Goodreads Authors/Readers discussion

You're a published Goodreads author. You're a voracious reader always on the lookout for new reads in your favorite genres. If so, read on. Here is a way to find good new reads and at the same time boost the signal for and sale of your own books. It works like this:
1. List the genre(s) you read. Mine are:
In fiction (AF only, no YA): literary fiction,
mystery, thrillers and LF erotica.
In non-fiction: history, biography, philosophy,
theology and science (cosmology and evolutionary
biology).
2. State the genre of the book you're going to post.
Mine is an adult fiction thriller.
3. Post your book with a link where it can be
purchased and a description is given.
Here's mine: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_nos...
4. State your preferred tags. Mine for this book are:
thriller, love story, adventure, adult fiction,
spy, spy thriller and cult fiction. Please don't
list more than ten.
5. For all books posted on this thread in your
genre(s), click on the link, drill down and read
the description. You'll have given the book a hit
and boosted the signal. At each stage listed here
I'll do the same for you.
6. If the description grabs your interest, put the
book on your GR To Read shelf at or near the top.
7. When the book comes to the top, buy it, put it on
your GR Currently Reading shelf and read it.
8. If you can't honestly give the book a 4 or 5 star
rating move on to another book. Put it on your GR
Read shelf if you want. Play nice and others will.
9. If you can, give the book a 5 or 4 star rating,
write a nice review (where you bought it and on
GR), put it on your GR Read shelf and, if on
amazon, tag it with the requested tags.
10. Enjoy!

Sounds fair enough to me Lee!
Here's Mine:
1. I read: Poetry,sci/fi,and biographical books.
2. My genre is conteporary poetry.
3. here's the link:
http://www.amazon.com/Instant-Poetry-...

4. My prefered tags are : poetry, culture and spoken word.

The rest of the steps are up to youand the other participants in this thread (including me) as far as I can tell.
Enjoy!
And thanks for starting this

Hi, Lawrence. Sorry your link didn't go live. You need to revise. I looked you up on GR, but you're book isn't listed there. Lee.
ps: I wrote poetry for many years before turning to the novel. You can find and read (free) my published poetry on http://rleeholz.com. My favorite contemporary poets are Adrienne Su, Gallway Kinnell and Molly Peacock. Su is on GR.

Thanks Lee! I've revised the link and it works now! I'm supprised you couldn't find my book on GR. I don't know why it's not listed. It is in my books Im reading section so I'll have to mfind out what's up. I tied to go to your site and when i clickjed on the link the window read " site under construction" so I'll check later. I'll look up Su. Please try the link again and let me know. Thanks!
Lawrence.

Lee: check for the book under "Laughing" Larry Berger. It might be listed that way.

Larry, I found your book and it's now on my To Read shelf. I see it's only available for NOOK which I don't have. Is there a paperback? Or do you know whether I can download the NOOK book to the Adobe Digital Editions on my mac? The're both epub format. By the way my book is available for NOOK on barnesandnoble.com. Link is http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-...
I checked my website a minute ago and it was working fine. Link is http://rleeholz.com/

Glad you found it Lee! There is a paperback! you should also be able to get a kindle edition from amazon. you should be able to order it off the site. Please let me know if you still have trouble. I had someone in Vegas tell me they downloaded the Kindel edition. I don't know why its not comming up for you. I'll check your web site.

I got to yor web site this time Lee! It looks great! thanks for sharing.

Hi Lawrence, I found the paperback on amazon and ordered it. Should have it in a few days and look forward to reading it.

Great! Thanks Lee!

Thanks Lee!
I read, mystery, suspense, thriller, drama. In non-fiction, inspirational, biography.
My book is a young adult, romance, literature, Christian romance.
My amazon link -
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_nos...

tags - Christian, Romance, Christian Romance, Drama, Fiction, Young Adult

Thanks to all who participate!
Oh title of book, "In His Love"

Hi Deborah. Welcome to the thread. I'm not into your book's genre, but the idea of this thread is to attract a variety of authors and readers with different tastes. While I won't put your book on my To Read list, I have tagged it for you on amazon. Hang in there and let's hope someone who reads YA joins the thread.

Hi Deborah! Welcome to the thread! I looked at your book and it seems interesting. I'll tag it but being Jewish I can't say as I really understand the nuances of the "Christian Romance" Genre. From what I DO know the two almost seem incompatable. I'm happy to tag it for you though. Good Luck!

