The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 112 – Goodreads Marketing for Authors

Goodreads is a social platform where readers congregate.

Are the ways in which we can market our books to these people without being sleazy?

Jesper has no idea about Goodreads, so he asks all the stupid questions, while Autumn tries to convince him that Goodreads is a good platform.

(For the record, Jesper did claim his author profile on Goodreads the day after the recording of this episode)

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Read the full transcript below.

(Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Narrator (1s):
You're listening to the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need an literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt.

Jesper (30s):
Hello, I'm Jesper. And I'm autumn. This is episode 112 of the Am Writing fantasy podcast. And we're going to discuss a topic today where, eell, I'm a total noob.

Autumn (46s):
That's very honest stuff, you know?

Jesper (48s):
Yeah. But luckily, well you autumn, you're not. And so we're going to talk about how to use good reads as a promotional tool to market books. So I don't know anything about that.

Autumn (1m 3s):
Yeah. You've never even claimed her author profile on there. You probably have reviews that you've never even looked at, but I can't imagine I enjoy. Goodreads is one of those things, I, I want to be on it more than I am. So maybe this will be another reminder to myself to get back on there and do something now maybe.

Jesper (1m 24s):
And I I'm hoping that I will learn a thing or two today as well.

Autumn (1m 28s):
Maybe I'll inspire. You. You'll have to tell me if I inspire you to maybe think about claiming your author profile by the end of today's podcast while you're setting yourself a very high goal. I, I took persuasive Fessel philosophy in my persuasive psychology actually in my college days. So we'll have to see if it comes out.

Jesper (1m 52s):
Yeah. Yeah. Just don't get disappointed.

Autumn (1m 57s):
Right. I'll try. Maybe I can convince you to give me your author profile.

Jesper (2m 2s):
Well that you could probably yes.

Autumn (2m 4s):
Okay. We'll have to see how it goes.

Jesper (2m 8s):
Yeah. Yeah, indeed. Yeah. I know you have a crazy times on your end. How's it going with all your jinxing of electronic stuff and destroying computers and have you screwed something else in the meantime?

Autumn (2m 21s):
Oh yes, absolutely. Besides destroying battery operated water pumps, I managed to, for some reason, make Adam's Mac, my husband's at Mac air unstable. So it stopped connecting to the internet. I just, my phone's. Okay. Thank goodness. It must be as no, we have a life case on that and it is, we've been joking because yeah, I've told you, my husband knows the, the Fe and my next series, I'm releasing, they cannot touch and they actually end up putting electronics and Faraday cages.

Autumn (3m 3s):
And it's like, my husband's now talking about making me go. I'm like, Oh, I can brand that for my books. So I still think he thought I'd be that excited about hearing. I can get my very unfair day cage from my laptop.

Jesper (3m 19s):
That would be a very interesting author image. And try to explain why, why you're sitting inside a cage.

Autumn (3m 29s):
I might need it. I do not know why things go scurry around me, but I've been extremely cursed racks the last couple of weeks. But I did just pick up my laptop like 45 minutes before we needed to get into recording today. And the student Q and a. So I'm I actually got it online and all my files were actually there. The logic board had been toasted somehow, but it didn't destroy my files. Just the logic board go figure I broke logic, but it's feels so good to have it back. And it's working and they replaced the keyboard and it's also fancy and nice.

Autumn (4m 13s):
It almost looks new for the memory was only decent. I'd be happy. It'd be perfect.

Jesper (4m 19s):
I honestly really hope that you're going to get out of your jinxing cycled quite soon so that you can just, you know, don't break things and just get back into your group without all this stressful stuff. It's Oh my God. I feel bad for you.

Autumn (4m 37s):
Yeah, it definitely had a few days where I've closed up shop early and just gone and read by Kindle, which thank goodness it hasn't broken on me yet either, but my husband actually knows I'm accident prone. So he got me like the most indestructible Kindle that you can buy. It's called a Voyager and it is like shockproof waterproof, you know, drop, kick it proof. I don't know if it's me proof, but so far so good. Knock on wood. Yeah.

Jesper (5m 4s):
Maybe Amazon will learn something that it was not as proven as they thought it was.

Autumn (5m 9s):
Oh yes. Well, if anyone ever wants to test something to see if it's, indestructable send it to me, I've broken indestructable glasses before, so please let me have a try.

Jesper (5m 22s):
Not even from trying, it's just not, you just use it normally and then you will break it.

Autumn (5m 27s):
That's true. I confess that as true anyway, but how are things on your side of the ocean?

Jesper (5m 36s):
Well, nothing as exciting as on your side, that's for sure. Yeah. I don't really know if there's that much to share since last week's episode. It's just been one of those working weeks where I've just been focusing on getting my words in these, the first draft of the reader magnet is done now. Yeah.

