12 Ways to Promote Your Books on Goodreads

You Don’t Have to Get Off the Couch to Promote Your Books for FREE on Goodreads

You can promote your work as an author from the comfort of your couch by taking advantage of Goodreads, the world’s largest social network for readers and book recommendations.

Before you spend money on a book publicist, you really want to utilize Goodreads because you can reach a potential audience of 55 million members for FREE by following these 12 easy steps:

1. Even before you publish your book, set up a basic Goodreads account to build friends and set up your own book reviews. Then convert to an author account once your book is published.
2. Add in all your published books to make it easy for people to post reviews.
3. List all your social media sites so your fans can follow you everywhere.
4. Post short videos about your books.
5. Publish your blog on Goodreads to increase your readership.
6. Add photos by using Photobucket to jazz up the look of your site and establish your brand identity.
7. Set up “Ask the Author” and “Popular Answered Questions.”
8. Add quotes by you as an author.
9. Participate in groups.
10. Set up events.
11. Offer giveaways.
12. Offer excerpts from your writing under the tag “Creative Writing.”

When You Add Your Blog to Goodreads It Shows Up Under A Feed For All Your Friends and Followers

Let’s discuss this in further detail.

1. To set up a basic account on Goodreads, follow the instructions at this link. Start listing the books you are reading and build your list of friends. Once you have published your book, convert your basic account to an author account by following the instructions at this link.
2. Add your published book to Goodreads by following the instructions here.
3. On your author account, be sure to set up active links to all your social media accounts so all your friends and fans have to do is click on the links to follow you. You can see what I did by looking at my Goodreads profile at this link.
4. Create one to three minute videos about your books to add to your author page. You can add a book trailer by clicking “Add Video” on your author page. I had a friend use my iPhone to record me standing in my garden discussing one of my books but I also create videos by pressing record on Zoom.us, a FREE videoconference program.
5. You will want to publish your blog on Goodreads because with 55 million members, more than likely you will increase the number of people reading your articles. Once I publish on any of my websites, I always cut and paste over into my blog on Goodreads. If you search for any of your previous posts you will notice that often the search engines will show you the versions published to Goodreads and LinkedIn before they show you the original article published on your website. Now here’s another cool thing: Goodreads maintains a constant feed of blog articles. When you publish your blog on Goodreads, your article will show up in the feed of all your fans and followers. People can also subscribe to your Goodreads blog by clicking on the RSS feed. Although you can synchronize your website to your Goodreads blog, I always cut and paste my articles into Goodreads because I want to add photos.
6. You can improve your brand identity on Goodreads by adding photos. I use Photobucket to do this. Simply join Photobucket and once you upload your photographs, copy and paste the embed code for each photo into the copy of your article before you publish it on Goodreads. Adding art is the main reason I copy and paste my articles into Goodreads instead of merely allowing my website to publish them for me.
7. Set up “Ask the Author” and “Popular Answered Questions.” This way your fans and followers can ask you questions and read about your writing process.
8. Add quotes from your books by filling out the blanks at this link. This is important so that when people search for quotes on specific topics, your words show up. This helps to establish you as an authority and improves your brand identity. Once you have added in your quotes they will show up on your Goodreads author page. You can read some of my quotes here. Once you have added your quotes, you and your fans can share your words or wisdom by clicking the share buttons for Facebook and Twitter.
9. There are countless groups you can participate in on Goodreads. This is a good way to interact with potential readers and find out more about book promotion.
10. If you are hosting a book signing or author appearance – either locally or online – be sure to let everybody know about it by creating a Goodreads event and then sharing the news to all your Facebook friends who are also on Goodreads. Just click on Upcoming Events and fill out the information.
11. Run a giveaway. I typically donate 10 books for each giveaway. I estimate the cost at around $100 including the wholesale price of the books and postage to readers in the U.S. You can list a giveaway by following instructions at this link. Goodreads recommending running your giveaway for at least a month to give more people a chance to participate. I usually run my giveaways for the maximum allowable time to give my book as much exposure as possible. An average of 825 people enter a giveaway so you’ll get lots of exposure. Once people win your book, they are supposed to write a review in exchange for the free book. I always include a handwritten note to each winner congratulating them on their win and asking them kindly to write a review. Every time I run a giveaway, I gain new fans and followers in addition to more book reviews.
12. Finally, even if you are not yet a published author, you can publish excerpts of your writing on Goodreads to start building your brand identity. Just go to the link entitled “Creative Writing” at this link. Even if you are a nonfiction author you can publish here. Be sure to add tags so people can find your work. Here’s an example where I added a chapter from one of my books.

You Can Join Any Number of Goodreads Groups

So why get off the couch or spend money when you can promote your books for FREE through Goodreads? To me, it’s a no brainer.

Want to learn more about how you can Win the Game of Social Media?

Join Catherine Carrigan and Ramajon Cogan at www.whatissocialmediatoday.com and we will show you how! Call Catherine Carrigan today at 678-612-8816 or email catherine@catherinecarrigan.com or contact Ramajon Cogan at (928) 821-4553 or email wheresramajon@gmail.com.

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