Authors, are you using Goodreads?

Goodreads isn’t the only social network devoted to library cataloging and discussions about books, but it’s the one I use and appreciate. I’d like to know why Goodreads and sites like it, including Shelfari, LibraryThing, Revish, and aNobii, aren’t very well utilized by authors and publishers. After all, the members of these communities are book buyers or borrowers. Not only that, they’re gathered in one place and identified by the books they’ve tagged as owned, already read, to read, in the process of being read, and favorites. On other types of social networks, not all of the users are book lovers.

Authors seem to discover and congregate in author communities online, which is fine, but relatively few authors seem to know much about Goodreads. For the moment, it’s an uncrowded platform. As an author seeking readers, you’d be wise to jump on the Goodreads stage in 2012, before your competitors discover it in 2013. And if you’re not thinking of other authors as friendly rivals, then you’re not reading this post anyway—and, heck, you might not even own a computer.

To assess the potential of Goodreads, explore the site until you’re comfortable with its features and navigation.

You can install apps that link Goodreads with your social networks. You can join a few Goodreads groups to see how they function and whether they’re active. You can add books to your Goodreads bookshelves, and then the site will recommend other books you might like based on what you’ve shelved. But that’s not all.

After you’re familiar with the Goodreads site, and you’ve seen how others are taking advantage of it, you’ll be better able to imagine how the Goodreads Author Program can be used to promote your own books. Best of all, it’s free.

Goodreads: How to Use the Goodreads Author Program

Jane Friedman: 2 Ways to Make the Most of Goodreads

Patrick Brown: Goodreads Stats Show Which Media Outlets Really Sell Books

Goodreads: Goodreads Author Feedback Group

Jason Boog: How to Add Goodreads to Your Facebook Timeline

Sarah Pinneo: An Author’s Guide to Surviving Goodreads

Perhaps Sarah Pinneo’s survival guide answers my question. Authors don’t use Goodreads if they fear they’ll make targets of themselves, or worse than being targeted, they’ll go unnoticed. Meanwhile, the authors who take risks get all the attention.

Writing a book is risky. Why stop there?

Are you engaging in conversations with the people who care about your writing?

I don’t like the idea of lumping engagement together with self-promotion, because engagement entails caring about other people, while self-promotion involves concern for oneself and one’s work. However, authors who engage appreciatively with their readers and fans will benefit by cultivating goodwill. The act of engagement then becomes one aspect of self-promotion.

There’s no need to explain the benefits of engagement to most extroverts, who already understand cause and effect and use it to their advantage. Most authors, I imagine, are not extroverts, so it can be difficult for them to see the correlation between a particular author’s popularity with readers and the amount of effort that author puts into making and maintaining connections.

Today’s authors almost always promote themselves and their books four ways: online, in person, with video or audio recordings, and in print-on-paper media. Aside from personal appearances, online is where identifying readers who have an interest in a writer’s work is easiest.

Unfortunately, too many writers assume that attracting readers and fans, and their comments, will be a passive process online. They’ll write something, they’ll publish it, and fans will accumulate while the writer is occupied elsewhere. In reality, followers will gather where they find an author behaving graciously—or, failing that, at least brazenly—and with an awareness of the fans’ presence.

Authors who are not ‘net natives might have a difficult time discerning who is taking an interest in them online, unless they learn something about web analytics, which I encourage writers to do. In addition, there’s a simple way to locate people who are writing online about an author or a book. Authors who care about their readership should set up several Google Alerts in order to be notified via email when and where conversations in which they’re being mentioned are occurring. Then, they can engage with the people who care enough to write about them.

There will be occasions when it’s better for an author to avoid engagement. If a conversation is extremely critical of the writer, then joining the discussion can require more tact than most people possess. Consulting with a neutral third party who is an especially diplomatic communicator, before deciding what to do or say, can be helpful.

In many, if not most, instances the comments about the author will be neutral or favorable, in which case it’s a shame if the writer neglects the opportunity to express appreciation.

Learn more about this topic:

Chris Brogan advises authors how to find and join online discussions

Chris Brogan: An insider’s guide to social media etiquette

Mary Tod: How self-publishing changes the bond between readers and writers

Jane Friedman: How to meaningfully grow traffic to your site/blog

Goodreads’ automated “You are now friends with…” feature

Linking my social networking profiles has produced unexpected results—not only glitches, but a few genuine mysteries.