Autumn (5m 55s):
Yes. You sent that to me, at least your, I still have to do

Jesper (5m 58s):
My edits and add to it, but yeah, we've been writing. It's been exciting. Yeah. Yeah, indeed. And as we said before, we not very good at celebrating. You actually pointed this out to me in an email, you said like, remember to celebrate, like, and, and honestly I did actually think about it when I sent you the last chapter. I did stop for two seconds to think maybe I should celebrate. So, and then I went onto the next thing on its dupe list, but so he had a two second acknowledgement of an achievement. And then, but I always, I almost would say that those two second is already an improvement because before I didn't even have those.

Jesper (6m 40s):
So it is slightly better, but not a, not a lot better. I could also mention that the, I just wrote up a whole post for our patron supporters on how the new iOS 14 rollout that is coming here early 20, 21 might affect Facebook ads. So this is, yeah, this is a pretty big deal for us authors who rely heavily on Facebook ads and the new iOS 14 will actually block some ad stuff or I would say not blocked, but it's, it's more to do with the fact that previously Apple operated with an opt out methodology, so that if you did not want the phone to share information with Facebook, for example, you had to actively go in and opt out via settings.

Jesper (7m 35s):
And the Apple is changing that with the new iOS so that you have to opt in. So you will actually be prompted by your phone to say, do you want your, your, the phone to share information with, for example, Facebook? And of course, most people will say, no, we don't want that. And then some of the ads becomes a problematic to run because Facebook cannot collect the data that they could before. So yeah, I wrote up a whole post on Patrion for our supporters on how I view this, what are the consequences, how to deal with it. So that was sort of a scary and interesting thing all at once there. That is, that sounds interesting.

Autumn (8m 16s):
Cause I know for me, I actually run Firefox and they have a Facebook corral, which blocks you from the Facebook pixels on websites. And I always feel sneaky by doing that, but I also feel like I'm undermining someone else's data. Oops.

Narrator (8m 34s):
A week on the internet with the Am Writing Fantasy podcast.

Jesper (8m 39s):
To welcome back Jeffrey on Patreon.

Autumn (8m 42s):
Yes. Thank you, Jeffrey, for coming back, you had a little glitch where you're gone for a little while and you've returned to us. So thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much, Jeffrey, for your continuous support of the am writing fantasy podcast. We really appreciate that. And I dunno, I feel like saying a few words about Patreon here or Yeah, that's, it's, it's a very wonderful platform and it really, it is what supports this podcast and lets us pay for the recording and the hosting and all of those things that is actually all paid out of pet pantry on every single month. So thank you for everyone who supports us there.

Jesper (9m 22s):
Yeah. And I fully understand that, you know, we live in a media reality right now where podcasts are free and that's fine. The reality though is also that we can't make a living from something that is free. So that's where we use patron and we are not running any ads on the podcast either. So we're not getting any money from there. So we entirely funded by patron as, as autumn just said, I could also mention, for example, that we just, we did have a, this week, one of our very strong patron supporters leave us on Patrion or the last week due to the person's financial situations. And that is fully understandable people.

Jesper (10m 2s):
So changes, you know, circumstances can change in your financial situation. And first and foremost, you have to take care of yourself. So I'm just saying this because supporting us on patron doesn't mean that it has to be forever. If you have the capability support with maybe just $1 a month for now, that is awesome and it makes a difference. And then if you laid on your circumstances might change, then don't feel bad about it. It's perfectly fine. If you don't have to drop out and spend your money somewhere else after all, you have to take care of yourself and your family before anything else. I think that the one thing I would like to point out autumn here is just that I think that the trouble with this kind of thing is that most people always think that somebody else will take care of the supporting stuff, you know?

Jesper (10m 54s):
And in truth, if everyone just stopped thinking that and pitched in with a dollar, then I wouldn't have even have to mention this at all, because then it would be fine. Yeah. At the end of the day,

Autumn (11m 7s):
The Wikipedia often says the exact same thing. And I always do think, you know what? I can sit there asking for like two bucks, I always send Wikipedia something when they ask. I admit it.

Jesper (11m 18s):
Yeah. I mean, the thing is that this podcast is not just recorded for the fun of it. We actually do take it quite seriously. And we're trying to give you very useful and also some, sometimes just entertainment but useful advice. And if you do appreciate that, if you find it helpful in any way, please go and check out Patrion and you can follow the link in the show notes and see if, if maybe it would be something you could support us a bit there. Yeah.

Autumn (11m 49s):
Don't forget with our new website rebuild, which is finish by the go check out and writing fantasy.com. But if you go to am writing fantasy, fantasy.com/writing hyphen tips, or just go into the website and go into the blog, we actually added a button just to donate. So if for some reason you don't want to do patchy on you don't want to do. I mean, there's rewards there and hundreds of posts at this point and writing tips and marketing tips. But if for some reason you don't want to do that, but you would like to help us out and be able to, you know, support the podcast. You just want to do a one-time little gift. We made that possible on the website. So go check that out and we appreciate that as well.

