Book Reviews - Part 9

Part 9:
NAKED REVIEW: HOW TO GET BOOK REVIEWS
What to do now that Amazon closed all loopholes (2017)

GOODREADS

Finally, here is how to find out what kind of books your friends read.

In November 2012, Goodreads reported 12 million members. In the second quarter of 2013 Amazon purchased Goodreads. Since then Goodreads’ user base has grown to 55 million members. Probably one of the reasons is that Amazon linked their Kindle e-readers to Goodreads. Instead of waiting for readers to find Goodreads, Amazon is making the process easy as pie. At the end of every book a “Connect to Goodreads”-window pops up. Everybody who buys a Kindle book more or less stumbles upon Goodreads.  

Today, Goodreads is the best venue to check out what kind of books your friends, your neighbors, your colleagues, your acquaintances, and your Facebook friends read.

IMPORTANT: You can only search the profiles of people who are your Goodreads friends.  If you have neglected building your Goodreads base, you can look for friends by entering their email addresses or speed up the process by linking your various social media platforms.

 Obviously, the minute you connect this way Amazon/Goodreads knows all your connections, however, the following opportunities may be too precious pass up:

1. Click on a friend’s profile page.

2. Scroll down the page until you  see: “(name)’s bookshelves”

3. Click the link to see a page like this and check out your friend’s book shelves.

Note this reader’s book categories on the left. Offering this particular reader who reads a lot of religious books an erotic BDSM novel  is probably a useless effort.

Indeed, this example offers much more valuable information, the kind of information you can only gain on Goodreads.

Clearly, this reader is a harsh critic of certain religious books. To me it looks as if this person does not hesitate to award any book with only a 1 or 2-star review. Even an author of religious or Christian books should think twice about offering their book to this particular reader.

Additionally, you can even look up what books your friends are interested in, books they hope to win so they can read them themselves, or give them as gifts to family and friends. Such books can be found in the “to-read”-category. Readers can mark books they want to read as “to-read.” Also, when people enter a give-away, the book they are trying to win gets marked as “to-read,” automatically.

Here is a fictitious example: If a reader who reviews mostly historical novels, romance novels, and cooking books but no children’s books also marked a few kids’ books as “to-read,” this is a strong indicator that the reader may have a niece, a nephew, or grandchild who does not live in the same household. If the child lived in the same household, the reader would probably review children’s books too.

Hence if you notice that a Facebook friend, Cynthia Mayor* (*fictitious name) reads a lot of books from different genres, you could check if Cynthia Mayor* is one of your Goodreads friends  and look up her reading history (just like James could have looked up my book list.)

Naturally, you can also look through your list of friends to find out who really likes to read your genre. This will help you in avoiding the mistake of “inviting a vegan to eat a steak.”

Goodreads gives you the opportunity to find out what kinds of books people like to read just as if you were “listening” in person to what your friends, acquaintances, and real life contacts tell you.

Still, don’t just prowl ahead before studying Goodreads’ rules; you need to study them just like Amazon’s rules and never forget that Amazon owns Goodreads. 

https://www.goodreads.com/author/guidelines

As you read these guidelines, you will notice that Goodreads does not forbid asking Goodreads group members for reviews. It’s probably because Goodreads is not an ecommerce site. Goodreads doesn’t sell anything but their own advertising programs, hence, the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC’s) truth-in-advertising laws don’t apply because these laws regulate commerce but don’t regulate social media platforms like Goodreads, Facebook, and Twitter.

[Though many indie authors believe that Amazon doesn’t want to help indie authors in doing business, Amazon enforces most rules because they need to comply with the FTC.]

Still, whether it’s allowed or not, many Goodreads authors resent being asked to do review exchanges. To succeed, you need to read all Goodreads group rules and learn as much as you can about other author/readers’ ways of doing things before you post in a group forum or ask.

Do not, and I repeat, DO NOT contact all your friends with review requests on Goodreads. As you could read in the guidelines, Goodreads has some mighty rules against contacting too many of their members. Considering how valuable the site is, you don’t want to create problems for yourself.