Take, for example, the disconcerting email messages from Goodreads with the subject line “You are now friends with,” followed by a Goodreads user’s online pseudonym.

The body of the message looks like this:

Robin,

Good news! Your friend list on Goodreads is growing. M was added to your friend list because you are friends on Facebook.

See M’s profile

Recommend M a book

Compare bookshelves with M

- The Goodreads team

 

---

 

Want to disable automatic Facebook friending? Go to: [link]

Want to control which emails you receive from goodreads? Go to: [link]

This email was sent by request to [my email address].

 

I’ve used “M” as an example here, because I know “M” won’t mind the substitution. Quite a few people use online pseudonyms, but they’re particularly prevalent on Goodreads.

Here’s one of the many problems with online pseudonyms: if I had sent a friend request to, let’s say, “M” on Goodreads, then I might have been able to recall who “M” was. I could have anticipated the “You are now friends with M” notification in my email inbox. But I hadn’t initiated the Goodreads friendship with “M.” At least, I thought I hadn’t.

What made the email notification confusing was that “M” uses a different pseudonym or a real name on other sites, such as Facebook. I’d never seen “M’s” Goodreads pseudonym.

Who knows what actually transpired when I linked my Goodreads and Facebook accounts? It took about forty-two tries before the app worked properly. Now, a timer is displayed when I launch Goodreads, while it automatically signs me in using my Facebook ID. Fair enough. I asked for it.

However, I didn’t think I had authorized Goodreads to approve any Goodreads friend requests automatically.

Fortunately, a Goodreads staff member responded quickly (kudos!) when I inquired. As it turns out, auto-friending is a feature of the Goodreads Facebook app. To view the app, if you’re using it, follow the first of the two links above, or:

1. Log in to Goodreads.
2. Click on the drop-down arrow next to your avatar in the top menu bar.
3. Select “Edit profile,” which will take you to your “My Account” page. (Go figure.)
4. On the “My Account” page, click on the “apps” tab.
5. In the section reserved for the Facebook app, look at the checkbox labeled “Automatically include in my reading network Facebook friends who are also Goodreads members” and decide whether to check or uncheck.
6. If you changed a setting, click on the “save settings” button at the bottom of the Goodreads Facebook app section.

To be honest, I need all the friends I can get, especially if I actually know who they are.

The perils of not paying attention to the questions

How does it make you feel when you try to discuss something with an expert advisor, and you get a canned response? Is it surprising? Annoying? Disappointing? All of the above?

I’m not referring to auto-generated email:

The reference number for your question is #XOXOXOXO. You should receive a response by email from our support department within the next business day.

Or:

If you’re reading this form reply from Robin Mizell Ltd., chances are you haven’t seen the agency’s website, which provides up-to-date query guidelines…

Autoresponders are the modern equivalents of CLOSED signs in shop windows—informative but not necessarily helpful.

Instead, I’m talking about those times when a question you consider important doesn’t seem to penetrate the consciousness of the professional you’re asking. Maybe you get no answer at all. Maybe you get a seemingly auto-generated reply, as if the person pushed the PLAY button to launch a recorded response that wasn’t quite on topic. It’s uncomfortably obvious that the person wasn’t really listening. The reply, in effect, was dismissive.

This is a classic among women’s complaints about men, which probably means that women often are too easily disregarded, too fearful of demanding consideration, and unwilling to challenge authority. Combine those troubling traditions with the tendency for some experts to avoid saying the words “I don’t know” or “Let me think about it.” Certain authority figures, regardless of their sex, simply can’t consider any new perspectives that might challenge their knowledge, so their reactions tend to be defensive.

Many times I’ve walked away, perplexed and disillusioned, after listening to a colleague’s baffling balderdash. The speaker probably assumed I was impressed, when actually I was crossing his name off my list of trusted consultants.

Give me an expert who won’t shrink from a good debate. We’ve moved into a new era of conversation and engagement. It’s a good thing. Learning should be a lifelong endeavor. The people Robert Safian calls Generation Flux know this: we learn from each other.

