Case Study: How St. Martin's Aligned the Stars for All the Ugly and Wonderful Things
Posted by Suzanne on June 01, 2017

"The Goodreads Choice Awards Deal for All the Ugly and Wonderful Things launched the book onto the bestseller list for the first time, four months after publication. It was a true Goodreads community success story!"
Laura Clark, Associate Publisher, St. Martin's Press
When looking at the success of All the Ugly and Wonderful Things by Bryn Greenwood, it's easy to forget the challenges it first faced. Turned down by 122 literary agents, the story tackles unconventional characters and discomfiting situations. But when St. Martin's Press executive editor Laurie Chittenden read it, she knew she had to publish it. "We're willing to take risks at St. Martin's," says Chittenden. "A book doesn't have to fit within a box for us. I knew we had something special when people from across the house I'd sent the manuscript started emailing saying they had fallen in love with it."

All the Ugly and Wonderful Things is about a young girl, Wavy, with a violent meth dealer for a father and an addict for a mother. One night everything changes when Wavy witnesses one of her father's thugs, Kellen, a tattooed ex-con with a heart of gold, wreck his motorcycle. Greenwood says that one motivation to write this book "was the feeling that stories like this need to be told, and not for shock value. We don't all have neat, well-lit childhoods, and sometimes the things that nurture us seem wrong to people looking in from the outside."

Today, All the Ugly and Wonderful Things is New York Times bestseller, and has more than 28,000 ratings on Goodreads, with an impressive average rating of 4.14. (The greater the number of people who have read a book, the harder it is to maintain such a high average rating.)

Looking at the road the book traveled to bestseller status, Patrick Brown, Director of Author Marketing on Goodreads, said, "All the Ugly and Wonderful Things really demonstrates the importance of the Want to Read shelf on Goodreads. The St. Martin's team deftly combined different marketing tools on Goodreads to build up a sizeable audience of readers that helped them get the attention of our Editorial team, and later a nomination for the Goodreads Choice Awards. This then gave them a launch pad for a major sales opportunity. Of course, all of this would never have worked without Bryn Greenwood writing a riveting story that readers can't stop talking about."





November 2015 - June 2016: Building Early Word of Mouth with Influencers on Goodreads

Right from the start, the St. Martin's team knew All the Ugly and Wonderful Things would need to rely heavily on word of mouth, so they focused on getting copies into the hands of Goodreads members as early as possible. They kicked off the campaign in November 2015, nine months ahead of publication with their first Goodreads Giveaway to drive awareness and start building the number of readers with the book on their Want to Read shelves. They also gave out ARCs through NetGalley and sent copies to the top 450 independent bookstores in the country. Over the course of the pre-publication campaign, 1,000 advance copies were sent out to booksellers, early reviewers, librarians, and readers.

Early reviews started appearing on Goodreads in Fall 2015, with readers praising the book for its complex characters and heartbreaking story.

St. Martin's ran additional giveaways in January, February, March, and April to keep driving discovery of the book. A key benefit of running a giveaway on Goodreads is the social amplification effect: as people enter the giveaway, their friends and followers see a post about the book and the giveaway in their Goodreads newsfeed, driving more discovery of the book. Another way that Goodreads helps boost entries is by automatically sending a free email to people who already have the book on their Want to Read shelf letting them know about the new giveaway. Readers love the opportunity to win a free book they are already interested in, and each time they enter, this further increases the social amplification effect.

Word-of-mouth started to spread as readers started receiving and reviewing their giveaway copies. Emily May, a top Goodreads reviewer, gave it five stars in May, which gave the book it's biggest spike (569) in Want to Read shelvings so far. St. Martin's kept building the buzz by running another two giveaways before publication, and by including All the Ugly and Wonderful Things in presentations at BEA to librarians, booksellers and media.

By the end of June 2016, all of this early promotion had led 7,146 WTR shelvings and 361 reviews for All the Ugly and Wonderful Things.