Amazon purchased Goodreads in the second quarter of 2013. Since then, Goodreads’ platform has grown by 275%. Goodreads has also undergone many changes. On the positive side, the new customer service is excellent and the website is being constantly upgraded. On the negative side, Amazon has disallowed many actions that were perfectly appropriate in Goodreads before they purchased it; for instance, communicating with the winners of your Goodreads book give-aways.  You cannot contact them.

I recommend that you use Goodreads only as a “library” and the way it is meant as a social media platform to discuss books. I also encourage you to tell your author friends not to engage in “coordinating with others” on Goodreads. At this time, we can only guess what other changes Amazon is going to introduce. There is no need to encourage Amazon to tighten the guidelines by doing forbidden activities. Remember: Now that Amazon purchased Goodreads they can churn the data that site offers, too.

Beyond being a data library, Goodreads is an excellent venue to find more readers.

Surely you have heard about Goodreads’ famous give-aways of print book copies.

If you have many friends and followers on Goodreads, this is a wonderful way to introduce your book to new audiences. However, it has to be taken with a grain of salt.

Late in May 2017, when Amazon began allowing third-party book-vendors to win the “Add to Cart” Buy Box, it became obvious that third-party book-vendors were underbidding publishers’ lowest new book prices; in fact, some third-party vendors offered new books below production price.

This prompted a wave of blogs from industry organizations and upset authors, most of which circled around the question, “Where are these new books coming from?” Maybe they aren’t new books but gently used books?

Another option is that Goodreads might be a venue where third-party-book-vendors acquire books, either directly or indirectly by buying from winners.

Goodreads tells book give-away winners that they are not required to review a book they win and  only encourage them to do so.

In 2016, I watched two of my give-aways of author books closely 

and noticed that people who weren’t authors registered for these give-aways. At first, I did not think much of it. I figured that these people have author friends and therefore wanted to win my books to use them as gifts.

This option became less likely when I saw that the same three people participated in many give-aways of books from many very different genres. Every time I got on Goodreads, I saw a posting that they had entered a give-away.

That’s how I concluded that certain Goodreads members participate in give-aways to win books they can sell. At the same time, I also heard from many author friends that though they gave away up to ten books at give-aways, they did not receive more than one or two reviews.

In theory, Amazon/Goodreads could put a stop to this potential abuse, easily. For instance, they could impose their own Goodreads “3 Strikes, You’re Out”-policy. People who are lucky enough to win three books, yet don’t even review a single one of them would not be allowed to enter in additional give-aways. Obviously, these readers are not skilled in picking books they like enough to write at least a mini review.

To me, the only explanation why a winner wouldn’t even take this minimal effort is that these winners don’t want to even open their copy to keep the book in pristine condition, because they plan to sell it.

Certainly, I can understand people not wanting to review every book they read. However, people who enter give-aways repeatedly without giving back even a little bit seem to miss that holding a give-away costs an indie author around $8.00 per copy; and up to $25.00 when shipping to foreign countries.

It’s one thing to take advantage of give-aways from big traditional

publishers; it’s a completely different thing to take advantage of indie authors, repeatedly.  

Even with this grain of salt, Goodreads is the social media platform for readers. It has to be assumed that in the future Amazon will add more features and new options. Hence, you want a real presence on this platform and you want your book(s) to get noticed there.

Here is one way: List a give-away of only one or two copies. It’ll  get the same attention regardless of how many books you give away. The only reason why authors want to give away more books is in the hope to gain many reviews. Though giving away only one or two copies diminishes this hope, it has another advantage.

If you give away only one copy, some people may decide to buy your book if the winning ratio is 1:1,000+, whereas if you offer ten (10) copies, they may decide that their odds are pretty good and that therefore they can afford  to wait and see if they win.

Here is how give-aways produce a snowball effect:

Every time one of your friends registers for one of your give-aways the news about this action will show up in all of their friends’ feeds. For instance, if 100 people, who have an average of 100 friends each, enter your giveaway, the “news” that they entered the giveaway will show up in the feed of their combined 10,000 friends (100 x 100).

If 1,000 people, who have an average of 1,000 friends each, enter your giveaway, the “news” will show up in the feed of their combined 1,000,000 friends.

