How To Use the Author Program

Every member of Goodreads has a user profile that allows him or her to review books, add friends, and post information about themselves, including listing their favorite books and authors and their interests. Users can also upload photos, organize their books into custom shelves, and post quotes they like. When an author signs up for Goodreads, he or she begins with this basic user profile.

Any author with a book listed in the Goodreads catalog has an author profile that lists all of the author's published work, whether he or she is a member of Goodreads or not. When an author join the Author Program, we merge his or her user profile with their author profile. Becoming a Goodreads Author carries special privileges, such as the ability to edit profile information, add book cover images, post events, write a blog, upload videos, and start Author Q&A groups.

Once you've signed up for the Author Program, nothing changes about your login process — you'll still use the same username and password — but now your user profile will point to your author profile.

To view your Author Profile, click on the link marked "my profile" that appears when you mouse over the "hi, [your name]" link in the upper right-hand corner of your homepage. To edit that profile, you have two choices:

1. Click on the "my account" link that also appears under "hi, [your name]." A small box will appear at the top of the page with a link to edit your profile.

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2. Simply click on your name under any of your books. This will take you to your profile. To edit it from there, click the "edit data" link that appears just above your "about this author" section on your profile.

Events

You can publicize events among your fans by posting to your Author Profile. To post an event, click the "events" link on the side of your homepage, then click "add an event" in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. You can select the date, time, and venue for your event, as well as fill in additional details and invite your friends. You can also opt to have Goodreads send out an automated reminder to those who have RSVPed to the event. Author Lisa See has gotten excellent results by messaging friends located in each city she visits on tour. This kind of focused outreach is exactly what you should be striving for, as it is far more likely to produce results than a mass-mailing.

Writing

You can also post samples of your writing on Goodreads. Post an excerpt from your novel or a short story. It's a great way to give readers a chance to experience your work for the first time. If they like what they read, they'll be back for more. You can post an excerpt from a longer work, an entire short story or poem, or even a full-length novel. When you first start out, each work you publish will be considered "chapter 1," but once you have some writing up, you can add extra chapters very easily.

To post a piece of writing, click here or visit your Author Profile page and scroll down to where it says "Writing by [your name]."

Quizzes

Quizzes are a fun and unique way to promote your writing. Create a quiz about your own books, or make up a new quiz about your favorite authors, books, characters, and more. To create a quiz, click here or click on the "explore" menu and select "quizzes." If your quiz is about all of your work (multiple books), click the "Author" radio button and a field will appear for you to search for the author name. If it is about a specific book, click the "Book" radio button, and a similar search field will appear. If you have correctly linked the quiz to your books, the quiz will appear on the book's page.

Your Author Dashboard is your one-stop shop for all things author-related on the site. It is a private page, visible only to you. The Author Dashboard is located in the upper right-hand corner of your homepage, under where it says "welcome back, [your name]." On your author dashboard you will find:

• Books. A complete list of your work on Goodreads, with simple links to edit the information about the book or change the cover, as well as a link to see the stats of each book (how many adds, ratings, and reviews the book has gotten over a several month period).
• Your blog. Your most recent posts will show, as well as stats for how many people have viewed and commented on each of your recent posts. There is also a link to write a new blog post.
• Advertising. The Author Dashboard contains a link to the advertising dashboard, where you can view the stats for your current campaigns, start a new ad, or edit an existing one.
• Giveaways. See a complete list of your completed and ongoing giveaways, including a list of the winners and their addresses.
• Q&A Groups. The Author Dashboard includes all of your Q&A groups, as well as a link to create a Q&A group.
• Author widgets. A link at the bottom of your Author Dashboard takes you to a page with a variety of author widgets and buttons that can be used to increase your level of engagement on Goodreads. Add a widget or a button to your website and get your fans to review your book. If your book is rated highly enough, you may qualify for a special "People love this book on Goodreads" badge for your author website.

Books

As a Goodreads Author, you have the ability to edit your book data. You can add a missing cover image, correct a misleading or incomplete description, and add co-authors, editors, illustrators, and contributors to your titles. You can also view statistics for each of your books. The best place to do all of this is the Author Dashboard.

Next to each of your books, you will see two green links: "edit" and "view stats."