Larry

Now, Larry, I'm Episcopalian, and I assure you that Christian and Romance definitely go together.

Okay, Thanks Lee! Like I said I'm not that familiar with the "Chirstain Romance" Genre. I meant no offense.

LOL - no offence I assure you! Thanks Lee & Lawrence I really appreciate you taking the time to tag it and your feedback!

I did the same for you 2!

Hi! I'm a lifelong reader of
Historical, Historical Suspense, Romantic Suspense
Contemporary Suspense
My writing genre: HISTORICAL SUSPENSE
You'll find it on Amazon at
http://amzn.to/jHBWCt
The tags are: suspense, historical suspense, romantic suspense, historical drama, family found, love story, fiction
Thank you for helping to bump LOVE WILL FOLLOW!

Hi Bailey, welcome to the thread. As you know from the other thread, you've been tagged.

Larry, Instant Poetry arrived today. It's next on my To Read list after the Roxanne Smollen book I'm reading now.

Hi, Lee. I have tagged all the authors in the thread including yours. Thanks so very much!
Bailey Bristol

Thanks for letting me know Lee! I look forward to hearing your opinon! BTW, after My last post I figured I'd better do a little reaserch. Here's what I did:

1. I contacted June Penny Who is the " Community Outreach Director" at the Barnes and Noble at Pittsford Plaza ( They have about ten stores in the city but most of them have been open for less than three years. This ones been around for nearly 30 and is considered their flagship store in the region. Junes Job is to set up the booksignings and book/literary groups that use the stores " Community Room" She's held this position since six moths after the store opened when they first opened the room to the Public. If anyone in the store would know about what really sells there it's her.) She gave me some interesting information:

It turns out the books in the "Christian Romance" Genre ( she walked me over to the section which had 8 seperate cases, by contrats thier poetry section only houses three and that includes work by both locals and names like Mya Angelou, Elloit, Joyce, Tennyson, Pound and Shakespear!) Which acording to her coun't for about $30,000 in instore sales at that particular Location. that may not seem like much, but then I asked her the question you might be think I would and her answer supprised me since they sponsor 5 differn't groups in the Genre, but she told me that poetry sales only amount to $2,500 in Annual Sales for the store! ( Deborah, are you getting this?)

2. I sent an email to my friend Dee Dee Hogan:
She Graduated from St. John Fisher College with a creative writing degree and went to work for their English department soon after. She taught creative writing for the college ( It's the local " christain college and considered one of the top "privet colleges in upstate NY.) for nearly 30 years and also ran the colleges "Write the night away" Literary out reach program for new writers in the area. She taught courses in Romance, Memoire Poetry and Journalisum durring her Tenure and only "retired" last month
( she still teaches the write the night away class.) One of her most frequent " Guest Lecturers" Is her sister Kathern Shaw. She was also educated at St. John Fisher but she became a professional Romance writer and in fact has 22 novels to her credit that were published by Harliquin. I figured if ANYONE could help me understanbd the "Christian Romance" Genre it would be the two of them. To my surprise
De told me she'd never heard of the genre and promised to check with her sister but I have not heard back on that yet. I hope this helps.

Larry

Welcome to the thread, J.O. Your book is not in one of my reading genres, but I tagged it for you on the US version.

1: I enjoy reading contemporary fantasy (not high fantasy: the limit on how high my fantasy threshold goes is Terry Goodkind) and alternate history (i.e. Harry Turtledove).
2: I write contemporary military fantasy.
3: The Phantom Squadron series consists of
The Advance Guard: http://tinyurl.com/AdvGuardver2
Dinétah Dragon: http://tinyurl.com/Dinetah
4: Tags for
The Advance Guard: history, fantasy, military, CIA
Dinétah Dragon: memoir, coming-of-age, dragon fantasy, Navajo

This looks like it'll be fun!

Welcome to the thread, Don. I'm happy to see the variety of offerings increase! Please provide the amazon links for tagging.

Larry, if you saw my blog, you know I'm into Instant Poetry. Actually, since it's short I've read it several times. To say I like your work is an understatement. I want to reread your poems, aloud, several more times before I write my review. Of course, the rating will be five stars!

Amazon links:

The Advance Guard
http://www.amazon.com/Advance-Guard-D...

Dinétah Dragon
http://www.amazon.com/Din%C3%A9tah-Dr...