July 2016: Catching the Goodreads Editorial Team's Attention

The level of interest in the book and the growing number of positive reviews caught the attention of the Goodreads Editorial team. Deciding which titles to feature in our Editorial newsletters and blog is based on data about books trending on Goodreads. "When we looked at books coming out in August 2016, All the Ugly and Wonderful Things really stood out for the amount of love it was getting from our members," says Danny Feekes, Managing Editor, Goodreads.

The Editorial team selected All the Ugly and Wonderful Things as one of the Fiction books to feature in the New Releases email sent to 40 million readers on July 26, 2016. This drove another major wave of Want to Read shelvings in the two weeks leading up to publication.

The Editorial team also chose Bryn Greenwood for the August Debut Author Snapshot Interview in the general newsletter sent to 35 million readers on August 2, 2016, helping more readers discover the book and add it to their Want to Read shelves in the week before publication.

August 2016: Ready for Publication Day! Book Already Has 14,600 Want To Read Shelvings and 628 Reviews

As a result of their marketing efforts, by the time publication day came on August 9, 2016, the St. Martin's team had successfully gained the interest of more than 14,600 Goodreads members who had added it to their Want to Read shelves, which put it in the top 100 most-shelved books prelaunch on Goodreads in 2016. Even more impressive, thanks to distributing ARCs through Goodreads giveaways and other initiatives, All the Ugly and Wonderful Things already had 628 reader reviews on Goodreads before publication.

With the book coming out, St. Martin's doubled down on their marketing. They booked one of our most popular book marketing products, the Personal Selection Email. This gives publishers the opportunity to send a warm, friendly, and unique email from an author to their fans and includes links to retailers to convert these interested readers into buyers just as the book comes out. St. Martin's was able to target the audience they had created for this book on Goodreads—the people who had already added the book to their Want to Read shelves.

In addition to strong early trade reviews in Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews, it earned rave reviews by Bustle, USA Today's Happily Ever After column, The Associated Press (which saw pick-up by the Houston Chronicle, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, San Diego Union-Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, and The Washington Post, to name just a few), and many Midwestern newspapers (including The Kansas City Star, Lawrence Journal-World, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and Wichita Eagle) at publication. It was later included in many best of the year round-ups (e.g. the East Bay Express, New York Daily News, and St. Louis Post-Dispatch).

All the Ugly and Wonderful Things was also selected by the Book of the Month Club as the debut selection for the month of August. A follow-up email from Book of the Month Club to their subscribers in late August, as well as discussion by popular Goodreads reviewers in comments on their reviews and more Goodreads members posting their reviews, led to a surge in Want to Read shelvings, which were then amplified by Goodreads newsfeed posts, driving even more readers to add it to their Want to Read shelf.

September - October 2016: Maintaining the Momentum

The author is always central to the success of book marketing, and Bryn Greenwood certainly played her part both on and off Goodreads. She had already answered several questions on Ask the Author on Goodreads before publication, and continued to do so in the weeks and months post publication as a way to engage with fans.



Greenwood also did some fun and creative marketing of her own, including offering a signed bookplate and handmade keychains and necklaces for people who shared sightings of the book "in the wild" (in bookstores, at the library, people reading it on the bus) on social media. She also offered to share deleted scenes with her fans via her newsletter to celebrate each time the book reached a milestone in Goodreads reviews.



And she continued to share new information about the characters and the timeline of the book in her blog to give additional context for reader discussions.



November 2016: The Break Out Moment with the Goodreads Choice Awards

By all accounts, the book was a success. The story could be over now, as for most books, three months post publication is when interest and sales may start to slow down. But for All the Ugly and Wonderful Things, this is when things really took off. Why? On November 1, 2016, Goodreads announced the nominees for the Goodreads Choice Awards, and All the Ugly and Wonderful Things was a contender for Best Fiction. Nominees for the awards are selected based on the data from the hundreds of millions of books added, rated, and reviewed on Goodreads in the previous 12 months--it's a high bar and recognizes the standout books of the year. The nomination drove the most dramatic spike in adds to Want to Read that All the Ugly and Wonderful Things had ever seen (2,565), and the interest stayed high during the three voting rounds in November.