Autumn (12m 31s):
Thank you so much because it does really help keep the lights on here, especially when you have one, half of your tribe is electronic accident prone. Yes. Okay. Anything else to add to, or should we move on to our conversation on Goodrich will only, I can say that it's not true of the moment, but by this time this is released. We will be over 3000 members on am writing fantasy Facebook in our group. And we're so close right now. We're, we're literally a day or two away. So, but definitely by the time this is released. So come join us on am writing fantasy Facebook, because it's just growing like insane. And when everyone there is wonderful.

Autumn (13m 15s):
Excellent. Yes, please do that. So there's probably something like a hundred million readers on Goodrich. I believe autumn probably close. I think the last time I'd seen was 95 million was the stats they had released when I took a webinar with them a year ago. So it's probably gotta be a hundred million readers, not just members, readers, people who love books. It's some million people look, I love books website. And I think this is one of the reasons why I'm a newbie to good reads because you know, in our little, let's say publishing company here, you, you and my publishing company advertising is sort of the stuff that I do, but good Reese has like considering you have your, okay, let me just put out a good read CEO here.

Autumn (14m 13s):
All right. So I'm an in, I'm in a meeting with the other executives and it's like, how many people do we have on the platform now? A hundred million. Okay. That sounds good. How do we capitalize on that? Well, so we don't why, well, I don't know. We don't have any ways to put any ads or monitor these people. So they're just using our platform and it's scrape. Yeah. Okay. Maybe it's great, but is I just don't get it. I mean, why can you not place apps on Goodrich? For example, with that many people, it would, it's like the most obvious place to advertise, but you, you can a bit,

Jesper (14m 52s):
And we're going to talk about that, but it's very limited.

Autumn (14m 55s):
It is very limited and it used to be a little less limited. I used to run good rates ads, but compared to AMS ads, they actually didn't perform that well, which is just to me crazy because these are people who love books, but yeah, use only so many ways you can actually give good reads money, which is probably why those ways that you can get good reads money. It costs quite a bit of money, but in its own way, from the author perspective, that's actually awesome. It's hard to give them money. You have to, there's other ways that you can go talk to these readers and find them.

Autumn (15m 35s):
And so it's all free. It's kind of cool.

Jesper (15m 40s):
It is cool. But I have a feeling that a lot of stuff that we're going to talk about here, or rather that you're going to talk about and I'm going to listen. But I think a lot of it has to probably do with there's a lot of time investment involved here. I have a feeling

Autumn (15m 56s):
There could be, but I mean, I guess if you're going, if you consider it a social media platform that is a hundred percent readers, why would you go to Facebook where it's like your aunt, Betty and your cousin, and they don't even read your books or do you want to go where there's readers, who you can go in, like sort through by the genre and find them and connect with them and have a great fan base. Where should you be spending your time? If you're going to spend some time on social media, it's not, you know, or looking at political tweets.

Jesper (16m 31s):
Yeah, no, I understand that. But maybe just before we get into all of those things that you can do, do you have any, because as you said before, it's even when you could run ads, they were not converting very well. And given that there is a hundred million or 95 or whatever, I don't think those 5 million makes a difference, but let's say around a hundred million readers on good reads. Why, if no, let me rephrase that. If it was very effective in terms of selling or marketing your books, I would think that every author would spend quite a lot of time on good reads, but I spent quite a lot of my time brushing up on the latest marketing things and, and ad strategies and all I do that all the time.

Jesper (17m 24s):
And I never ever hear about you should be spending time on good reads. So I'm just wondering now that I've never really used good reads. So of course I'm, I don't have any, let's say I don't have any standpoint in terms of arguing why or why not, but I'm wondering if you have any reflections on why is it not converting that well, w w what is it is it's to do with the audience that is Andrea or

Autumn (17m 50s):
Why? I think it's the, I think it's sort of almost like talking about a Kindle unlimited. If you, I know some authors who are a hundred percent Kindle, Kindle unlimited, and they're making a living wage off of that. And I know some authors who are on good reads and they are invested, it is their number one social media platform. It's where they spend all their time and the ones who are doing that. I mean, you're talking directly to readers and they're doing well. They, the webinar I took with good reads said that, you know, if they showed some books, that's like, this is a new release. This is one that basically went on fire on good reads.

Autumn (18m 31s):
And because of that, it was very popular across the board. Got the New York times bestseller lists all of these things simply because it started on good reads and got that burn going. So it can be an incredibly powerful platform, but I think most authors are spread out or they're not concentrating enough on just one platform and doing really, really well in it. And I mean, I have to say, like, I, I love good reads, but I also hate it because it is owned by Amazon now. And they have not put much money into it as it is like a 1990s platform. It looks terrible. Yes.