I love danah boyd’s analysis of the networked versus the hierarchical business environment, which she explains in a recent issue of Fast Company:

Command and control and hierarchical structures are being disintegrated. Big companies are trying to make that slow down. They have massive internal structural issues.

There are all kinds of reasons to be afraid of this economy. Everything in the corporate world is set up for security, so you can get to the next review. People who are willing to be uncertain will be more likely to be able to move ahead. People ask me, “Are you afraid you’re going to get fired?” That’s the whole point: not to be afraid.

Embrace the questions, people. They make everything more interesting.

Q&A with Brian Feinblum on the Book Marketing Buzz Blog

The exuberant Brian Feinblum posted a Q&A with me over on his Book Marketing Buzz Blog today.

Brian’s been in the book business for twenty years and is also an author. Check out his great blog for lots of new interviews with book publishers, acquiring editors, marketing professionals, publicists, literary agents, media consultants, and other authors. Or you can find him on Twitter @ThePRexpert, where he already has quite a following.

Generosity is a form of self-promotion

To say that generosity is motivated by self-interest seems wrong, until you consider that a feeling of righteousness or the enhancement of your self-esteem or your public image are important rewards.

Now that we easily can act as our own spokespeople online, many of us have assumed almost full responsibility for marketing our products or services—that is, promoting, advertising, and selling our work, as well as analyzing the results of our efforts. Not everyone is comfortable with the task, and perhaps even fewer are effective at self-promotion. Poor results can be due to factors like ridiculous expectations of instant success, open displays of resentment, and dogged determination to ignore the outcome. The hard sell, like a bad pick-up line, can be the reason for failed connections or, even worse, alienation.

We forget that the most natural kind of self-promotion is achieved through generosity. And what could be easier?

Think about the possibilities. Generosity can be as simple as:

• −Giving advice or assistance to a novice
• −Sharing knowledge in the form of how-to guides
• −Congratulating someone on a recent achievement, and maybe sharing the person’s news on your own blog or social network
• −Contributing thoughtfully to a discussion on someone else’s blog or status update
• −Inviting someone to guest blog or participate in a Q&A
• −Offering to coordinate, sponsor, or host a public event
• −Making a product or service available for free, even for a limited time
• −Being attentive to blog comments, questions, email, and phone calls that deserve responses*

*Even a form, or formulaic, response is better than nothing. Particularly online, failing to reply or acknowledge a reply is the equivalent of dead silence and a blank stare, captured for all to see.

There are so many creative, enjoyable forms of generosity to add to the list. Who says self-promotion needs to be all about ourselves? We get attention by paying attention.

Deep down, you knew that all along.

Penny Sansevieri’s must-read for self-published authors (includes good advice for all authors)

Author and book marketing expert Penny Sansevieri’s guest post on the BookBuzzr blog is too important to miss. If you haven’t seen Penny’s “hard look at the realities of self-defeating behavior and some of the things authors might buy into that will sabotage their careers,” then go take a look.

Social reading—why and how?

One of the reasons certain books are read by so many people is because we like having ready-made topics of discussion—to facilitate social interaction. The next time you engage a stranger in conversation, notice how animated the two of you become after discovering you’ve read the same popular novel. Don’t you occasionally choose to read a book primarily because you want to know what everyone else is talking about?

Books can be conversation catalysts, and last week, J.A. Konrath pointed out that it should be easier to launch a discussion along with a new ebook. “What if you don’t join a social network to discuss books,” he asked, “but instead you joined a book that was a social network?” I was impressed by his ability to condense the technological concept into a tag line. Companies are developing social reading platforms, but their programmers don’t always find themselves on the average reader’s wavelength. Consequently, it can be difficult for them to persuade consumers of a need for their product. Konrath’s suggestion was perceptive.

After seeing Konrath’s blogpost, my neighbor Dan Trout said, “That was one of the most Outside the Box things I’ve read in ages, and with very minor alterations to a few of his descriptions, the technology is in place to handle all of it!”

It’s true. When I began paying attention, I found all of these social reading startups:

24symbols

Appitude

COPIA

ReadSocial

Before any of these social reading platforms take off, consumer demand will need to be more significant. There’s also the matter of licensing publication rights.

Which social reading software is your money on? Know of any others?

~~~

Readmill [Added on September 14, 2011]

Subtext [Added on October 26, 2011]