G is for Goodread

How Goodreads Works

Goodreads is a free website for book lovers. Imagine it as a large library that you can wander through and see everyone's bookshelves, their reviews, and their ratings. You can also post your own reviews and catalog what you have read, are currently reading, and plan to read in the future. 

What every author should know about Goodreads?

Patrick Brown advice for authors on Goodreads

'First, they should claim their author profile and join the Goodreads Author Program. It’s free to join and requires only a valid email address. In a broad sense, the best way for an author to build a presence on Goodreads is to be an active Goodreads member. That is, they should write reviews of the books they read, participate in groups, and generally use the site as a reader might. In addition to this, they can do some very simple things to get the word out that are not intrusive. If the author is already writing a blog, they can sync that to their author profile. If they aren’t writing a blog, they can start one. They can post videos, ebook excerpts, polls, etc. All of that will end up in their friends’ and fans’ update feeds.

More specifically, the best promotional tool at a Goodreads Author’s disposal is definitely the First Reads giveaway. Giving away an advance copy (or even a finished copy) of your book is a terrific way of getting your book some attention on the site. After all, if you want people to fall in love with your writing, the best way is to give them a taste of it. On average, about 750 people enter each giveaway, and of those people, we’ve found that about 8% of them will add the book to their to-read shelf, win or lose. About 45% of the winners review the book, meaning that the more copies you offer, the more reviews you are likely to get. And reviews are really the fuel that drives everything on Goodreads. When a member reviews your book, not only do their friends see that review, but it often gets pushed to Facebook, Twitter, and their blog, too. We’ve found that about 1/5 of all Goodreads users write a book blog, and we do our best to make it easy for those users to share their reviews on their blogs.

A great way to get a little bit of bang for not many bucks is to pair a giveaway with a self-serve advertisement. Self-serve ads are easy to create and can be bought for as little as $50. You pay based on the number of people who click on your ad, and you can target it to fans of a specific genre, as well as to residents of a specific country, one gender or the other, or a targeted age range. This way, you get your giveaway in front of the people you most want to reach.

To post a giveaway, just log into Goodreads, and visit this link:

http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/new

To see a list of current giveaways, go here:

http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway'

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