Autumn (19m 11s):
It's a really old, outdated, it's a forum. I don't even particularly like forums. You can't, you have to know HTML to even put in an image much less an image and a link. So you have to know a little bit of coding. Yes. You actually have to know coding to you mean you could just do stuff kind of blandly, but if you want it to make it look pretty again, that's probably my graphic designer decide coming out there that, you know, I, I know HTML coding whenever I'm on there and I want it putting in post photos and things. So it's so archaic and everyone keeps trying to create the next good reads. You know, a lot of platforms are trying to create a new version of good reads, but no, one's managed to knock it out of the number one spot for readers.

Autumn (19m 54s):
And I think there's a few reasons there, and maybe it's inertia because everyone's already there and until it explodes or Amazon takes it away, or it makes it a paid for platform. They're just going to say on good reads, because right now, even though Amazon owns it, it's kind of, it's got its own people, its own personality. It has librarians that manage the data and stuff. And they're fun to talk to. I've had to, I've had the fun of asking them a few questions. So it's got its own kind of thing going. I think, I think if you really, if even me, if I really invested the time and got going, the number one thing you can do as an authored to change your book sales is to go and talk to readers to go and build up your reader base Emma's are good.

Autumn (20m 40s):
Reads is a fantastic place to go and do that, but you have to be invested and dedicated and not just jump in and out and in and out, you got to go in and be part of the group. And the membership know that that part is perfectly fair. And I understand that, but I guess my question is, can you get them and maybe we're going to get into this so you can save the answer. If it's something we've got to get into any way. But as I said, I'm a new PSO. I'm I'm asking the stupid questions. Fair enough. But can you get people off of good reads and onto your email list in any easy way? Short of there is I think one or two ways and we will get into that.

Autumn (21m 20s):
So, yes. Okay. But let's go. Not as easy, it's not as easy as adding a button to your good reads author profile. It's not that easy, but there are other ways that you can do that. Okay. Well, what do you want to stop them? Well, I think we should start with the obvious ones. And one of them we've already touched on is that good reads used to do advertising, used to do self-service ads, almost the same as AMS ads, except it was actually a little more archaic and old fashioned AMS is like so much more sleek compared to what you could do on good reads. And I have used them and it took for ever to even spend $50 there.

Autumn (22m 4s):
It just was, it was really, I can see why they stopped doing it because they were not serving very well. They did not generate a lot, but I thought it was funny because just to double check before we ran this today is I did check on what their advertising says and it says no longer doing it, but they did say that this is literally for quote, for larger budgets, looking to drive maximum awareness on good reads, contact our advertising team to learn about our customized book, launch packages from larger budgets. So if you're a brick and mortar publisher or JK Rowling go to Goodwill. Yeah. I would think it was something similar to because Amazon also has it, the advantage program.

Autumn (22m 47s):
If you get into that, you, you can get not the investors program itself, but I forgot what it's called, but they have some, some branding banner stuff that you can get posted on, on Amazon. And I think if I remember correctly, I think the minimum spend to get into that program is 50 K. Oh my goodness. I was like, you don't just do that, right? No, no, no, no. So you, you were a serious publishing house or an author who is amazing. Yeah. When you can say, Oh yeah, 50 K nut up problem. So there is that. And I think the other thing that most people know good reads for is book giveaways.

Autumn (23m 27s):
Because if you're a reader, you know, there is a way it's so easy to sign up for either an ebook or a paperback of giveaway. And I remember the day where they were actually, I think the cheapest $50, maybe it was more, but there was a time they were super cheap to run. But now the minimum, the starting price is $119. So they're not that cheap anymore. That's not horrible. And if you're going to run a Kindle one, it has to be, you have to be published through Amazon. So through KDP and you can give up to a hundred books of an ebook giveaway, or if you want to do a print book giveaway, you can have a smaller, you know, just do like five print books or even 10.

Autumn (24m 10s):
So those two options are there. And I think most people know about them. And I did them once upon a day. But now that they're a little more expensive, I save up for maybe a big splash, like the final book of a series or something like that. You want know, do something special with it, but those are great, great and popular ways of actually quickly connecting with readers. So if you want to give one a try, I would highly recommend it.

Jesper (24m 39s):
Yeah. And the one thing I do understand about these giveaways is that one of the key benefits of it is the, there is like a social amplification built in meaning that I think everyone who enters a giveaway automatically has that book added to their, want to read shelf, which then creates a story in the newsfeeds for all their friends and followers. So that's pretty neat. You know, that, that way it's sort of that amplifies the word of mouth basic.