St. Martin's also added another giveaway to the mix to extend the discovery through the Goodreads Choice Awards and further promote the book.

Ultimately, All the Ugly and Wonderful Things came in second in the Best Fiction category. "We were all blown away by this," says Laura Clark. "The book was competing against some amazing books by big-name authors like Liane Moriarty and Jodi Picoult, and it had won the hearts of enough readers to earn second place. I think it's a testament to the power of the unconventional and compelling story that Bryn wrote. What was doubly satisfying is how influential the Goodreads Choice Awards are, introducing the book to an even wider audience of readers."

As we've seen with other winners and runners-up in the Goodreads Choice Awards, the announcement of the winners in early December drove significant numbers of adds to Want to Read shelves across all the categories. For All the Ugly and Wonderful Things, this generated the biggest one-day spike in discovery to date, with 3,869 readers adding the book to Want to Read and creating a step-change in the number of adds to Want to Read in the following days--just in time for the crucial holiday season.



December 2016: Converting Want to Reads to Sales with Goodreads Deals

It was at this point that the Goodreads Deals team called St. Martin's with a special offer. Goodreads Deals had launched earlier in 2016 and the team came up with the idea to run the first-ever special event focused on deals for winners and nominees of the 2016 Goodreads Choice Awards. To maximize the opportunity, Goodreads invited the Kindle team to offer the deals to their customers on the same day, and St. Martin's extended the ebook downprice to all of their ebook retailers.


The deals went out by email on December 27, 2016--just in time to help all the people who had received new ebook devices over the holidays find great books to read on them.

"The biggest strength of Goodreads Deals is that we send the email to both our subscribers and to any of our members who have one of the books on their Want to Read shelves so they don't miss out on a deal for a book they're already interested in," says Roshni Patel, Head of Digital Merchandising at Goodreads. "St. Martin's had done such a great job of helping people discover the book, that when the deal arrived, people immediately wanted to take advantage of it. And thanks to the book getting the kudos of a nomination in the Goodreads Choice Awards, any readers unfamiliar with the title knew it was a book readers loved, making it an easier decision to give it a chance."

The accolades for All the Ugly and Wonderful Things continued in December when the Book of the Month Club sent out a press release on December 14, 2017 including Bryn's book as 1 of the 5 finalists for their inaugural Book of the Year. Following voting from their members, All the Ugly and Wonderful Things was declared the first ever Book of the Year on December 28, 2017.

January 2017 - All the Ugly and Wonderful Things Hits the New York Times Ebook Bestseller List

As a result of the huge number of sales driven by the Goodreads Choice Awards Deal, All the Ugly and Wonderful Things catapulted onto the New York Times Ebook Bestseller List published on January 4, 2017 at #9. All the more remarkable was that this happened four months post publication.



When Laurie Chittenden called to give Bryn Greenwood the good news, there was a pause, some excitement, and then suddenly, Bryn said "Oh shit, I promised I'd get a tattoo that said 'Lucky motherfucker' if I made the bestseller list!"

Learning from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things' Success

The St. Martin's team understood their marketing strategy from the start: this was a book where it was essential to get as many people reading, reviewing, and talking about it as possible. To accomplish this, they successfully used several key tactics on Goodreads:

• Foster early buzz for the book: Multiple Goodreads Giveaways built early awareness and got the book into the hands of early reviewers so they could write those crucial early reviews
• Keep building on the momentum: St. Martin's didn't rely on one or two tactics to promote the book. Reader feedback on Goodreads was one of the earliest signals that they had a strong book on their hands so they kept building on this with more giveaways—offering more copies as they got closer to publication. In total, they offered 165 print copies through the pre-publication giveaways (in addition to digital copies via Netgalley.) But they didn't stop there. St. Martin's kept up the giveaways post publication and saw dramatic jumps in entries--thanks to having built up a large audience of readers who would automatically receive the free Goodreads email about the giveaways.
• Leverage Goodreads' book marketing services in publication month: Thanks to the effort the St. Martin's team put into getting the book on Want to Read shelves, they were able to take advantage of direct mail advertising that targeted the exact audience they created and drive sales.
• Convert the interest on Goodreads into more sales: Working with Goodreads Deals, St. Martin's was able to target all of the readers who had the book on their Want to Read shelves with an incredible deal that created a "must-buy" moment. Combined with promotion from the ebook retailers, the sales put the book on the New York Times Ebook Bestseller List for the first time.

