Monday, January 09, 2012

Monday Mentionables: Demystifying Goodreads

"Demystifying Goodreads" - this was a feature article in the most recent Romance Writers Report, and it was perfectly timed since one of my 2012 goals is to be more active promoting my work and using social media.

Sigh.

I do believe in both of those goals, whole-heartedly....it's just that sometimes keeping up with everything you can possibly do online gets overwhelming. Anyone else feel this way?

Anyway, Goodreads is actually a pretty user-friendly site. If you're not familiar with it, it's another online community - this one is for readers (mostly) and writers. When you join, you post the books you've read/are reading/want to read and then give them reviews and ratings. You can also talk to other members about their opinions and recommendations. I get the feeling it could be a pretty chatty place, if you wanted it to be.

The plus for authors is that you can interact with readers. They do seem to have some effective marketing tools as well, including Free Book Giveaways for new releases, your own profile page where you can share your books/trailers/blog/other links. Like any social media site, I'm guessing, the time you put in is what you'll get out of it.

So I'm interested....how many of you belong? Log in regularly? If you're an author, have you found it useful for promo and marketing? And finally, if you're a member, please add me as a Goodreads friend!

1 comment:

Liz said...

Hi Allie: I'm pretty new at this but I think Goodreads has been a big help to me. In the 2 contests I've run about 850 people entered to win and over 80 readers added my books to their bookshelf and I have 8 fans - only 1 of who I actually know in real life. So whether those readers who added me actually end up reading who knows but my ratings are up to 11 so I think it offers great exposure to actual readers.