Autumn (25m 9s):
Yes, exactly. It is. And that's what, I don't know if, if most people realize like that's how good reading works. It took me a while to figure out because good reads has a couple of different areas. It has the forum area, the groups. So you can go into groups and forums and get to meet people and chat. There's like an archaic version of Facebook. If people are not used to forums, I they're not picture related enough for me. And I think that's why I don't like them. They're all textual and I'll go, my husband loves them and I just find them appalling. So I'm just not a good on forums, but I should spend more time there. But then they have a side that is like sorta like Facebook newsfeed, where it's an ongoing feed and you get to see things posted by your friends.

Autumn (25m 50s):
So the more friends you have or the more friends someone else has, you know, they, it gets shared more widely. And you would like to be just like Facebook. You would like to have your feed, something about your book, show up a couple of times, maybe a day. So all of the things I'm going to suggest are basically ways of getting your book, something you're sharing to show up, just so that people see it. But obviously the number one goal is to get basically as many friends as you can. And the best way you can do that, as you can either go friend, everyone who say likes a book that you like, which is probably a perfectly way of doing it. Cause you want to stick into your genre. You want to, you know, keep people who, you know, go everyone who reviews your book, ask them to be your friend.

Autumn (26m 34s):
You can do things like that. Or obviously you can share with your newsletter, your list on social media, other platforms. That's why you go into Twitter and you'll see someone say, Hey, I'm a good reads author. Find me here. That's because they want people to follow them. And so if they're following you on Twitter, you want to get them over to good reads as well. You're going to have to bring people into the platform, even though it already has a hundred million readers, you know, you have to find them and connect with them. It's a lot of networking. But to do that, that gets the amplification that you just mentioned. You want to spread your message to everyone's newsfeed on good reads.

Jesper (27m 11s):
And that's where I'm getting slightly nervous here, right? Because you're not in terms of having to bring people in. And I understand that all that, but building a reader list, so to speak on somebody else's real estate, that's like the number one thing we talked about in the self-publish sex success course that you should not do. You know, you have to get them onto some email list, meaning that you own the list of readers and they're not built on a good reads or the same thing applies to Facebook groups. There was people who build up a huge Facebook group and that's the only place that they can connect with those readers. And what happens to data at Facebook decides that, well, maybe now we're going to charge you to be able to post our stuff in your own group.

Jesper (27m 57s):
Otherwise we're only going to show it to 10% of them or whatever, you know, you never know what's going to happen. And that's why at least in the self publishing costs that we always say, you have to get people onto your email list. That's the only way you can control your own customer list. And that was why I was asking before, can we get them out of so, okay, let's say we get them into good reads then, but how do we get them out of there and onto our email list?

Autumn (28m 25s):
Well, we will, there's a few places where we can look at doing that besides obviously, you know, by getting them to shelve and buy your books. Even if you disappear off of good reads, for some reason, the fact that they have your books and hopefully in all your books, they have links to where else they can find you. So that is one important thing. But yeah, this is definitely using another platform to build. Hopefully you want to pull them into your own list, but I do think occasionally with something that it is book dedicated and reader dedicated. It's not bad to have a presence here because these are readers. These are active, hungry readers. These are people who really love books.

Autumn (29m 6s):
And if you're going to spend some time, you know, any time, this is a place to be better than Facebook, better than anywhere else. This is definitely an audience you should look at because there's a lot of people who love books and will be active on this and have been active for years and years.

Jesper (29m 26s):
Hmm. Okay. Fair enough.

Autumn (29m 29s):
I know I haven't convinced you got the wool work on it. We'll work on some of this sharing and I'll see if we can get some stuff that's over, you know, how you can move them into your newsreader list, how you can get them off of that. I mean, I have to admit, I had a following on what, what Pat and I haven't been back there for ages, but it is interesting to see like where you can build up reader relationships and which are the ones that are worth keeping or which are the ones that are going to go and then buy your books. And I will say on good reads, these are the ones that are going to go buy your books. These are ones you want to make friends with.

Jesper (30m 3s):
Interesting. Why the ads never worked very well then, or maybe it was more to do with how the ads were served and stuff rather than the actual audio

Autumn (30m 11s):
You were really, you could only ever use your book cover, which kind of makes sense. I mean, it's your book cover? And the copy was very limited. And I think where they show up the website, just being as old styles as it is, they just weren't being served well. No. Okay. I would say, I think Amazon has too many ads, but Oh my goodness. They're not going to slow those down anytime. So I think they're going to add more, to be honest, especially now that I do have a Kindle and you see how they, the ads come up on your Kindle and it's something that the Regenera can I at least choose which books are going to show me anyway. So let's get into choosing that, but yes, exactly.

Jesper (30m 56s):
But I can get a lot of weird ones on my Kindle as well. It's like, I don't know why you advertising this to me. I'm never going to buy it

Autumn (31m 2s):
Exactly. Not the right audience. Right. So sort of I mentioned the forums. So sort of going onto the forums and being the troll that, you know, every time someone says, I want a book recommendation and you're just sharing your own book, which I don't recommend. Don't do that. This is not, we're going to just skip the forums. As I mentioned, that is not my forte, but you can go and join the forums and you should be there as a participant, as a reader. And also, you know, occasionally maybe once every 1 million posts mentioned, you're a writer to get people over to your side. But once I told her, that's probably not that bad.

