Become a Goodreads Author

Goodreads is the ultimate social media site for book lovers. Readers flock to Goodreads to see what their friends are reading, read reviews about books they are interested in, and keep track of books they want to read. How popular is this site? Well, with over 30 million members, we’d say it’s pretty popular! However, Goodreads isn’t just a site for readers; it’s incredibly useful for authors as well. Goodreads is an easy platform for authors to promote themselves and their work and to obtain reviews from readers. According to Goodreads, there have been 900 million books added and 34 million reviews written since its creation in 2007, numbers that continue to grow daily. Convinced to become a Goodreads author yet?

As an author, there are many things that you can do on Goodreads to promote your book. To be a Goodreads author, first and foremost you will need to create an account on Goodreads so readers can learn more about you. After you have created an account, you can find your book (or add it if it’s not already on Goodreads), click on your name next to the book title and identify yourself as the author. After you do this, Goodreads will verify you are in fact the author and place a “Goodreads Author” badge on your author page, increasing your credibility in the eyes of readers. On your Goodreads author page you can include your picture and biography, write a blog, create quizzes about your book, and much more. Use it as an informative tool, but also make it fun and interactive for readers. For authors who would like assistance setting up their Goodreads author and book pages, Mill City Press offers a Goodreads Page service where we handle all the setup for you.

Another popular promotional service Goodreads authors can take advantage of is Goodreads Giveaways. Here authors list the number of books they would like to give away, and then readers enter to win. This is an effective way to get people talking about your book. Even if certain readers who enter don’t win a copy, your book is still on their minds! Take a look at current Goodreads Giveaways to see how the process works and how many readers enter to win. As part of our Goodreads Page service, we create a Goodreads Giveaway for your book to help increase your exposure.

Besides simply creating a Goodreads page, you can also advertise your book on Goodreads. With Goodreads advertising, Goodreads authors create ads for their book that will be displayed to other users. To increase the performance of these ads, Goodreads allows you to target the people you think are most likely to be interested in your book based on factors such as their reading preferences (romance, sci-fi, self-help, etc.), age, gender and location. This helps ensure the money you are spending on advertisements is effectively used. At Mill City Press, we offer a Goodreads Advertising Campaign for authors who want the exposure from advertising but prefer someone do the leg work for them.

For new and self-published authors, becoming a Goodreads author is a great way to get your book in front of potential readers. But don’t take our word for it, check out all the self-published authors currently using and getting reviews on Goodreads!