Don, your tagged. J.O., please provide amazon link if you'd like to be tagged. J.O., I hope you read the original premise of the thread. I evaluated your books as possible reads for me, but I'm not into either paranomal (weirwolves) or romance. Nevertheless, we are happy to have you join the thread. The main idea is to at least look at each other's books and possibly read, etc.

Larry, obviously I loved Instant Poetry. Please see my reviews on amazon, GR and FB (via my blog). For others, this is the way I wanted the thread to work: find something I wanted to read, love it and promote it via ratings, tags and reviews. Keep it up, Larry

Lee wrote: "Larry, if you saw my blog, you know I'm into Instant Poetry. Actually, since it's short I've read it several times. To say I like your work is an understatement. I want to reread your poems, aloud,..."

Lee wrote: "Larry, obviously I loved Instant Poetry. Please see my reviews on amazon, GR and FB (via my blog). For others, this is the way I wanted the thread to work: find something I wanted to read, love it ..."

Lee wrote: "Larry, if you saw my blog, you know I'm into Instant Poetry. Actually, since it's short I've read it several times. To say I like your work is an understatement. I want to reread your poems, aloud,..."

"blushing " Thanks Lee! I'll go to your blogg and read them right now!

Thanks for putting this together Lee; what a great idea. I'll add my information and a few comments ASAP (just not now, since a 6-year-old is waiting for me to fulfill my duty as a human pony).

Good to meet the rest of you too!

- Mike

Thanks again Lee, I'm back with the info on my most recent title:

ARCHANGEL by Michael Vorhis

The shame of terrible deeds past can drive a man to self contempt. So it is with Mick Calahan, anonymous, disconsolate, shielding the world from himself in priest's robes. But a bewildering assignment and the desperate trust of a young woman threaten to make him choose between staying buried and unleashing the past again. Drawn into Gabriella's taut, troubled paradise, Mick harbors a dark secret--that his signature quality is not virtue. And the woman knows her own deliverance will drive this mysterious man to oppose evil by becoming it.


(The eBook is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, the Apple iBookstore, the Sony Reader store, the Smashwords store, the Diesel eBookstore, and elsewhere. Search on ARCHANGEL and Vorhis.)

(And note that it's not a dogma-pusher, nor is it another of the many paranormal spirit-world-entity fantasy action things. I'd consider changing the title to avoid confusion with those except that the title is so perfect for the story, and together with the tale accomplishes what I set out to do.)

Welcome to the thread Michael! I can't really tell if this fits into my "categories" or not but It looks like a great story! Congrats and welcome again! Btw, note to Lee: Thanks for all your support! I THINK i found your blog and I'm not sure if you got my message or not,but could you please post the link into this thread for quick referance? Mine is at http:// poeticconversations.blogspot.com In case I hadn't mentioned it yet. Thanks again for starting this group!

Larry

1. I like science fiction, fantasy, or a good old suspense/thriller
2. I write science fiction/fantasy mixed together
3. My book is called: Forgotten Future, it is a collection of short stories. It is my first published work. http://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Futur...
4. Tags are: fantasy, science fiction
5. Anything I can do to help, let me know. Advice on how to become a better writer are welcome. Forgotten Future

Welcome, Michael. Your book looks very interesting and I've marked it To Read. What tags would you like on amazon?

Welcome, Rashaad. I have looked at and tagged your book. Is it available other than for Kindle?

To Lawrence and other who are interested in my blog, the link is http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...

For those who have joined and haven't made it back to the original post with which I started the thread, my book is:
http://www.amazon.com/Abomination-Ass...
http://www.amazon.com/Abomination-Ass...
The preferred tags are thriller, love story, adventure, spy, spy thriller and cult fiction. Any three would be much appreciated as would a look at the description to see if it might be your thing.

Right now it's on kindle and Smashwords. Waiting for them to submit it to the other e-reader stores.

Just received the proof for the paperback, so I'm going through that line by line. Hopefully, that will be on sale on amazon by late next week.

Forgotten Future

Rashaad, please post the amazon link when it becomes available.

Hi Rashaad: Defenatly let us know when it's in paperback! Like a lot of "old school" writers I'm a bit of a bibliophile and have yet to buy myself a Kindel or Nook. You are in my genres and I look forward to reviewing your book. As far as help with writing ,I'm not exactily sure where Palm Coast Florida is. I do know that there are world class writing centers in Miami, St. Peter's Burg and Tampa but I don't really know if your anywhere close to any of those cities so I can offer a suggestion. Please clarify so we can better assist you. Again, I look forward to reading your work. Welcome to the thread! Larry.