Autumn (31m 43s):
It seems like it, like, they never want to hear that you're a writer in these groups, but you should go and be active as a reader. And that's fine, but we're here to talk about how you can help your author platform. So let's look at that and we'll go through some really quick ones that are really easy and well, these are ones you most people should know about, but if you start an author profile, you actually go and claim it. If you've already published in Amazon, you have an author profile over in good reads. And so what you do is actually claim it. You don't create it. It's kind of, it's different that way. It's already there. It's already there. You, if you have, you probably already have books that are not only there under your author profile, but have reviews.

Autumn (32m 28s):
People have already been doing this for you. So it's a matter of going in there saying, Hey, that's mine and setting up your profile and adding your pictures and doing things like that. And you can link your blog if have a blog outside of good reads, you can link it. So you can post they're very similar to your Amazon author profile.

Jesper (32m 45s):
Yeah. Well, I was just about to say, why don't they just, I mean, it's all owned by Amazon. They should just pull it from the author central on Amazon. That then done. I mean,

Autumn (32m 55s):
Yeah, you, we won't talk about why they haven't done this stuff, but yeah, that would make things a little bit easier. Okay.

Jesper (33m 1s):
Well, what if I wanted to talk about that?

Autumn (33m 4s):
Do we want to give tips or do we want to complain about Goodreads.

Jesper (33m 7s):
Okay. Let's give tips then.

Autumn (33m 8s):
Okay. One of the things I think is pretty cool though, is you can actually upload videos. These will show up under your author profile so that when readers go and like, look at you as an author, which is a lot easier to do than on Amazon. You know, it's something you actually tend to go to people's author profile a lot more than the book profiles, so you can upload videos. So if you have a book trailers, if you have videos of you reading, if you have audio books and you've made some cool Clippy things, I have shown some to you. I love doing those. So if you do some stuff like that, this is a great place to go ahead and post them. And then they show up on your author profile. They have a nice little, I mean, nice for good reads.

Autumn (33m 49s):
Okay, nice for the 1980s little spot that they sit and they can show up and you can go share them. Another really kind of thing. As you're setting up your author profile, you can actually add a spot for favorite quotes. And so I know most people think of like, you know, life savings. Like one of my favorite ones is when life, when all is said and done, there's more said than done. Well, that's a great quote, but it has nothing to do with my books. What you want to do is on your author profile, share some of your favorite quotes from your own book and have them up there as your favorite quotes. And obviously say the book it's from it kind of will check people's interest.

Autumn (34m 31s):
If they see something they think is pretty cool as well. And so there's another one you can do is you can join groups, which I've mentioned with the forum. So it's just like Facebook and they get to know you as an author, but you can also create your own fan group. So if you wanted to create your own group dedicated to, you know, maybe a genre, maybe a certain type of book, or just simply your own books, you can create something like that there. And that is where I think you can really work on bringing authors or readers over to your profile because you have a lot more control. The forums have usually one or two threads that are, you know, the ones that people are introduction.

Autumn (35m 16s):
And that's where you can say, Hey, dream, join my newsletter list to get a free book or get a free book here. So this is where I think you can really get into the control and directing people to say, Hey, I have this freebie. If you sign up here, you can get people over into your newsletter. And that's one I think is an important one, but of course you need to get people over good reads and then over enjoining to your fan group. But the nice thing is the groups that you've created as well as the groups that you're a member of show up on your author profile. So it's not like it's hidden. It's, it's very clearly posted that says, Hey, there's this fan group for my books go here.

Autumn (35m 56s):
And plus you can post it on your blog. And every time, the nice thing about good reads is every time you touch something on there, you share something, it shows up in the newsfeed. So you need to do like, you know, go in once or twice a day and update something, update a book you're reviewing just one little, one little thing as much as you would do do and do a tweet of course, with good reads. I don't think there's any scheduling platforms. It's like, HootSweet, I'm trying to think there's nothing where you can go and push a post through. So you actually have to go to the good reads platform and type in physical letters and share things by being there physically in person.

Jesper (36m 38s):
But what if I only want to run? I don't want several, you know, fan groups or where, whatever we want to call it or read a group. So I don't want that. I just want one. And for example, in our case, it is on Facebook. We have that group. So what then, so in order to leverage the people who are on good reads, so do you then have to create a group and have it here, or can you create a group and just point them somewhere else or something?

