Yes, Goodreads can be a great platform for an author to reach readers. Here are some easy ways to promote yourself on Goodreads without freaking out about reviews. It’s simple, easy, and might even be fun.

NOTE: Goodreads has changed some things so I’ve updated this article with more in-depth info on what an author can do with this platform. I will go into how to deal with reviews with a separate blog post.

Published authors need to claim their profiles

First, make sure you ARE on Goodreads as an AUTHOR. You must have books published somewhere online and you must claim them to get set up with a Goodreads profile. Once you do, you’ll end up with a page that looks likes this. We’ll go into the various good bits here in just a second.

NOTE: the gray block was an ad which I’ve covered up. Amazon is now using GR to advertise other stuff and while I dislike this, I have no control over it.

Setting up your Goodreads author bio

Most of your Goodreads profile is pretty straightforward: Name, bio, photo, followers, and books you wrote (remember you have to claim them, they don’t automatically load on your profile).

Next, genre. This helps readers know if you would interest THEM. After all you don’t want readers who have no interest in what you are writing so be very clear here about what you do.

Be sure you put in your website URL which they allow. This helps guide fans straight to your website and can be a great opportunity to convert them to being on your newsletter list. If you don’t want to mess with a website there are some website communities that let you make a personal page (see AllAuthor).

When picking author influences, choose ones that are comps to your books. Again, this helps the system know who you write for and who you read.

Keep your bio to two paragraphs or less. Say something about YOUR writing style – why would a reader pick up YOUR book over thousands of others. What makes YOU special. Personally, adding stuff about your pets and family is cute and all but it is dry stuff that doesn’t tell the reader anything about what you write. It doesn’t convince me to buy YOUR book.

Ask the Author Questions area at Goodreads

Ask the Author is a cool feature for several reasons. You get to interact directly with fans who want to know more about you and your books. How flattering! When you are asked a question, it shows up in an email roundup that goes directly to the people who followed you, reminding them of your existence!

Unfortunately, what I’ve noticed is that it can take Goodreads 24-48 hours before they email you that you have a question to answer! Phooey!

If no one is asking you questions, you can ask yourself a question.

This is a good tool to use so you can get the message out there about some aspect of your writing or books that you want your followers and visitors to know about. For example, that you are working on a new book or that you have a book a launch coming soon.

If you don’t have enough active and engaged readers to ask questions, you can ask yourself a question. This is a good resource to use to EXPLAIN aspects of your book or writing that is hard to do in a book description.

For example, if you want to highlight trigger warnings but don’t want to write one on the book description you could ask yourself a question about that book’s content.

I’m using a routine at about twice a month of asking myself a question. Don’t go overboard but do use it as a way to speak directly to fans and hopefully, it will become active on its own once you get enough books out and generate enough followers.

Post your book trailer on Goodreads

One cool thing is you can also post videos so if you are doing Book Trailers. Look for it on the left side under your followers (seen on a computer).

I wish they would do more with this video area because it’s pretty cool! You can even see all the videos on the VIDEO PAGE

Add your blog to your Goodreads feed

Under your list of books, you’ll see your latest blog post from your website if you have synched it with your Goodreads profile. Like the video area, there is also a blog page for those that click through who want to see all your blog posts.

Like the Video page, the BLOG PAGE lets the viewer see all your posts that you’ve made. It also helps with backlinks to your website, something Google uses to rank your website as being trustworthy and of interest.

Follow or Friend? What to do on Goodreads

I personally do NOT like to friend unless I really know the person. And please don’t ask other authors to friend you unless you DO KNOW THEM. I am more willing to follow others, especially if they review the type of books I like.

Should you allow followers to know what you are reading?

If you read the books your followers would like to read, letting them know what you are reading would be a good idea.

I personally do NOT like this option and have it turned off. My husband and I share a Kindle, and both read a lot of things that would be of little interest to others. I also hop around a lot between books and genres. If a sample or book doesn’t interest me, I dump it. So that would look very confusing on Goodreads.

Listing a book on Goodreads can be a little tricky

If the book is live, all you have to do is claim it (it doesn’t automatically put your book on your page). In one case I had to ask a Goodreads Librarian to add the book to my page so that isn’t unusual.

You may want to put up a dummy listing before the book goes into pre-order or publishes, which is a little tricky, but not impossible. On your Author Dashboard, go to ADD A BOOK. This works best if you have a title and ISBN for the book set aside. It would also be great if you have cover but if no cover, upload a TO BE ANNOUNCED graphic that acts like a cover.

Once the book publishes or goes to pre-order you will need to COMBINE EDITIONS. The best way to do this is contact a Goodreads Librarian.

