The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) discussion

Written by Barb Barb Drozdowich

Can Goodreads be difficult to navigate? I think so. But like learning to write excellent dialogue, navigating Goodreads can be learned with a little bit of patience.
Is Goodreads full of nasty people? Not really. There are 50 million account holders on Goodreads. In a group that large there are bound to be nasty people. Take your local mall as an example. Not everybody there is pleasant, yet you continue to shop there. You develop a way to cope with the nasty people – you can do the same on Goodreads.
goodreads logo

The Enormous Potential Reach of Goodreads
Goodreads had 50 million readers all in on place. What could be a better place for finding readers, especially for the beginning author – or the author trying to make contacts in new countries, ?

But just like you would never stand in the middle of your local public library holding your book and yelling at everybody to read it, that behavior is not acceptable on Goodreads either. So put on your reader’s hat, grab yourself a cup of coffee and think about six distinct networking possibilities.

#1 Shelves
Goodreads allows an account holder to list the books that they have read or want to read. They are supplied with some default shelves as well as the ability to create as many custom shelves as they want. Every time you as a reader or an account holder list a book on a shelf, that information is shared with all of your friends. And like Amazon or Facebook, Goodreads is controlled by algorithms so putting books on certain shelves is more important than other shelves.

The idea behind shelves is not just an organizational tool, it is a sharing vehicle. It helps you share with other people. I’m sure you’re not nosy, but lots of people are interested in what other people are doing. They are curious as to what books their friends are reading. They may choose friends based on their taste in books. Every time you log into your Goodreads account you are shown what your friends are doing, reading and reviewing.

If you want to put your author hat back on, consider how much free advertising you can give your author friends by listing their books on a shelf of yours, perhaps by reviewing it. Consider creating a shelf called “Great authors.” List all your friends’ books on the shelf. People will notice.

#2 Friends/Followers
I consider to be the connection between people on Goodreads to be the second most important functionality that Goodreads has.

On Goodreads people can be ‘friends’ of one another. This is an action that one person requests and the receiver accepts. In addition, readers can be ‘followers’ of authors. This is a one-sided interaction started by the reader; it does not need to be accepted by the author.

These two types of interactions have different powers.

Although on Goodreads authors are encouraged to increase the number of followers, I believe both groups have importance. An author profile on Goodreads comes with quite a bit of functionality that many authors don’t seem to know about. One of my favorites is connecting an author’s blog to Goodreads via the RSS feed. This not only allows people to read blog posts on Goodreads, but also to get email notification of whenever a new post is created by Goodreads.

And I have over 300 more readers of my blog than are visible from my blog stats because those are followers on Goodreads.

On the main landing page of Goodreads is what’s called the newsfeed. This allows readers to keep up-to-date with what their friends are doing. You may not spend much time scanning this information, but many people do. I have well over 3000 friends who are aware of a wide variety of things that I do on Goodreads, such as put a book on a shelf, add a book to a reading challenge, or enter a giveaway. It’s not uncommon for me to be notified of somebody else marking a book as ‘to read’ that I’ve just finished sharing. Likely they caught sight of it on their newsfeed.

#3 Giveaways
Paperback books can be given away on Goodreads. There’s a beta test going on right now for e-books, but were going to focus on the paperback giveaways. Do we as authors give away copies of our books in hopes of getting reviews? Obviously the answer to that question is yes. Do we always get reviews? Sadly the answer to that question is no – but we hope. There are two main positive things about the Goodreads giveaways:

1) the potential for reviews

2) the placement on shelves

We always hope that every book we give away for a review will get us a review. When giving away a book on Goodreads, stack the deck in your favor. You are given the name of the winner, so write them a nice letter asking for a review and explaining how to do it. I typically write a short note in the book, not on a separate piece of paper. Can these books be found for sale on Amazon or eBay? Yes of course, but then perhaps the next person will review the book as well.

Don’t focus on the money spent, focus on the possibility of a review – of the networking potential.

The second point that is overlooked is the shelf aspect. When a reader enters a Goodreads giveaway, the book is automatically placed on their ‘To-Read’ shelf and this information is shared with all of their friends. To avoid this second step people have to uncheck a box. To remove the book from their shelves they have to go to the trouble of actually deleting.

Typically these books will stay on shelves as a constant reminder to the reader that they had expressed interest in a book. It also serves the as a reminder to their friends that they have an interest in this book.

These giveaways attract a lot of attention – on average, 825 people enter a giveaway and over 40,000 people enter giveaways each day on Goodreads.

That’s a heck of a lot of attention for the cost of a book and postage.

#4 Groups
Groups are often considered to be the shining star of Goodreads. Many of my fellow book bloggers seem to live in their groups. There are many groups whose only function seems to be authors announcing a book release or a book for sale, but the real networking power of groups is found in the other groups.

For example did you realize that there are upwards of 10,000 book clubs that have groups on Goodreads?

There are groups from every geographical area of the world, covering every genre of book and in fact all sorts of non-book subjects:

Are you interested in finding some friends and readers on the other side of the world from where you live? I bet there’s a group from that country – whichever country that might be.
How about a group that talks about other things you’re interested in other than books? Great way to make online friends.
Most of the groups allow their members to create a profile or an introduction. All of the books that you have written as an author are attached to your profile.

Let’s face it, us readers aren’t stupid, if we want to buy a book, we know how.

#5 Reading Challenge
he reading challenge functionality I think is one of the most overlooked functions on Goodreads. The reading challenge allows readers to decide arbitrarily how many books they are going to read in a calendar year. It then allows the readers to record the books that they read as well as ratings or reviews.

Just like with shelves, every time a book is recorded as being read, that information is shared with the reader’s friends. It is also part of the reading challenge list.

Anybody can go into someone’s list and comment or just look at the books on the list. In addition to that, readers can advertise the fact that they are doing a reading challenge on the sidebar of their blog.

One thing I encourage authors to do is to create a shelf called ‘Reading Challenge,’ then use the widget functionality to display what they’ve been reading on the sidebar of their blog. In fact authors can get together and be rather strategic about what books are displaying.

I’ve done a reading challenge several times. I’ve found there has been a lot of interaction between people who are doing the challenge. Quite a few of the books that I have read in the last calendar year have been added to other people’s shelves. Again not flashy, but networking.

#6 Events
The event notification on Goodreads can be overused, but on the other hand, is an easy way to communicate with all of your friends. It comes with a small amount of ability to divide the audience. For example if I was going to have an in-person event, I can invite people based on their geography. But think about the power: every time I have a book release, I have over 3,000 people to share this information with. That is in addition to the number on my mailing list. Quiet yet powerful.

In my mind, the power of networking on Goodreads is only limited by my creativity.

Unlike Facebook or Twitter, you don’t have to ask account holders if they read – just what they read. And while I don’t believe that Goodreads is the only place that you should network, it should be part of your efforts.

The lure of 50 million readers in one place!