• Edit. The edit link will allow you to change the cover of your book, change its description, and add a second author, an illustrator, a translator, contributors, or an editor. Please be careful to add only correct information to your books and to limit book descriptions to the publisher's jacket copy of the book. If you are unsure of how to make a change or whether an addition or an edit is required, please consult the Librarian Manual.
• Stats. The view stats link will take you to the statistics dashboard for each of your titles. Here you can see how many people have added, rated, and reviewed each of your books over the past six months. Use the "Chart Type" drop-down menu to view the stats graph in a variety of formats. Note the spikes in number of adds and ratings around the time of giveaways, Author Q&A groups, advertising campaigns, or other special events.

Blogs

Goodreads Authors are the only people who can publish their blogs on the site. Writing a blog is an excellent way to attract new readers to your work, and to keep the readers you already have earned involved — particularly between books. From the Author Dashboard, you can create a new blog, sync your existing blog with Goodreads, and see statistics for how many people have viewed and commented on your most recent blog posts.

What Should I Blog About?

A blog can be about almost anything related to you or your book:

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• Write about your writing process. You'd be surprised how many people find the process of writing fascinating.
• Blog your tour. If you're on a book tour, write about all the great events and stores you've been to and the many interested readers you've met.
• Focus on your interests. Don't be afraid to write about things that are interesting to you, even if they aren't directly related to your book. Interest often equates to passion, and readers can tell when a writer is passionate about something.

Starting a New Blog

It's easy to write a blog on Goodreads. From your Author Dashboard, click "view your blog." This will take you to a welcome page with three options: write a new post, edit your blog's title and description, or sync with a pre-existing blog. From there you can change the name of your blog, as well as write a new post. It's really that easy.

Syncing with a pre-existing blog

If you already write a blog elsewhere on the web, it's remarkably easy to import it to Goodreads, as well. From your author dashboard, click on the link "view your blog." On the welcome page, click "sync with a pre-existing blog," enter your blog URL (e.g. http://socratesblog.blogspot.com), and hit "add feed." Your blog will begin syndicating to your Author Profile page.

With an audience of over 8 million affluent, educated, self-identified readers, Goodreads is the ideal place to advertise your book. The Goodreads Self-Serve Advertising platform is perfect for authors with less than $500 per month to spend on advertising. With the self-serve advertising platform, you can create your own ad campaign, target it to the people you want to reach, and track its success throughout your campaign.

How to create a new ad

In your Author Dashboard, click on the link marked "Advertise your book" found near the bottom of the page. This will take you to a page where you can create a self-serve ad. To advertise your book, fill in the ISBN field and click "load." This will auto-populate the book, ad title, and description fields. Please note that you can edit the ad title, ad name, ad description, and display url as you see fit. You can also ad a new image, if you like. Click the "Engagement Stat" box to have a link show how many people have liked or added your book.

There are several ways to be sure you get the most for your ad campaign:

• Include a call to action. Ads that include active language, such as "Click here to add," tend to outperform ads that don't include such language. Other examples of calls to action include "Add it to your shelf," "Click here to read reviews," and "Click here to win a free copy."
• Make your description simple and crisp. You don't have a lot of characters (140, including spaces), so you'll want to be as clear and concise as you can be.
• Consider targeting your ad. Goodreads offers various ways to target your ads — by age, gender, location, and reading preferences (i.e., a specific genre of book). These tools can be powerful in delivering a higher level of interaction with your ad. Some ads, however, do better without targeting, as every group you choose to target means other groups are excluded. For example, if you choose to target age, please be aware that any user who elected not to disclose their age will be excluded from this targeting and will not see your ad.
• Link your ad to your Goodreads book page. You may have also noticed that you can edit the Destination URL to land on any website you like, such as your personal website or an Amazon book page. While this is true, Goodreads strongly recommends having the URL point to your Goodreads book page. We believe this technique is the most beneficial for you, the author. By linking back to your Goodreads page, you ensure that you will get the most out of your ad campaign. Once a user clicks your ad and lands on your book page, they can add your book to their shelves, which will, in turn, put your book in the feed of all of their friends. If one of their friends adds the book to their shelves, then that person's friends will see the book in their feeds. This is the viral potential of an ad campaign on Goodreads.
• Upload an ebook and add a preview to your ad. This is a great way to give readers a taste of your writing in a direct and meaningful way.