Summing it up, Lauren Friedlander, Associate Marketing Manager, St. Martin's Press, says, "The outpouring of love from the Goodreads community has been overwhelming and heartwarming—this book is near and dear to my heart, and I wanted everything in the world for it! Goodreads really played a tremendous role in the sensational attention this book has received."

Summer Reading for Authors: 8 Books About Book Marketing
Posted by Cynthia on May 22, 2017

Summer is just around the corner (it was about time!), which means you'll hopefully get some quality reading done. You can tell readers via Ask the Author what you’re reading for fun this summer by answering the question on your Author Dashboard, but you might also consider adding these eight titles to your Want-to-Read shelf to brush up on your marketing skills:

Marketing Advice from Best-Selling Author S. Jae-Jones
Posted by Cynthia on May 10, 2017

Building anticipation for an unknown debut Young Adult author is not easy, unless you have an author as engaged with her audience as S. Jae-Jones. Readers started shelving her book, Wintersong, as early as April 2016, almost a year before its publication in February 2017. The author regularly shared creative content that showed she knew her audience (a make-up tutorial, anyone?), built her newsletter list, and leveraged her connections with other authors. Of course, all this built-up anticipation resulted in the book making the New York Times bestseller list.

We asked JJ to share some of her secrets of her marketing success.

Wintersong received an incredible amount of pre-publication buzz, and now more 50k people have it shelved at to-read. How did you manage that as a debut author?

To be completely honest, I'm not entirely sure how the pre-publication buzz happened or rather, how much I personally had a hand in it. I think buzz is a combination of luck, timing, and a commercial pitch. The luck portion is entirely out of your hands, but I do think you can affect the other two.

Having a commercial pitch is not necessarily about having a commercial IDEA; rather, it's finding a way to be able to succinctly relate the premise of your book in an engaging way that hints at a story to come. Easier said than done, I know, but there is a bit of a trick to it. For example, the basic pitch for Wintersong was about a young woman who journeys underground to rescue her sister from the clutches of the Goblin King. In one sentence, I have the protagonist, the setting, the stakes, and the antagonist.

I used to work in publishing, and my old boss used to ask me what the "handle" of a book was. The "handle" is a simple, straightforward, easy way to wrap your mind around a project, what you can pick up and carry with you. If you find it difficult to write a commercial pitch for your own book, maybe practice it for other books or movies that you love before settling on your own.

As for timing, some of that will be up to chance, but I don't think it hurts to start talking about your book as early as you can. I do think there can be instances of too fast, too soon, but getting the word out about your book via your social media channels (if you have them) is not a bad idea. Announce when your book goes up on Goodreads. Announce when it becomes available for preorder. Announce when you get a review. Talk about the writing or editing process.

There is a five-touchpoint theory of marketing in that a customer comes into contact with a product five times before making a decision about whether or not to buy. The earlier you start, the more time you have for readers to come in contact with your work.

You have many authors, including Roshani Chokshi and Marie Lu, review the book ahead of publication. How did you get those other authors to review your books? Any advice for authors if they don’t have connections through a publisher?

Make friends. Friends will do you favors. They will also reach to other friends to ask for favors, and so and so forth until you realize you are at the center of an enormous web of connections, muahahahaha. ;-) I'm being facetious, but also in deadly earnest. How do you make friends? Well, that's a little harder to answer, but the best relationship are formed over shared misery, in my opinion. This means seek out other writer friends, either online or in person. There are Facebook groups of other writers or message boards where you can find critique partners if you're more comfortable building relationship via the internet, or you can attend conferences and author events if you have the time and funds.