Autumn (37m 8s):
I think it would have to have something active on good reads, otherwise people forums and stuff. You see things float to the top that are active and people are asking questions. And so if no one is actually in it, it's just going to drop to the bottom to the abyss and will not be shown. So you would actually have to have people in here and posting questions, but then you're all

Jesper (37m 30s):
Of a sudden running two different groups

Autumn (37m 32s):
There is. And then, so it's a choice of where is the best place to be hosting, hosting your readers? You know, is it Facebook or is it good? Reads? Yeah, indeed. Okay. And so, and I've mentioned, you know, reading books. So being an active reader, if you read books, you should do your good reads reviews should add them to your own shelves. All of those touches, like I said, they show up in your timeline. And so that way people will see them. They'll see who you are. They'll see that, Hey, I like that book too. They might come and check you out, but let's get into the more interesting things that most people I don't think realize are available on good reads. And one of my favorite is that you, most people go in, they claim their book from Amazon.

Autumn (38m 18s):
That is one thing that does feed through. So if you publish a book on Amazon, it feeds through to your good reads profile. Was you doing anything? That's you just go and say, yep, that's mine. Yep. We're good. But you don't have to do it that way. You can, even if you don't have a pre-order, you can, as long as you have a blurb, something you're got and maybe a coming soon image, you can actually go ahead and create your book in good reads with like a coming soon image. And then you can use that to post updates on the book, using a general update option. That's under your author profile, or you can post it as if you're reading up reading the book or review update.

Autumn (38m 58s):
So all those things will make it show up and they'll have this coming soon image, and then it'll get people to go. And like, they can go ahead and shelve it. So they know when the book does become live, it's actually going to show up on their shelf. So that's a great way for they'll see all the updates. And of course there's some, there is a small problem with is if you're not good with computers or if you're good with computers like me, but you destroy them. When you touch them, you break them. You there's some backend things like once the book is live, you have to have the addition. You know, you want the pretty cover, the one of the proper edition. And that is stuff that every author is perfectly capable of doing, but you have to know where to go to do this.

Autumn (39m 41s):
And again, this is a 1980 style website, so it's not the most intuitive, but once you figure it out, you can do that because I know I've had some book cover changes, and you got to change, which edition is the one that readers will see. And sometimes you have to combine additions and it's some backend stuff it's not exciting. It's only if you like being a librarian is fun, but it is fun. It is possible. And it is a neat way of saying, Hey, I have these books coming up. They are here. They're splashy. They'll show up. It's it is nice way of promoting a book that's coming up.

Jesper (40m 18s):
Yeah, for sure. And I was also thinking, well, the stuff you said before about, you know, adding some sort of updates on a regular basis, I think, and if I'm incorrect here and correct me, but I think what you can do is I think you can link. I don't know how to do it, but I think you can link between your Kindle and your good reads author profile. And then if you are making highlights or notes on your Kindle, as you're reading a book, it will pop up on good reads as updates.

Jesper (40m 60s):
Is that right?

Autumn (41m 1s):
That is right. That is my favorite feature. And I'll get to in just a second. I have like two other ones I want to get to. But yeah, that is, that is one of my favorite things. And I can't even put my finger on why, but

Jesper (41m 14s):
That helps a bit in terms of you having to go down, post something, then, you know, if you're just reading and highlighting something you like, and that's automatically a post right data. So that's nice.

Autumn (41m 23s):
It is nice. And it's, there's a few cool features with that as well. And that's called Kindle notes and highlights. So, Whoa. Yeah. But speaking of that, so part of what you should do when all your books make sure your Amazon ASN number are in the book information, because by doing that, that opens up a feature that allows people to look inside just like they can do on Amazon. So that's a good way of getting readers to be able to open it up. And it's a quick little change that a lot of people don't even realize that you have to go and make sure the ASN number is there. It sometimes doesn't come through automatically or it's on the wrong edition. You need to go and check these things out and it works great.

Autumn (42m 7s):
And so before we get to my favorite one, there's also, there's something called the, ask the author questions. And these are a lot of fun too, because I have gotten readers who have read my books and then they go in and they ask questions and it's right there under your author profile and heavily good reads. It does give you a few generic ones that you can answer. And plus you can put in a prompt. So if you have a book you're coming out with, that was just released, you can say, Hey, ask me questions about my new release, blah, blah, blah. So you can put that in there. So it'll help inspire people to ask questions, answering the questions, makes them show up in the newsfeed, which is very useful.

Autumn (42m 48s):
And also it shows up permanently under your author profile. So, so people go into your author profile and they can see other questions that you've been asked and that you do answer them that you're an active author on good reads. So that's, I always love it when I see a new question in there from someone, and then I feel bad if it's been a couple months or something, because I'm on a good read slope. And I'm like, so sorry, but it is, it is great. And yeah, it's also fun. It's one of those things where you try to get your newsletters, you know, anyone to go and ask you a questions because it does give you an excuse to show up on timelines and it gives you something to talk about. And plus it's always fun to find out someone has questions about your books.

Jesper (43m 28s):
Hmm. I agree.

