Goodreads Guidelines & Recommendations

Goodreads is the largest social network built specifically around reading. A place for casual readers and bona fide bookworms alike, Goodreads members recommend books, compare what they are reading, keep track of what they’ve read and would like to read, form book clubs and much more. Readers can also purchase books directly from online retailers via the site as well as subscribe for newsletters and email updates about their favorite genres, books, and authors.

Most book recommendation websites list random people’s reviews, but Goodreads prioritizes your followers’ reviews. When a person adds a book to the site, all their followers can see what they thought of it. Members also create trivia about books, lists of the best books, post their own writing and form groups and book clubs.

Goodreads is a powerful sales tool because its users are there to look for new books. They are also effective at helping readers find books they haven’t heard of–not just helping promote major bestsellers.

A Few Things You Can Do On Goodreads

• See which books your followers are reading and read their book reviews
• Track the books you’re reading, have read, and want to read.
• Check out your personalized book recommendations. Goodread’s recommendation engine analyzes 20 billion data points to give suggestions tailored to your literary tastes.
• Find out if a book is a good fit for you from the community’s reviews.
• Host giveaways for advance and finished copies of your book.

The simplest way to get started with Goodreads is to join as a reader. Register at goodreads.com and create a profile. Put in a username, email address, and password, and click sign up. The site will walk you through the rest. Once you get comfortable, you can start looking into services built for authors.

Goodreads Author Program

Below are some basics of the Goodreads Author Program, including what it offers and how to register. The author program has several features to help authors grow their community and promote their books. Much more in-depth information available on the Goodreads Author How To Page.

How Do I Join?

1. If you are already a Goodreads member, make sure you are signed in. If not, sign up for an account.
2. Search for yourself and click on your published author name. The author name is listed below the title of your book in the search results. If you do not find your book in the database of published works, please see the section below (who can join).
3. Clicking on your name takes you to your basic author profile page. This page has your name at the top and “author profile” to the right of your name. This page is part of Goodread’s database of books and authors and is separate from your member profile page (which lists your bookshelves and friends).
4. Scroll down to the bottom of the page. Click “Is this you?” to send a request to join the Author Program. It may take a few days to process your request. You will receive an email confirmation when Goodreads successfully upgrades your user account to an author account. Joining the program merges your author page with your member page. The email will also contain further instructions for managing your author profile.

Who Can Join?

The Author Program is designed for people with published books, or who are in the process of publishing a book. It’s best if your work is on a bookseller’s website, such as Amazon.com or BN.com, but they will accept any author who has published a book. This includes authors from other countries as well as authors who are self-published. If your book is self-published and is not yet in the Goodreads database, you may manually add it.

What Can You Do as a Goodreads Author?

Take Control of Your Profile

• Make your profile a dynamic destination for curious readers.
• Add a picture and bio.
• Share your list of favorite books and recent reads with your followers.
• Write a blog and generate a band of followers.
• Publicize upcoming events, such as book signings and speaking engagements.
• Share book excerpts and other writing.
• Write a quiz about your book or a related topic.
• Post videos.
• Add the Goodreads Author widget to your personal website or blog to show off reviews of your books.
• Enable the Ask the Author feature on your profile page and check back regularly to respond to any reader questions that have been posted.

Promote Your Books

• Get the word out! Here are some of the promotional tools available on Goodreads:
• List a book giveaway for galleys to generate pre-launch buzz. (Note—You’ll need to coordinate this with your marketing team, as only one giveaway per ISBN can occur at one time.)
• Sign up to advertise your book to up to the Goodreads Community—20 million readers!
• Lead a Q&A discussion group for readers.
• Participate in discussions on your profile, in groups and in the discussion forums for your books.
• Encourage readers to follow you on Goodreads. Your followers will receive alerts when you release a new book in addition to seeing anything new that is shared to your page.
• Mark your current book “as read” and use the comments to share a short excerpt or why you loved writing it.

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