One million! That number beats whatever you are doing on Facebook. Though certainly not all of your Goodreads friends and their friends will see the news about your give-away, on Facebook even users who scan both of their feeds (news feed and pages feed)  may only see 2.5% of the actual postings, as explained in a previous

chapter.

Obviously, a stunning cover helps in getting the attention of readers, but there is more you can do, like creating a quiz, posting blogs, and communicating in groups without selling. Once readers recognize your cover because they have seen it on your blog, they’ll be more inclined to enter. As soon as they do, the fact that they entered your give-away will show up in the feeds of their friends.

If readers see that your book has a stunning cover and a beautiful blurb but (unfortunately) you offer only one (1) copy, a certain percentage of readers will check out your book’s price.

TIP: You might even consider reducing your ebook’s price during the time your book is listed for a give-away.

In short, don’t discount Goodreads give-aways but use them to your advantage to introduce your book to many of the 55 million Goodreads members.

Goodreads groups are also excellent places to make new connections. The obvious reason is that you can search for groups of people who are interested in readings books from your genre(s). Once they are your friends, you can see what kind of books and how many they read.

On Goodreads you’ll find groups for virtually every genre (including some you may have never heard of) – discussion groups, support groups, and groups where writers and readers connect. You’ll need at least a few hours just to scan through all groups to see best options. Investing that time may be more beneficial than hanging around on Facebook and searching for relevant content amidst postings of pictures of kittens and political memes.

To see some of the amazing positive improvements Amazon has made on Goodreads, try the following:

Reset the settings for your update feed. Find the update button in the upper right and set the settings to Goodreads community and Reviews Only. This allows you to see who of your fellow group members is an influencer who posts reviews. These are the readers you want to be friends with because they write reviews that will be seen in their friends’ feeds. 

Equally you can set the settings to see what your friends are reading, who is commenting, who is blogging and “everything.” Mark your top friends so you can filter out a specific group.

I believe that the introduction of this one feature  makes Goodreads superior to Facebook. Both of these social media platforms don’t actually sell books but on Goodreads you can see at one glance who actually reads and reviews books whereas filtering out this information on Facebook would take hours. That being said:

• Don’t try to befriend 100 people in one evening
• Don’t chase people who don’t read your book’s genre. It still doesn’t make sense to ask a vegan to eat a steak.
• Don’t do “calls to action” or “coordinate with others.”

Goodreads/Amazon is showing you more data than Amazon ever offered, at anytime.

Naturally, you should not stop at looking what others do but become a player yourself. 

BECOMING A PLAYER

To utilize Goodreads best you need to look like a player, too. When you befriend somebody on Goodreads or you accept somebody else’s friend request, Goodreads sends you a confirmation email. You should study it, especially if you read books of the genre you also write.  Here is an example:

The presented example shows you two comparisons of my bookshelves with the bookshelves of readers who befriended me.

The first reader marked/read 318 books, including 17 books I also read. Goodreads notes that “our tastes” for the books we both read are similar.

The second reader marked/read only 34 books. Probably, not surprisingly, we don’t have much in common.

However, this second comparison may not reflect the “naked truth.” When I checked out the reader’s profile, I found out that this author/reader joined Goodreads only recently and had not marked more books.

Though it appears as if this reader isn’t reading many books (and might be a person who is just hanging out on Goodreads), she reads regularly.

Hence – evaluate your own profile!

If, so far, you have neglected to post reviews on Goodreads, it’s time to do that.

GOODREADS INFLUENCERS

Another amazingly useful feature is the improved “People Search Page.” It allows you to search for influencers. Please read Goodreads’ guidelines again before you contact any of them. Typically, influencers know any applicable rules by heart, so read them too so you look professional.

Want to meet fellow authors to forge a friendship? Check out author events on Goodreads.

Live abroad?

I just spotted twenty-eight author signings in Canada and four in France. Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen will be speaking on his The Refugees at Shakespeare and Company, located at rue de la Bûcherie in Paris, on July 04, 2017. 

If on July 4, I’d be anywhere within 200 miles of Paris most certainly, I’d attend. How often does one get the chance to rub elbows with a Pulitzer Prize winner?

