Giveaway and Widgets

[Ray]

I must admit I'm a little confused about using a Goodread's widget to promote my upcoming giveaway. Can someone explain how a Goodread's widget is used on social media and website?

[Jan]

Thanks for asking, Ray. I've never figured out the widget maneuver either.

[Robert]

I don't use the widget, looked up some stuff, following the breadcrumbs technique to see what people did, or it did to them. Since it relies on a standard bookshelf a good way to manage it might be be to just use the want to read exclusively for that. It seems like it is limited to 5 books?

I was at a a local indie author show this weekend, one of the things I heard from a romance author was that the reviews you got, if any, out of the goodreads giveaway had declined for them when using ebooks instead of real books. If you want to spend the money it is one way to get people to download your book. Everyone wants a free book, I click on free offers wherever I see them all the time, but it can be a very long time before I get around to reading one particular book.

I also learned that the romance industry is highly efficient and professionally run. There are local groups that give authors direct access to publishers, established authors, and mentors to help them get their product out. That is probably because of the huge demand for the product which is probably growing bigger every year. So if you have a good solid romantic component in your story you might want to check to see if there are any local romance author groups in your area.

If the romantic component is only fleetingly apparent I don't think it would qualify as the primary interest of these groups is supplying romantic stories, not changing the world. Or you might get told to expand the romantic interest. It would be up to the author to weave the two interests together without sacrificing the romantic component.

Interestingly, some of the authors I talked to who are not actively incorporating the problems of the ordinary environmental world into their stories are very interested in what is physically happening to the world but like plenty of other people, are not particularly fond of the way the news presents what is happening. They do provide a view of the world that is far from ordinary, not just a backdrop for a story.

Once you attract their attention, some publishers in the romance industry are willing to wait for you to write a series as you go along, instead of demanding that the entire series or at least the first three books are already written. It is not the magic carpet ride as that genre like all others are approaching a content bottleneck where it is getting harder and harder to get yourself noticed without a substantial advertising effort, which for the average author means spending real money.

The goodreads widget is a piece of html code which is used to display a book or books from your book shelf on a website where can add or edit the html code.

It shows the 5 most recent books on one of the 3 standard bookshelves.

From goodreads, "You can post a widget which shows off a list of books in your shelves on your website or blog. To do so, log in to Goodreads, click on edit profile from the drop-down to the right of your profile image in the header, then select the 'widgets' tab on the right side. Follow the instructions to copy the widget code into your blog. You can choose to show off any shelf you like: read, currently reading, or any shelf of your choice. Please make sure your blog software accepts javascript."


Facebook
According to the web, you can't install it directly on your facebook profile page, you have to add a page, called a fan page or a business page, it is separate from your profile page.
https://elizabethspanncraig.com/promo...
There is a tab that links to goodreads.

For your blog or website, this explains some of it. It looks at the 5 most recent books added to a shelf. One set of comments said you could change the number of books shown and you had to update the widget if the book list changes,
https://blackbirdpublishing.com/addin...

Another set of comments said it automatically displays the 5 most recent books.
https://en.support.wordpress.com/widg...