I was at Book Expo last week and lucky enough to sit in a session by Patrick Brown of Goodreads. Here are some fun tips from his session and a link to the slides! Not on Goodreads? You may want to consider it. Check out the stats below!
First up, some stats: 
18 million members on Goodreads and 24 million reviews
Their reviews tend to get shared across a variety of platforms, too – and a lot of them get shared on Facebook. Reviews are a big book activity driver on Facebook.
Blog posts are a fantastic way to gain more attention to your profile. Blogs show up in the feeds of the folks who follow you or in their daily email digest. Also, blogs show up on your friends’ lists (those who follow you) so the folks following them will see the posts, making the exposure tremendous. Lesson #1, blog more on Goodreads!
Wondering how to break down the list of tasks for your Goodreads profile? Let’s start with the daily to-do’s:
- Shelve books – and write blurbs, you don’t always have to write a review or give a star rating. Just keep your shelf populated.
- Make sure your account is synched to Twitter so you get the feed to your profile
- On your Homepage, down on the right hand side you’ll see this:
- Be sure to post an update daily if you can or weekly!
Is Goodreads on your website? Be sure and add their widgets to your site. It will help your exposure there!
On Book Giveaways:
Giveaways help kick start book discovery and you can do multiple giveaways for a book. Patrick’s suggestions were as follows:
- Do a pre-pub giveaway
- Start early 3-5 months pre-pub for giveaway
- Then after book is out, do another giveaway to raise awareness
- How long do you want the promo to run, how many books? That choice is up to you, but Patrick suggested running it for a month and giving a minimum of 10 books, even better, give 50. He said the more books, the better the exposure!
- Facebook offers ads, he suggested to do a small ad around your giveaway, Enter to Win which is a great idea.
- Here’s his Goodreads presentation! www.slideshare.com/goodreadspresentations
Share Sell More Books on Goodreads! Click to Tweet
I’ve been trying to schedule Goodreads into my time for too long, Penny. I really think it’s time to get going now :o)
I’ve started reading Red Hot Internet Publicity… Wow.