Want to find more local followers on Goodreads and Twitter? Throw an event and post it on Goodreads, then tweet your event with hashtag #(NameofYourCity) daily for at least two weeks before the event.

Most U.S. public libraries have a community room you can rent for free three times. Most of them welcome author/reader meetings.

Looking forward, it will be easier for Amazon to develop the Goodreads site. Many authors forget that Amazon Inc. is more than twenty years old whereas the corporation took over Goodreads only about four years ago. The volume of activity is smaller at Goodreads, which should help too.

Whereas Goodreads features only books, Amazon features an additional 200 million products. Consequently, they have to churn the data of many more buyers to keep the site up to standard, including fulfilling the requirements of the FTC.

I am one of Amazon’s vendors/authors/publishers since 1998. When I spoke to an Amazon representative a few weeks ago, she told me that she had never seen a login like mine. I just laughed. I have a different login because in 1998 when I became an Amazon vendor, only publishers but not individual authors could do business with Amazon. Indeed, I have been with them for almost twenty years.

That’s why I remember all the cool features Amazon installed to help indie authors sell their books. For me, it was an extremely sad experience to watch how unqualified, smart-aleck-non-expert bloggers, and some review clubs and book promotion services took advantage of every cool feature and abused it.

Sometimes I wonder, if Amazon anticipated that when they asked ARC reviewers to identify themselves by writing, “I received a free copy in exchange for an objective review,” literally hundreds of review clubs would instruct thousands of people to “...just write something and add the byline.” Were some of Amazon’s employees disappointed that the great idea blew up in their face?

And, did Amazon anticipate that when they allowed readers to “like” their favorite authors so they could gauge authors’ influence, some authors would dispatch street teams of hundreds to like the name of authors they had never even heard of, let alone read one of their books?

(This feature was discontinued by Amazon in 2015 after their algorithms identified thousands of books whose authors had been “liked” by hundreds of people even though the books never sold more than a few dozen copies. Since algorithms can “interpret” coordinated efforts this too was a ridiculously useless effort. Amazon just “pressed a button” and “everything” was gone. The time street teams invested was wasted and the cool feature was gone, too.)

It is my hope that Amazon is developing Goodreads in the platform that Amazon was supposed to be on top of being an ecommerce store, namely, a marketing platform for independent authors.

I trust that authors have learned from what happened at Amazon during the last three years and that they will self-police and properly advice novices. I also hope that indie authors stand up and post in the comment sections of blogs from unqualified, smart-aleck-non-expert bloggers, “Just stop it. Doing what you suggest isn’t going to help in the long run.”

Right now is the time that indie authors can take advantage of new opportunities. Meantime, other developments have helped push the industry forward.

Computer programs have been developed to aid authors with formatting their books and other previously complicated tasks.

There is an abundance of contracting services who also can help.

Self-publishing authors’ books have landed on bestseller lists and proven that indie authors are here to stay.

Even the traditional media acknowledges that indie authors produce excellent books and therefore feature self-published books beside traditionally published books in online and print magazines, on podcasts and TV.

I am incredibly optimistic that all of us are moving towards a brighter future for indie authors.

*

Gisela Hausmann dares to write what others' won't say or don't know. Her work has been featured in regional, national, and international publications including Success magazine and Entrepreneur, and on Bloomberg's podcast "Decrypted."

Gisela tweets @Naked_Determina.
Her books are available at Amazon and other fine book stores.

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• 73 Ways to Turn a Me-Mail Into an E-mail

• Naked News for Indie Authors How NOT to Invest Your Marketing $$$

• BOOK MARKETING: The Funnel Factor: Including 100 Media Pitches (paperback only)

• The Little Blue Book for Authors: 53 Dos & Don’ts Nobody Is Telling You
• The Little Blue Book for Authors: 101 Clues to Get More Out of Facebook
• The Little Blue Book for Authors: Essential Manners for the Modern Author

• NAKED TRUTHS About Getting Book Reviews 2018
• BAT SHIT CRAZY Review Requests: Email Humor (paperback only)

© 2017 by Gisela Hausmann

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