a good job of promoting each other, that it might be more helpful to get my book in their hands. After all, we writers are all readers, as well!
Marty, none of those seven readers have reviewed it on Goodreads. Might any of them be interested in doing so?I also noticed that your blog had been added with a feed that wasn't working properly with GR (the redirects were going to your blog, but not to specific posts), so I fixed that.
And I bring up your blog because that's another way to get people to notice you and your book. For example, the other week I saw that a friend had "liked" a blog post by an author I was unfamiliar with. It looked interesting, so I clicked through to read the post. And then I read several other blog posts of his. They had NOTHING to do with his books (although some of his other blog posts did) -- they were intelligent, well-reasoned, and passionate (short) essays on topics that happened to interest him, and happened to resonate with me.
I shelved one of his books as to-read, and I consider it a fairly high-priority to-read. But even though several friends of mine had his books shelved and rated them 3 and 4 stars, I probably would never have noticed his work at all -- if not for his blog.
I wanted to post an offer here to fellow indie authors, offering a free copy of my book to the first five authors to add it to their "to-read" list. But there is a buff-colored box to the right as I write this, warning me not to "use this group to promote [my] book." So I'm still at a loss as to how I can leverage my networking with other authors here.
Is this site meant purely for discussion? How do I drive potentially interested persons to my existence here?
Thanks.