The benefit of putting up a book you know will publish in the future is you can start building excitement with your followers and having them put it on their TBR Wish list which gives you many benefits as an author. This advance publicity can really help your book launch be successful.

Ask fans to put your books on their TBR bookshelf

The more your book is listed on bookshelves, the higher its rank of popularity on Goodreads. If it gets enough attention your book could be listed in the articles Goodreads send to their users! So work that link to your Goodreads page for your book during the pre-release leading up to the book launch.

This is Breathings of the Moon which hasn’t been released yet, but you can see how readers can click and put it on a wish list to read. Why you want this for a book about to be released is that anyone who has this on their wish list will get notified when you do a Goodreads Giveaway. When they put it on their wish list it also pops up in their feed, letting their followers know about your book.

Doing a Giveaway on Goodreads

A good time to do a Goodreads Giveaway is 30 days out from a book launch, ending it the day the book goes live. You can also do it for a book that is already published.

At this time I do ebook giveaways for 100 copies for $119 version. When you place your order you will not be charged any more by Amazon for the ebooks you giveaway so that is pretty neat.

NOTE: Amazon will NOT allow you to list a giveaway for a pre-release until an epub has been uploaded to the KDP dashboard.

Anyone who has put the book on their wish list TBR or who follows you will be notified by Amazon in an email that a giveaway is now available (see graphic below). When they join the giveaway it again notifies their followers (once when they put the book on the wish list, and again here) about your book. It’s a great way to be seen on Goodreads for a small investment especially if you have been growing your Goodreads followers.

Doing a giveaway is also a very low cost way of discovering a lot about how well your books are doing and gauging interest. In the below summary seen on your Author Dashboard you can view how many people entered the giveaway. Be aware that in a series, the numbers will naturally fall off the further you get into the series.

Post a Self-review to update fans on Goodreads

If your book is live on Goodreads, you can leave an update by doing a NO STAR REVIEW. Any change you make in the “review” goes into your feed and is seen by followers. I’ve been using this feature a lot and it has helped me grow excitement about forthcoming books,

I now use it leading up to the book launch for my pre-sale books like here for A Spell of Rowans, with an announcement seeking Beta Readers. When I’m ready to release ARCS, or it goes up at NetGalley, I will edit this “review” to give readers that info. Every time I do that it sends an update notification to my fans on my feed.

DO NOT RATE YOUR OWN BOOK!

That is unethical and can get you banned at Goodreads. However, writing a ‘review’ with NO RATING is acceptable.

You can see below that I give NO STAR RATING, but I do have a “review” where I discuss the sale of Ghost Talker and give some information like “if you like this author, you will like this book” and some popular “tropes.”

Here’s another example where I used a universal buy booklink for those who don’t buy through Amazon. To get the bold text, italics, and stars, I’ve used Unicode.

Here’s a “self-review” by one of my favorite authors, Intisar Khanani about her book being released. Her style talks directly to friends while highlighting things she feels is important to readers to know about this book, such as where review copies can be found. She does NOT give herself a star-rating (smart lady!).

Reviewing other Authors on Goodreads

Like Bookbub, your author name is attached to any reviews you do of other people’s books. That is why, to preserve your reputation, do NOT post book reviews unless you can HONESTLY give them 4-5 stars.

Like Bookbub, I try to review on Goodreads books I think my readers would also like to read. This helps me establish myself as an authority, and helps with networking with authors who may write things that have the same readers as I do.

On Goodreads, I give my longest reviews. I take a shortened version, change a few words and use it at Bookbub. This gives me a twofer on social media with little effort on my part.

Be very careful with this. If you score low, it can generate ill feelings and a backlash so just do four and five star reviews and be as kind as you can.

Using quotes from your books

This is another fun way to use Goodreads that one author had a lot of success with: uploading quotes from your books so they are used by others!

Read your book on a Kindle or book tablet device and highlight the quotes you think might fit big topics (life, love, grief, coping, love, sadness, etc…). Put them into a doc with the name of the book on top. Start adding via copy and paste via the ADD A QUOTE which you can find on your profile page near the bottom.

This can be a tedious process especially if you have a lot of books. I haven’t seen a return on it yet, but it is an investment that only requires time. And you’ll need those good quotes for marketing purposes anyway!

Many things have changed with Goodreads since I wrote this article so I expanded it with the new information. Information about Goodreads reviews and how to deal with them is in this blog post.

Overall though, Goodreads is where the readers are at! Especially those that review and are willing to share their reading habits. It’s full of treasure and will help you find Comps, engage fans, and find reviewers. Shouldn’t you be there?