> have yet to buy myself a Kindel or Nook.

Larry, thanks for bringing this up. For those on a shoestring budget or who for other reasons have a title that started life as an eBook, this sentiment is a naturally limiting thing. Myself, I try to remind people that free eReader software is readily available everywhere, but sitting at one's computer to read a novel is less than attractive for most people. Without a portable "always in one's pocket" device, eBooks are inconvenient.

Fortunately Smart Phones are exploding in number and serve reasonably well as eReader devices. And within a month the eBooks will be on sale as individual Apps. No need to load reader SW or "register" it to an individual seller like Amazon or B&N. That will all help I think (I hope!).

We'll see. Thanks for the info!

Sure, I'll be sure to post the link. I just turned in all the changes, but I have a feeling I'm going to have to wait on another proof.

Forgotten Future

> We'll see.

Yes, and I think I hear the skepticism in your typing fingers. It's well placed, unfortunately. But hopefully little by little eBooks will grow to a roughly 50/50 proposition with paper, wherein every other person prefers one way or the other.

Me, I'm rooting for eBooks for obvious reasons, but I still enjoy old-fashioned hard copy for my own reading. Hypocrisy at it's best!

- Mike

> and I've marked it To Read.

Fantastic Lee, you won't regret it! I'm going to do my best to read yours and everyone's. I honestly don't know where folks like the 50-Books group get the time to read so many. I work as a Silicon Valley indentured servant to pay the bills (keep telling myself year after year how temporary it is), and honestly would have no time to write if I even read four books in a year. But I'll try...maybe will have to give up tripping lightly and deliciously over every phrase to catch the tempo of the language, and just turn myself into a high volume speed reader. (But then I fear writing and reading would both lose their appeal for me.)

> What tags would you like on amazon?

I don't quite understand this question. I defined a bunch of tags when I published on Amazon, same as I did for the B&N, Apple, Smashwords and other stores. What do you mean? Do I have to define tags on GR for some reason? It's my understanding that searching any of those bookstores with any of those tags should include my book somewhere in the search results returned. I guess I'm in the dark on this one, so if you'll educate me...?

- Mike

> tags

Sorry Lee, I get the question now...you want tags for GR, not Amazon. For my book, ARCHANGEL, I'll request the following tags:

Angel; Arch; priest; fable; Calahan; Callahan; character; Mick; town; literary

Thanks,
- Mike

Hi all,

I noticed my book's review star average has suddenly decreased (it's been rated lower than its average), yet I'm quite sure no one of the group has had a chance to read my book yet. Maybe we shouldn't rate each others' books until we've read them. Or if we really want to (based on description or cover art or I'm not sure what), we should probably take some care not to reduce the current average? At least until we've read the book.

Just a thought.

(For that matter, if I read another GR author's book which is enjoying a five-star rating until I come along, then before I'd consider logging a four-star down-rating I would discuss with the author and give the author the option of my rating or my silence.)

- Mike

> Add the Prophet's naked handmaiden

Lee, you've caught my attention. :)

- Mike

To Michael:
If you go back to my original post that started the thread (I know it's a long way now), you'll see that I suggested we not rate books we haven't read. I also suggested that if we couldn't give a least a four star rating, we should give none at all and definitely not a negative review. We're trying to help each other honestly but play nice at the same time.
I was talking about amazon tags. if you have established ones on amazon, I'll use them. I'll also give you likes on barnesandnoble if you give me that link.

To J.O. - I looked at and tagged your books.

Well said Lee :)

Very well said Lee! Thank you, and I did read your book! I'd be happy to " discuss" my opinions with you privately but based on what we might discuss I don't think you'd want me to do an actual review. "Middle Kingdom" By your Friend Ms. Su is the next book on my list. I look forward to it. Thanks for the support!

Larry.

Thanks, Larry. I would appreciate your opinions on the book - privately.

Lee

> If you go back to my original post...
> I suggested we not rate books we haven't read.

Yes. You didn't overlook that Lee. I was agreeing with the plan (and underscoring the point).

> Tags

As technically savvy as I profess to be, I think I'm missing the point entirely re: tags. Sorry. Looks like we should just provide an applicable list of genres?

- Mike

Mike,

Re tags - you need to go to amazon and look at the range of tags people have created - they can create any ones they want - but the name of the game is to come up with tags that are appropriate for your book and people use often to find books. This is what amazon rewards by moving a book higher up in the cue under any given tag. Sometimes tags are genres, sometimes not.