How does the billing work?

Goodreads Self-Serve Advertising is sold on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis, meaning you pay for the number of clicks you receive, rather than the number of people who see your ad. Self-serve ads are sold at a default price of $0.50 per click, but you can bid more or less than that. Bid amounts are one of the factors used to determine how often an ad is shown. If you buy $150 worth of self-serve advertising, your ad will run until it generates 300 clicks. If you want your ad to run on the site for a certain duration, you can cap the number of clicks possible on a given day. For instance, you might want your $150 campaign to run for a month. In order to guarantee that it stays live on the site for 30 days, you would need to cap the number of clicks at 10 per day or lower. IMPORTANT NOTE: We will charge your credit card for the full amount of your campaign upfront, though we are happy to process a refund for you at any time should you find your ad doesn't meet your expectations.

Self-serve ads run on the homepage, search page, and a few other places where members browse books. We reserve the right to change the placements of the ads to provide the best possible service. Goodreads uses a sophisticated algorithm to determine which ads to display to which users. All running ads that match the targeting of the logged-in user (gender, age, location, and book genre) are shown based on the algorithm. The ads that perform the best are shown the most often, though all ads are given a fresh start each day, meaning that each ad gets a fair chance to gain impressions.

While you may not see your ad on the site, you can tell that it is running by checking your stats.

For more information on Self-Serve Advertising, please see the Self-Serve Ad guidelines and the Self-Serve Ad help page.

An Author Q&A Group is a special group that only Goodreads Authors can create. It's a forum where you and your readers can discuss your books, your writing, or any aspect of your career. Q&A Groups are a terrific way to promote a new book, generate interest in a specific backlist title, or spark conversation about your work in general.

How to create an Author Q&A group:

In order to create an Author Q&A group, you must first be a Goodreads Author. Once you are enrolled in the Author Program, click here to create an Author Q&A group, or you can visit your Author Dashboard. The fifth section from the top is titled "Q&A groups." If you've never created a Q&A group before, click on the link "Read more on creating a Q&A group." The information on that page is very important; it will help you create a successful group. Once you are ready to proceed, click the "Create an Author Q&A group now" link at the bottom of the page. This will take you to a template with some information already filled in, such as a group title "Q&A with [Your Name]," and a range of suggested dates for the Q&A. All of this information is editable. You can call the group whatever you like, and you can hold the Q&A session whenever you like. Remember to mark the group a "Goodreads Author" group and to allow enough time for questions to accumulate and interest to build. Typically, Goodreads recommends two weeks as a suitable duration for an author Q&A. The author should start the first discussion thread welcoming the readers to the group. After that, where the discussion goes is up to you and your readers!

Tips to make your Q&A group more successful:

• Invite your friends. This is another reason to be a regular user of the site — you'll build up a roster of loyal friends and followers who you can call on to help you with projects like Q&A groups.
• Allow enough time for questions to accumulate. Typically Goodreads suggest two weeks time to run a successful Q&A group.
• Be active. Try to respond as frequently as you can. This will encourage further participation, as group members will see your passion and interest.
• Partner with a group already discussing your book on Goodreads. This is a tremendous way to increase the reach and level of activity in your group. Perhaps there is a book club already discussing your book who would like you to participate. Maybe a group with a similar topic of interest might want to co-host a Q&A with you. While it's great to enlist the help of others on the site, please understand that not all groups would want the author to speak with them, as your presence might make them feel self-conscious or stop them from expressing their true opinions of the book. An example of a successful co-sponsored Q&A is Nafisa Haji, who worked with a book club to create a very active and engaged Q&A group.
• Don't be afraid to go off topic. A Q&A group should be, first and foremost, a way for you to interact with your fans. Imagine that you're at a party with all of them. You wouldn't talk the entire time about yourself and your work, would you? Of course not. You'd talk about all sorts of things that are interesting to you. If you're a genre writer, perhaps you'd like to discuss the elements of thrillers or what makes a great romance novel. If your book takes place in a foreign country, perhaps that might be a topic of interest. Don't limit yourself strictly to your own book, as some people might want to speak with you who haven't read it yet. This is a great way for authors to meet potential readers. Paulo Coelho hosted a lively Q&A group that continued for months and touched on a number of topics, including Arabian culture and history, his previous works, and the situation in contemporary Iran. The lesson here is not to limit yourself or think of your group too strictly.
• Add your books to your group bookshelf. This will make the group appear on your book's page, making it that much easier for people to find your group.
• And as always, deal with negative criticism gracefully. In most cases, the best thing to do is ignore the comment. If it is a truly hostile personal attack, you can delete it, since you are the moderator of the group. You can also block any member who seems insistent on attacking you, thereby preventing that person from joining the group again.