The one caveat to this technique is that it takes time to build these relationships. In the cases of Marie Lu and Roshani Chokshi, I became friends with them either before their books sold, or before their books became published. Most of my writer friends who blurbed my book are actually my critique partners; they read everything I write before it's even the apple of my publisher's eye. As with the first answer, there is no simple, quick solution to success.

What’s your favorite thing to explore on Goodreads?

I love tracking my reading. On a personal level, it illuminates trends in what I seek out and why, plus it also sheds light on gaps. If I'm too heavy on one genre, then I will try and branch out. I use Goodreads much more as a personal tool than as a marketing one.

How do you engage with readers on Goodreads? How has that changed since you joined the Author Program?

I joined the Author Program straightaway. I found the "to-read" stats the most illuminating, because I could track spikes in interest. For example, there was a large spike in "to-read" adds after I revealed my cover via my newsletter. Another when Marie Lu reviewed it on Goodreads. Another when I did a blog interview. Those stats helped shape what I was doing promotion-wise before publication. I interact with readers by answering questions submitted to me via Goodreads, although I will admit that the closer I got to publication, the less time I had to interact.

How do you plan to keep the momentum going for Wintersong?

The old saying in publishing goes that nothing sells backlist like frontlist, so I am working on the sequel.


Next: Building a Marketing Timeline on Goodreads: Infographic

You might also like: Marketing Advice from Author Fred Van Lente

Goodreads Authors can subscribe to the Monthly Author Newsletter by editing their account settings.

Building a Marketing Timeline: Infographic
Posted by Cynthia on May 08, 2017

Though it might seem like bestsellers happen overnight, it takes months of planning to get a marketing plan in place before the book is out. What does that kind of plan look like? Here's a handy infographic that outlines the broad strokes of a pre-publication marketing campaign on Goodreads. You can read the details on this previous post.



Next: Five Writing Prompts for Mystery Writers

You might also like: Quotes About Reading and Writing

Goodreads Authors can subscribe to the Monthly Author Newsletter by editing their account settings.

Five Writing Prompts for Authors During Mystery Week
Posted by Cynthia on May 01, 2017

What makes a good mystery novel? A crime is committed—not necessarily on a dark and stormy night—and readers want to know: Who committed the crime, and why?

Some writers may shy away from writing mystery novels because, quite frankly, it’s hard! Story lines are often complex, readers need to be kept guessing, and characters need to have an interesting backstory.

But you read the advice from the experts: Start writing. Approach questions from Ask the Author (find it on your Author Dashboard) as if they were writing prompts. Try it out answering the question "What mystery in your own life would make a good book?" during Mystery & Thriller Week on Goodreads.

If you're all out of questions, here are five writing prompts to get you going:












Share your story with your readers on your Goodreads blog, your writing section, or in the comments below. Share it on social using #MysteryWeek. Ready, set, write!

Writing Tips from Mystery and Thriller Writers
Posted by Cynthia on May 01, 2017

Readers love asking their favorite authors questions, especially when it comes to advice about writing! As we celebrate Mystery Week on Goodreads, get inspired by some of these bestselling mystery and thriller authors. Don’t be afraid to ask any of these Featured Authors for their tips about writing, and make sure your own Ask the Author is enabled from your Goodreads Author Dashboard and you answer the question, "What mystery in your own life could be a plot for a book?"

Dan Brown, author of The DaVinci Code

“Rather than outlining your plot in chronological order, try outlining your plot as if it were a candle burning at both ends. Begin the process by writing your first and last chapter simultaneously. It may be helpful to make the protagonist’s circumstances in these two chapters as different from one another as possible. This will require your character to undergo a series of changes between the beginning and end...changes that can serve as pillars on which to construct the middle of the book.”

Mary Higgins Clark, author of Where Are the Children?

“The advice would be to everyone who wants to write: start it. But specifically, if you want to be a suspense writer, something I did that was extremely helpful may work for you. I wanted to see how Daphne Du Maurier was able to give the suspense to Rebecca that made that book a classic. I wrote the first paragraph and the last paragraph of every chapter and did a synopsis of what went in that chapter. It was a wonderful way to see how she built suspense in such a subtle manner.”

