Goodreads is Amazing
I’ve had a Goodreads account for three and a half years. During most of that time, I barely used it, and that’s partly because I didn’t get it. It seemed like a pretty good cataloging system for books I’d read, but I wasn’t sure why I needed a cataloging system for books I’d read. I played around with it a little, and then mostly abandoned it.
Before my book came out, I went back to Goodreads to try it out. I made sure it had The Bubble Gum Thief and loaded information into its page. I wrote a review of Gone Girl. I rated some more books. But I still didn’t get Goodreads.
A couple of months before The Bubble Gum Thief came out, I held an Advance Reader Copy giveaway on Goodreads. Over seven hundred people entered for a chance to win one of five copies. Several hundred of these folks put The Bubble Gum Thief on their to-read list. And then I started to get what Goodreads is.
Reading is a completely solitary exercise, and that can be frustrating. When you read a book, you live in its world, and if it’s a good, or great, or amazing book, you want to talk about it with people. You want to debate it. You want to relive it. You want the book’s world to invade your own. But we generally don’t socialize based primarily on our taste in literature. So even if you love a book, it’s quite likely that your spouse, or parents, or best friends will have no interest in it at all.
There was a time when you could read a great book and go your whole life without anyone to talk to about it.
On Goodreads, you can debate and relive all of your favorite books there because there are tons of people there who want to do the same. And you can find things to read you never would have heard about—things to read that you will love and cherish, that become a part of who you are—and you never would have found them but for Goodreads. That’s why Goodreads is amazing.
It is extra-amazing for an author. At any given time, there is a group of people who have decided to let the world know that they are “currently-reading” my book. It’s not a lot of people. But it’s more than the number of people that I always imagine reading my book, which is zero. And that gives my writing purpose. An actor can go to a theater and watch people see him in a movie. I can’t go to your house and watch you read my book. But with Goodreads, I kind of can. I see people start the book, I see them finish the book, and I can see them rate the book. Because I see people having experience with my book, it makes me want to give them more experiences. It makes me more excited about the next Dagny Gray book. It helps me write even when I’m feeling too tired, or too busy, or too distracted. It’s a big can of jolt when I need it.
