Self publishing supremo Bella Andre
Orna was at BEA's UPublishU last week and really enjoyed the presentation by Goodreads's Director of Marketing, Patrick Brown, with romance indie-author supremo Bella Andre, on how authors can get the most out of Goodreads.
Bella, who keeps an astounding writing routine (25 pages a day, anyone?) spoke of how she has to be really really careful with her time but her top social media goal now is to make Goodreads part of every day.
Why? 18 million members, that's why, and all of them avid readers.
Some of our own members have spoken of finding GR less than user friendly and not knowing how to use it to reach readers..
So we asked Patrick to send us his presentation “An Author's Guide To Goodreads”. And he did.
[…] questo link puoi trovare una guida realizzata da Bella Andre – nota selfpublisher americana – in collaborazione con la piattaforma, in cui […]
I have tried twice to master the Goodreads monster and just last week gave up for good.
Here is why for anyone else considering it:
My biggest problem was the display of book covers that I ditched many years ago. Very few, if any, of these got into the hands of readers but Goodreads still display them very prominently and will not remove them. I asked, many times.
They say they were available so they they have to display them.
Some of these covers date back many years to my first stumbling attempts at publishing and are not representative of the professionally designed and produced books I have published in recent years.
These are positive disincentives to readers and give a totally false impression of where my work is now. This is the prime reason I left Goodreads.
There are others to do with the time I consumed trying to master their cumbersome systems.
Attempts to merge editions for example met with constant failure.
Even getting my author name right was virtually impossible. I was faced with either David O’Neill or DavidRory O’Neill but in my efforts to sort this, I ended up with two accounts which I could not then merge. When I tired, I lost the account I was trying to keep which had over 300 books listed and had consumed many hours of my time!
This site may be great for readers but it’s not author friendly.
Unless, you are really up on how they do things and have no mistakes or old work to haunt you. Beware.
David Rory O’Neill.
[…] How To Get Good at Goodreads […]
Ah – there is a voice missing! That explains why I was finding these slides a bit like some (direct translation from Chinese) instructions I once had for a backgammon set, which only made sense after I’d read some originally-in-English directions. I feel these slides would be great if I already knew, for example, how to get an author presence on Goodreads. But I am totally ignorant, and this doesn’t really help
So I will flounder a bit longer
Yes James. We find it’s best thought of as a big cocktail party, far too big to meet everybody (and some you’d never want to hang out with, and others who have no interest in you) but with opportunities everywhere. You’ll never master it all but can dive in almost anywhere and make things happen. Let us know how you go.
This is a good start. Without the dialogue that went with it, I had to imagine the points being made. I researched some of them and will continue to do so. GR is a huge & unwieldy beast that requires a lot of research to tame.