Linwood Barclay, author of No Time for Goodbye

“I think that what drives a thriller need to be something that matters, like a family member. It needs to have a sense of momentum, that the story is like a boulder rolling down a hill, picking up speed with each chapter. And, as much as possible, a little twist, or something, at the end of every chapter to make you want to go on to the next one. If I get at all bored while writing the story, I know the reader will be bored, too. I have to keep myself interested.”

Tana French, author of In the Woods

“When you write psychological crime, you spend a lot of time thinking about *why* this specific character would commit such an immense crime as murder - and the answer is often (not always) rooted deeply not only in the individual character, but in the flaws and priorities of the society around him or her.”

Joseph Finder, author of Vanished

“Inspiration comes from different sources at different points in the process. When I'm just starting a book, thinking about the main character and the premise, inspiration really can come from anywhere: the news, conversations I overhear between strangers, magazine ads, other books I'm reading. When I'm in the midst of writing, inspiration may take more of a problem-solving mode: if x happens, what then? If y, then what? I will often find images in magazines or online that resonate with the story I'm writing — something that gives me an idea of what Nick Heller's DC loft looked like, or the resort in Power Play, or the hideout in Buried Secrets. A writer's magic words are, "I can use this."”

Jacqueline Winspear, author of Maisie Dobbs

“I don't see why a work of mystery or any other "genre" fiction should not be literary. Some of the best, most intelligent, literary writing today is coming from writers in what people term "the mystery genre" - and it's in mystery that readers are exposed to fiction dealing with the sharp end of societal problems, historical events, etc. The fact that a mystery takes the reader through chaos to some sort of resolution speaks to the human condition - through the lens of mystery we see humanity at its best and worst.”



What advice resonates the most with you? Share your thoughts and your own advice in the comments below. Then check out what else authors can do to make the most of Mystery Week.

Seven Clues for Authors Participating in Mystery Week
Posted by Cynthia on April 17, 2017

It would be a crime if you missed this opportunity to promote your books! Mark your calendars and get ready to participate in Mystery & Thriller Week on Goodreads, May 1 to 7. We’re shining the spotlight on page-turning mysteries, thrillers, and suspense stories and need all the help we can get from savvy authors. Here are seven ways you can engage with readers on the site during Mystery Week:

1. Enable Ask the Author. Don’t leave your fans in the dark—allow them to reach out to you with questions about your books, your writing habits, or your murder weapon of choice.

Find Ask the Author on your Goodreads Author Dashboard. New to the platform? Read Best Practices for Ask the Author here.

2. Answer the special Mystery Week question. Your first mission, if you choose to accept it, will be to respond to the special mystery-related question from Goodreads via Ask the Author. Be generous with your response: your answer might show up on our rotating list of authors on our Mystery Week landing page. Find your special question in the Ask the Author section of your Goodreads Author Dashboard.

3. Use #MysteryWeek in all your activity. You’ll be able to cross-promote your Goodreads activity on other social media channels, and help readers will discover your content.

4. Write a 5-sentence original mystery. Anthony Horowitz, Charlaine Harris, Dennis Lehane, and many others will be recommending books and sharing original content to kick off the week, but readers will always want more! Post to Twitter, ATA, on your Goodreads blog, or in your writing section. Find writing prompts here.

5. Leave clues about your new book. Share a veiled version of your cover, reveal the murder weapon (but not the victim), or disclose the location of your new book setting by posting information to your blog. Fun thought: Use the whole week to leave breadcrumbs for your fans!

6. Join a mystery group. There’s a group for every reader, and if you love solving mysteries as much as writing them, considering getting involved in one of our groups on Goodreads.

7. Browse our list of top 100 mysteries and thrillers. Readers love seeing what their favorite authors are reading, so we'll be sharing our list of the top mysteries and thrillers on Goodreads for you to browse and to shelve to your personal shelf!

