Dos and don'ts of promoting on Goodreads groups

[Eric]

Daniel wrote: "If I could add a comment, my first, so please don't tarnish me as a spammer, writers have many hurdles to overcome in order to be read, one of them is where they can legitimately advertise. There a..."

Reality is that even the most established authors need to do the publicity thing. It’s why the chat and human interest TV shows exist. Nobody goes for a TV interview unless they have their latest book to plug.
The problem for the self-published is we don’t have many chances to appear on mass media and so working the internet is the only way to reach out. I recently had a book blogger ask for $100 before they would even look at my latest book.
My problem, just like yours (I suspect) is that I’d much rather have my head into writing the next than work publicising the last.

[Belinda]

Hi. My name is Belinda and I live in Florida. I confess to being an author. My son lived in London for five years and I have visited that beautiful city several times.

Let's see. What else? I love Zumba and I love William Shakespeare. I even have a cat named Shakespeare.

[Jim]

Eric wrote: "Reality is that even the most established authors need to do the publicity thing. It’s why the chat and human interest TV shows exist. Nobody goes for a TV interview unless they have their latest book to plug.
The problem for the self-published is we don’t have many chances to appear on mass media and so working the internet is the only way to reach out. I recently had a book blogger ask for $100 before they would even look at my latest book.
My problem, just like yours (I suspect) is that I’d much rather have my head into writing the next than work publicising the last. .."

Yes the advantage the big six have is credibility and the ability to get their writers on the chat shows
I've noticed a difference locally between a writer with ebooks only and a writer who has physical books.The latter is regarded as 'more real'
As for the $100 blogger, frankly I doubt any of them will deliver the goods, remembering that you'd probably have to sell $300 worth of books to see your money back

[Taylor]

great advice from people who enjoying biting the heads off others. I for one, have been scanning this group long enough to form anxiety, looking for a place to mention my Amazon giveaway, and I find nothing (well, and self-affirming-greatest)

[Patti (baconater)]

Requests for assistance are always welcomed.

There are several places you can post a give-away.

You could start by opening your author thread.

[Will]

Taylor - it can be a bit daunting at first. Goodreads is a huge place and each of the different forums has slightly different rules about where you can and cannot post authorly stuff.

Most forums have a thread with a title like "authors please read". That usually tells you where you can safely post.

As Patti says, in this particular forum authors can have a thread all to themselves.

[Robin]

Hi to all and thank you for having me. I am new to Goodreads and hope you will bear with me while I try and get the hang of it all. I am from Wigan in the North West of England, so I love pies and mint balls naturally.

[Leslie]

Rosemary (grooving with the Picts) wrote: "I mean a random dropped promotion from an author that has never made any attempt to engage with us as a group. You just know that they've copied the same thing over a number of groups and used a sc..."

Hi Rosemary and all who share the same opinion,
As an author, can I suggest you try and look at things from our (the authors') side of things. One thing that authors don't have is much spare time. Writing is an amazingly time consuming occupation. There is trying to work out the plot or story line - and no, whereas some of it may come in a flash the total thing does not and one may have to bash away at it for ages to get it right. At present I am trying to finish off a novel; the whole thing was broadly finished last Christmas but I am still trying to rework the ending. Next comes the research. After that the writing. And after that again the editing. And of course in between all that all the chores of everyday life.
And you want us to spend more time just having a chat!
Of couse I can see your point, but I hope you can see ours. From an author's viewpoint, having a chat is just wasting time. So I am afraid you are unlikely to get much from us unless we are promoting our books.
Happy reading.

[Leslie]

Alastair wrote: "Thanks Heath and Robert - I agree with your points. Promotion is tough and I would suggest requires traits that don't usually fit with those of writers! Keeping up the focus on promoting completed ..."

The problem with advise on this subject is that the parameters are unknown. You send out a tweet on Twitter; how many people actually see it? How many actually read it? If one knew the answer one could advise on how many times to tweet, but on-one does not know the answer - and no, I am not going to mention twitter analytics, which is an 'after the event' analysis, one needs the answer before posting! - and although not same, posting on Goodreads has similarities.

I know for myself, I don't even see, let alone read most of the postings made in the groups of which I am a member. I don't have time for same. I dip in and out when I have a spare moment. How many of you reading this know about my latest offer which has been posted on Goodreads? No, I am not telling you what it is, what I am asking is how many of you know about it? If you don't know about it, then I have made my point. Unfortunately, one does have to spam to an extent, because any one advert/promotion is not seen by everyone. Yes, it may be boring, even annoying to see the same promotion in groups a, b, and c, if one is a member of all 3 groups. However the person who is only a member of group b will only see it once and the person who is a member of group d will not see it at all.

Sorry guys, but I am afraid you'll have to just endure us authors plugging away at promos. If you all went out and bought our books anyway there wouldn't be any need for us to plug them - now, there is an idea!

[Rosemary (grooving with the Picts)]

I'm afraid if you think having a chat is just a waste of time, then this maybe isn't the group for you!

Tweet analytics tell you exactly how many times someone sees your tweet, and also how many times they engaged with the tweet. And if you click on that, you can get an even further breakdown. If you're interested :)

And by spam I mean that we do get people who drop the identical post in several of our threads, one after the other. I'm sure you can see why that's irritating - one promotional post, in the right thread, is of course absolutely fine.

[Leslie]

Rosemary (grooving with the Picts) wrote: "I'm afraid if you think having a chat is just a waste of time, then this maybe isn't the group for you!

Tweet analytics tell you exactly how many times someone sees your tweet, and also how many ..."

There is an adage in advertising which runs something like, "half of all advertising is a complete waste of time; the only problem is that one doesn't know which half." Life would be so much easier for all if one did.

Happy chatting. Oh yes, and happy reading.

[Rosemary (grooving with the Picts)]

Well you could introduce yourself here - https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
and then start your own "meet the Author" thread in the folder here - https://www.goodreads.com/topic/group... (after reading the instructions in the first thread!!)
but the best way is to actually join in the chat in places like the Pop in for a Chat thread.

[Alicia]

It's a good place to pop in and chat, as the title says. There are some other authors, and a lot of very involved readers.