This week we're going to talk about social media. There's so much that can be said about social media, so I want to break it down by platform. Today we're going to talk about Goodreads.
Goodreads is an excellent platform to start with. Setting up an account is free, although you have to set up your author page after you've set up your primary account. This is good for marketing because it allows you to share what you've been reading with your readers, as well as advertise your books.
How Goodreads works:
Goodreads allows readers to categorize books that they are reading. They can mark books as "want to read", "reading", and "read". Once a book is marked as "read", the reader is given the option to leave a review.
Pros:
This platform is great for garnering reviews. Because it prompts the user to leave a review once a book is marked as completed, it makes it an easy way for readers to talk about your book.
Goodreads allows authors to connect their blog, which helps readers find your blog. It will post the previous ten posts from the blog that you've connected to your author page.
Goodreads allows you to offer a preview of your book. When you upload your novel, there will be an option to upload a preview, which can be viewed online only or can be downloaded to be viewed offline.
You can add your book to reading lists. Sometimes the best way to get your book in front of others is to add it to a vote-based list. As you talk about your book to others, ask people to vote for you on Goodreads.
You can pay for an ad that will run on Goodreads, and it can be tailored to audiences of specific books/authors or it can be tailored to specific genres.
Cons:
There aren't a lot of ways to promote your book. You can't write posts about it, and Goodreads is very heavily reader-oriented. It's built for people to keep lists of books to read. This can be good, if a lot of people have your book on their to-read list, but there isn't any way to really promote your book, outside of paying for an ad or asking for votes.
Goodreads is a great place to start if you are looking for somewhere to begin your advertising process. It's very easy to use and to navigate, and allows the author to offer a preview of the book, as well as purchase an ad that runs to a very specific market. I would say, if your don't have any social media, Goodreads is the easiest and best place to start. It's very hands-off, which makes it less intimidating to budding authors.
Next week we'll talk about Twitter, hashtags, and keeping it short and sweet!