Autumn (43m 30s):
So Kindle notes and highlights. That's I guess that I don't know why this is my favorite, but so this is one of those things, like you've mentioned, if you're reading in your Kindle and you come across a section and you see where someone's highlighted something, that is actually something that becomes a really cool feature specifically on good reads. So if you click on it, you know, you'll often see comments we'll open up as well. Well, as an author, if you write the comments, they will show up on top. So I think that's actually kind of a cool feature. So as an author, you can go in and they say the most powerful and impactful. One is the first one you do in a book. And obviously the last one you write in a book, but you know, depending on how long your book is, you don't want to do dozens of these, but maybe five, 10 per book, you can go and highlight.

Autumn (44m 22s):
And you can say, what inspired you to write the scene or what this meant to you? Just anything about that setting that moment, why it's in the book and you can do a little explanation there, or just say, Hey, you know, or you could do a little teasing, hint, whatever you want to do and readers can actually comment on it. But then once you sync it with Amazon, it goes up to good reads. And there's a special page called your Kindle note and highlight page. And I will admit, it's not as easy as just thinking you actually have to go in there. And once it's sinked, you have to say, yes, please share to good reads. But again, so if you do five or six of them, you can, once you do that, you can just do one a day.

Autumn (45m 6s):
Then you don't have to do all five or six at the same time. You don't want to, you know, you want to spread this out. So you get a whole week out of this. And then, you know, people ask, they comment back on it. You know, they share it. You can have a whole conversation about it. And that's what I think is kind of, kind of a fun way. It's you get to interact with a reader directly in your book and that makes it kind of fun. Yeah. I can see that. No, you don't sound convinced at all, but it is funny. Cause I don't know why, like I said, I don't know why I like it, but I do think it's funny cause I've had a good reads.

Autumn (45m 48s):
Amazon representative actually reached out to me directly saying, Hey, you know, can you we'd love it. If you would do this on your first, your debut novel and stuff like that.

Jesper (45m 57s):
And I'm like, geez, it's not everyday. You get an email from a platform that says please, and maybe they were emailing everyone, but it made me feel special. So yeah. That's fair enough. Yeah, but I don't know. It just, I don't let's say look down upon good reads in any way. And I can definitely think that there, there's probably a lot of authors who get a lot from it. And, and I don't question data such that the only thing that why I'm hesitating and why I'm not sounding very convinced, I think is because it sounds to me like good reads in the census very much like Reddit in the sense that it's a place you need to participate as a reader there or in Reddit, you have to participate as, as one of the people in the group, you know, you not on read.

Jesper (46m 50s):
If you go, if you just start going down and promoting your own stuff, they will go crazy at you. But it, and it sounds a bit like it's the same here. You know, you have to engage as a reader and then maybe some people will start checking out your stuff. And maybe you can, you can sort of build up some POS around your books in that way. And of course there are those examples where somebody has made it onto the New York times bestseller list, as you mentioned before, but that's probably the lightning in the bottle kind of things, you know, there's very, very few who will do that. So I can, I can recognize that it is a real relationship

Autumn (47m 31s):
Slash community building tool, nothing wrong with that, as I said, but I think you just, you have to like to spend a lot of time on good reads and you cannot, at least in my mind right now, I think you can not view it as a marketing tool because it's really not. The marketing is like secondary. At least that's how I feel about it. I would think I don't disagree. But I think the difference is that even though the marketing is separate secondary, your books and buttons to buy your books are right there in front of the reader. So they're on, they're hungry for books.

Autumn (48m 13s):
So on Reddit, they might not be on there looking necessarily for books unless you're in the one that's, you know, is for books as a reader here, they, these really are people looking for new books. And I mean, we didn't even get into there's like lists. You can add your books to, and have people vote on them. There's let's Topia. There's so many different avenues of getting your books out to different people. And they're looking for them actively on this website. And that's why I think unlike Facebook, unlike a lot of other places, if I was going to tell one author who like what social media platform should I start on? I would probably say, do, do spend time on good reads.

Autumn (48m 54s):
It really can make a difference. You can connect with actual readers. And often these are serial readers. These are hungry readers who will read, you know, 12, 20, 30, 50 books in a year easily. They, they have reader challenges annually on how many books you can read. So this is, this is the population you want to be hungry for your book. So I would leave it at that. If you're gonna start out as an author and you want, you don't know what social media platform to start at, try this one, see if you can make a difference because this one could actually really help you. Okay. Show. Yeah.

Autumn (49m 33s):
Maybe some people got inspired to do a bit of good reach. Yeah. So she will leave it at that. Let's leave it at that. Okay. So next Monday, I should have a very interesting interview for you where we are going to share some inputs on how to get a traditional publishing deal.

Narrator (49m 54s):
If you like, what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to support the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join Autumn and Jesper on patreon.com/amwritingfantasy for as little as a dollar a month, you'll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going. Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.