The Goodreads First Reads program has given away over 30,000 books since its inception. This program is heavily trafficked and an average of 650 people enter to win any given giveaway.

Holding a giveaway is a terrific way to generate interest in a new title and attract new readers to your work. Who wouldn't take a chance on a free book? Giveaways are very simple, very popular, and very powerful if planned correctly. The concept is simple: You list the book you want to give away, including a description of what it's about, choose the number of copies you want to give away, pick the dates you'd like the giveaway to run, and select the countries that will be eligible to enter the giveaway. Goodreads will choose the winner(s) randomly and notify you with their addresses. It is your responsibility to ship the books to the winners in a timely manner. Click here to list a giveaway. You can also find information about your past giveaways, including the status of the giveaway and a link to it, on your Author Dashboard. Please read the terms and conditions carefully. Goodreads will not approve any giveaway that violates our terms in any way.

Here are some more ideas to help make your giveaway more successful:

• Allow enough time for interest to accrue but not so much time that people forget about it. While there is no standard duration for a giveaway, Goodreads generally recommends two weeks to a month. This allows enough time for lots of people to join the giveaway, but not so much time that they forget they even entered. Ideally, those entering who don't win the giveaway will be intrigued enough to seek out your book elsewhere on the site and possibly add it to their "to-read" shelves. It will be hard for them to remember to do this if the giveaway lasts for too long.
• Create an Author Q&A group timed to coincide with the end of your giveaway and link to the group. While you wouldn't want to hold your Q&A group immediately after your giveaway — you'll need to give people time to read the book, after all — an Author Q&A group can be a great way to maintain contact with members who enter your giveaway. We don't allow authors to message all of the entrants to a giveaway, so this is probably your best shot at holding onto some of those potential readers. While you can't require everyone entering to join your group, you can certainly link to the group and mention that anyone interested in discussing the book should stop by after the giveaway concludes.
• Give away signed copies. Many readers consider signed copies to be a special treat. Why not sign and date your books before you ship them off? Please don't personalize the books (Don't write "Dear Shelly," etc.). Some people might be entering to win a book for a friend.
• Be considerate of the winners and losers. You cannot demand any additional action from those entering or winning the giveaway. In other words, you can't ask that they write a comment on your blog or tweet about the book. Additionally, it is not required that the winners write reviews of the books they win.

A widget is an eye-catching tool you can place on your website or blog to attract readers to your Goodreads page. We offer several kinds of widgets that show off your books and reviews in various ways. Widgets are a great way to generate activity on your Goodreads page and to improve your rating on the site, as it sends your biggest fans to your Goodreads page to rate your books.

To add a widget to your website or blog, visit your Author Dashboard, and click the "Author Widgets" link on the upper right-hand side of the page. From there, you'll be able to choose and configure your widgets.

• "Add to my books" widget. The "Add to my books" widget brings an instant social element to any book page on any site or blog. The widget allows visitors to your site to add your book to their Goodreads shelves with one click. They can also see if any of their friends have added the book, as well as the average rating and number of ratings for the book. The widget is highly customizable — you can change the shape and shading of the button, hide the number of reviews, and more. The widget is ISBN-specific and will work for any book in the Goodreads database. Click here to add the "Add to my books" widget.
• Author Widget. The Author Widget shows off your books and their rating on Goodreads. You can customize the number of books the widget shows and the width of the widget. You can also change the name of the widget to whatever you like. Please note that the order of the books on your widget is determined by your books' popularity on Goodreads. To add the Author Widget, please click on the link in the upper right-hand corner of your Author Dashboard.