Not a mystery writer? That’s ok! We’ll be sharing writing prompts and writing tips from bestselling authors throughout the week to help get the ideas flowing. Take the opportunity to expand your writing skills, connect with other writers, or simply get inspired! We’ll be at the edge of our seats to find out what you come up with…

Find more inspiration on how to prepare for Mystery Week from mystery writer Fred Van Lente here.

Keep an eye on the Goodreads Blog check out our Featured Authors taking questions, browse the mystery giveaways, and join the conversation on Twitter using #MysteryWeek starting May 1.



Next: Marketing Advice from Best-Selling Author Fred Van Lente

You might also like: Romance Authors Make the Best Marketers

Goodreads Authors can subscribe to the Monthly Author Newsletter by editing their account settings.

Marketing Advice from Best-Selling Author Fred Van Lente
Posted by Cynthia on April 10, 2017

Fred Van Lente has been a professional writer for eleven years, and his comics and graphic novels have earned him #1 spots on the New York Times bestseller lists, numerous awards, and have been the basis for feature films. This July, Quirk Books is releasing Van Lente’s debut novel, Ten Dead Comedians, which early Goodreads reviews have described as “an entertaining homage to Agatha Christie...but with a cutting edge and a lot of hilarious happenings.”

Before his publicity campaign hits overdrive, he was kind enough to answer a few questions about his marketing campaign on Goodreads.

What has been your favorite thing to explore on Goodreads?

I really like being able to organize my books into different shelves so my readers have more of an insight into the writing process. I write a lot of non-fiction too, so hopefully it's interesting for readers to see things like the works that went into Ryan Dunlavey's and my upcoming Action Presidents OGN series from HarperCollins.

Your Ask the Author answers are hilarious. What’s your approach to responding to questions, and how do you generate new ones?

Ha! Thanks. They are a lot of fun. I did a few self-generated by Goodreads, and that I think encouraged other users to ask. The rest are all from Goodreads users themselves. I just try to be short and to the point and as funny as possible... kind of like my regular writing style, I guess!

What has been the most effective marketing strategy for getting the word out about your book?

The bulk of marketing, really, is just telling people the product exists—it's informative in nature. Too many writers, it seems to me, think of marketing as "getting people to want to buy", and in my experience that's the wrong concentration. The marketer isn't in the desire-creation business, the author is. You need to create books people want to read, and, you know, that comes in the what-book-should-I-write stage and a lot of your battle's already won or lost before the book actually comes out. The book's either something that people want at that particular historical moment, or it isn't. It's an uphill battle to generate interest out of thin air. So the best marketing materials, I've found, are the work itself—advance copies and ARCs. Goodreads obviously has a couple of programs that are great for that.

That said, for my debut novel, Ten Dead Comedians, the marketing team at Quirk Books has had all sorts of amazing ideas, including running a Clue-like competition at signings and events like Book Con, and as a promotional giveaway-slash-leave-behind, they created great coasters promoting the book. Ten Dead Comedians, is an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery involving stand-up comics, so the coasters are meant to invoke a comedy club with a two-drink minimum. So they have both that informative aspect—here is the book, here is what it's about—but they also convey a spirit of fun and excitement around the novel, hopefully encouraging that interest to buy. So it's the best of both worlds, marketing-wise! Can't wait to start handing these out in a couple of weeks.

How has your activity on Goodreads changed since becoming an author vs. using it as a reader?

I am lucky enough to have been a professional writer for eleven years, mostly in the comics and graphic novel field, so I was already a pro by the time I started using Goodreads. But for years I used it just as a fan of books myself. Now that the debut novel is coming out I decided to really upgrade my author profile on the site. I have a Goodreads blog now that updates via RSS feed both to my own web site and my Amazon author's page, so it's been very useful to me as I embark on this new and pretty awesome stage of my career.

You share how you format a comics script. How has writing and publishing a novel been a different experience?

Comics are a weekly rush to the printer on every level—for the writer, for the artist, for the production team, for the sales force. It's a grind that chews out a lot of people and spits them out. So I am very happy, with a novel, to take nearly a year on a single work, and then work with the team at Quirk Books to bring the book to market over a period of months. It's the difference between crash-landing a jumbo jet and steering a cruise ship out of port. One is much less stressful! But then, I've pretty much been doing comics exclusively for almost a decade, so I guess I am probably biased... (laughs)

Have questions for the author? Leave them in the comments below! Fred Van Lente will be responding to questions from authors on Tuesday, April 18.