In addition to the Author Widgets, you can also use any of the various "Add to Goodreads" or "Read reviews on Goodreads" buttons to increase engagement from your website or blog. To use the buttons, simply save them to your computer (right click or control click on the buttons, then select "save as"), then paste them wherever you'd like on your website or blog, and link them back to your Goodreads book page. Again, this draws your best fans — the ones who visit your website — to your Goodreads page so they can rate and review your books.

What do I do if I get a negative review or comment?

In most cases, it is best to ignore a negative review or comment. On various occasions, Goodreads authors have lashed out at readers who gave their books negative reviews or ratings, and the results have been disastrous for the authors' reputations. Goodreads is not private; other readers will see a hostile reaction from the author, and a single negative interaction is often enough to turn a reader against an author permanently. Use member feedback to improve your work, not as grounds to vent your frustration.

Can I thank everyone who added my book?

It is not advisable to engage (via comments/messages/friend requests) all the people who add your book or a related work. This will result in people flagging you as a spammer, which we will not tolerate. If you are flagged enough times, your profile will be evaluated for deletion. Goodreads recommends that you not add someone as a friend until you have interacted with them elsewhere on the site — in a group or in a book discussion thread.

Someone is attacking me personally in a review or a comment. What should I do?

It is Goodreads' belief that honest reviews (positive or negative) are crucial for the site. We have never removed a review simply for its dislike of a book or low rating. That said, personal attacks on the author or unverifiable statements about the author will not be tolerated. Low star ratings or reviews such as "I didn't like the stories/characters/ etc." are fine; but reviews that say "I hate the author," "Don't read this book because he/she is a jerk," or "The author owes me money" are not. Flag the item or send us a link to it, and we will take appropriate action. To flag the item, click on the small gray "flag" link in the lower right-hand corner of the review or comment field (next to where it says "Like this review?"). This will bring up a pop-up box that will give you several options to describe why you are flagging the content. If you cannot flag an item for whatever reason, please send us a link to it with a description of why you feel it is inappropriate.

What is the difference between my profile and my author profile?

Each author on Goodreads is also a reader. Therefore, each author has a profile that enables them to review and rate books, just as any other user on the site would. But authors also have a special kind of profile that includes their own books. Once you have joined the author program, we merge these two profiles together into a single profile called an Author Profile. You'll still have the ability to rate and review books, but you will now have special privileges, such as writing a blog, editing the information on your own books, and much more.

What is the difference between a friend and a fan?

A friend is a two-way commitment: Both people have to agree to it. If you are friends with someone, their reviews and comments will appear in your feed, and yours in theirs. Being a fan is a one-way activity: A reader can become a fan of yours and you are not required to do anything. You don't have to accept or approve them, and you don't have to interact with them. If someone is a fan of an author, that author's blog posts, reviews, and comments will appear in their feed, but their own comments and reviews will not necessarily appear in the author's feed, unless the author and the user are also friends. It is possible to be both a fan of an author and an author's friend.

There are books that I've written that don't appear on my author profile. What should I do?

First, make sure the book is listed on Goodreads. If it isn't, you can manually add the book to Goodreads by clicking on "manually add book" on the right side of the search page. Once the book is on Goodreads, make sure the author name matches your name exactly (including initials and punctuation). Once it matches, it should appear on your author profile.

There are books that I didn't write on my author profile. How can I get them off my profile?

Tell us! Send us an email with the specific title that you did not write, and we'll remove it from your author profile. While we do have Librarians who monitor the site data, we can't catch everything, and this is a common error. When two authors have the same name, the only way we know who wrote which book is when someone tells us.

I write books under my real name and a pen name. How can I add the books from my pen name to my author profile?

At this time, there is no way to link two names to one author profile. This leaves you with two options:

1. Create a separate account for your pen name; or
2. Add your real name as a second author on the books written under a pen name. We are working on adding an alias feature that would allow us to link multiple author names to one Goodreads account in the future.

How can I sell my book on Goodreads?

Goodreads is not currently accepting any new ebooks for sale. We apologize for the inconvenience.