Missed your chance to ask him a question? Ask him on his profile page and be sure to follow him to see all his activity!

Next: Five Things Writers Need to Know Before Publishing Their First Book

You might also like: Marketing Advice from Author Gail Carriger

Goodreads Authors can subscribe to the Monthly Author Newsletter by editing their account settings.

5 Things Writers Need to Know Before Publishing Their First Book
Posted by Cynthia on March 13, 2017

Many writers dream of becoming published authors: to have their words read by millions of readers; to hold their manuscript in a book form; to see that book in bookstores and libraries; to get glowing reviews on Goodreads or in the New York Times. They think that once they hit "publish" on a self-publishing platform or hand their final, edited manuscript over to a publisher, their work is done.

In reality, many writers quickly realize how much more they are expected to pitch in on the marketing front. They realize that books don’t just magically appear in bookstores, and that readers won’t drop everything and read the book the second they first hear about it.

To help you avoid surprises, here are five things writers need to know before publishing their first book:

1. Bestsellers are not created overnight.

When you see a book shoot magically up the best-seller list in the first week it is published, understand that it took many people many months of work to put it there. It takes traditional publishers so long to get from acquisition to publication because they are setting the stage for the release: writing the marketing & publicity material for the sales reps to use with the buyers, mailing out media review copies, securing interviews and reviews, putting together the advertising creative, and more.

As an author, you’ll need to have the patience and foresight to plan out a complete marketing campaign. This can start as soon as you finish the manuscript: establish your online presence, start building a mailing list, and introduce yourself to the local publishing community.

2. You will need to be an extrovert.

Book promotion means you will need to balance talking about yourself and your book and talking about other things people care about (for example). You will need to engage with your readers. You will need to sign books. You will need to charm booksellers. And you will need to tell your story over and over again, answering the same questions, remaining positive and friendly throughout.

Remember that you wouldn’t be a published author without readers, so work hard to make every interaction a great one. Also know yourself well enough to recharge your batteries between events, and let your publicist know to be selective with the types of interviews you do. Quick tip: Ask the Author is a great way to engage with readers, as it allows you to select which questions to answer, and when to answer them. [Read tips about using Ask the Author here.]

3. Not everyone will like your book... and that is ok!

You might think your book will only find it’s way into the hands of readers who will think it’s life-changing, but sooner or later someone will not like your book. No book is for everyone, and the most important thing to realize about a negative review is that it’s just one person’s opinion. Don’t take it personally. Instead, leave it alone and then get the beverage of your choice, and look up your favorite book on Goodreads. Chances are there are many negative reviews of it!

Respect personal preferences, and never try to change someone’s opinion about your book. If you’re worried you’ll get affected by reading reviews of your own book, don’t read them (yes, it really is that simple!). If you suspect it violates our review guidelines, flag it so our team can take a look at it.

4. Read books, not your own reviews.

One way to avoid reading your own reviews is to stay occupied by reading other people’s books! This is the best activity to engage with readers on Goodreads and build a following [read more about building a following here].

Share your passion for reading and show off your talent for writing by reviewing books on Goodreads. Start by reviewing books you loved in childhood, move on to books that inspired you to become a writer, and then tackle the current best-seller list for more recent titles. Remember: Goodreads is a community for readers—these are your people! Connect with them, and trust they will discover your own work that way.

5. Keep writing.

If all goes well, readers will devour your work and immediately want more. You need to have something ready to share with them, whether that’s a short story or a preview of the second book in the series. Keep the same writing schedule as you had before your work was published. You might transition from being a writer to being an author by publishing your first book; publish more than that and you have a career.

What do you wish you had known before publishing your first book? Share it in the comments below!

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Movie Studios Finding Love & Results on Goodreads
Posted by Katie Boyer on February 27, 2017