How should an author use Listopia?

[Anna]

Is it good form for an author to add their own book to a Listopia list? Is there some maximum number of (obviously relevant) lists a book can be added to? How should I approach it?

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

a readers opinion (despite all those posts arounds the blogosphere telling authors to add to listopia after listopia ...):

Generally, Listopias are reader created and expected to be a tool for readers to add books (and do the voting). Sometimes they ask for or specifically prohibit author involvement. Like the group book of the month nominations where some groups encourage authors to nominate their own book and other groups prohibit (although in groups you can message moderator easier).

Depends on who created the listopia and how well your book fits any criteria they set. With only a couple of listopias showing in a book page, I'd carefully choose which handful of listopias I put my book on (if hundreds/thousands of listopias suddenly list your book, staff do eventually get around to complaints that an account is spamming the listopias).

Putting your book on a "green cover" Listopia if it had a "red" cover, a book about the "American Civil War" on a Listopia for the British Civil War type of activity -- you'll just annoy list creator, readers usung the Listopia and librarians cleaning your book off the list.

Putting your own book on "Best of ..." listopias -- well most of those are definitely intended for reader voting of their favorites. You can do it; but, don't expect votes. Putting your book on "group blah-blah-blah BOTM 2015" tyoes of lists will just get an entire group complaining to get your book removed.

There are listopias actually for authors to add their own books. You can also create your own listopias (I'd set very specific criteria so you can request librarians or goodreads staff to clean off the resulting spam you'll get — it's bad for listopias out there with spam accounts to bomb listopias showing up faster than goodreads can apparently clean them off).

Used to not matter much and few reader complaints were made. Those spam accounts this year really got ridiculous so readers who previously would ignore your book being added ( or even forget they made or followed a Listopia -- goodreads options for tracking listopias leave a lot to be desired) are more diligent.

goodreads says they are working on better ways to find and clean up the spans crap ruining listopias for authors and readers alike.. If they do manage to get a handle on it, listopias may go back to normal and readers not be as proactively monitoring listopias. Currently it just looks like outside of goodreads, more and more sites keep springing up offering for a fee to spam your books on to goodreads listopias despite goodreads prohibiting commercial use.—which only aggravates the issue and createes more spam.

By spam, I don't mean you putting your book on some appropriate listopias. I'm not sure how effective a marketing tool they are now that they've been so spammed some readers don't bother clicking to see what other books show on list and vote on their favorites. But, carefully selecting some appropriate ones that welcome author additions is a free way to get a Listopia to show in your book page.

No rule against it unless putting your book on a Listopia with criteria it didn't meet (or on so many suspect spamming the system). Even if list creator or readers using complain, if book fits criteria librarians aren't authorized to remove and escalating to staff attention can take months to see results.

Spammers and sites selling Listopia votes and listings are making some iof us obviously touchy about it. Listopias used to be fun to browse.

ETA: horrible late night touchscreen typos.

[Steelwhisper]

I maintain two BDSM lists I created specifically to list realistic BDSM (as in what happens in real life) and SSC BDSM (as in what adheres to real life rules, even if fantasy in setting). These lists are meant to be meaningful and educational.

I've had to delete dozens of author adds of people who read "BDSM" and then add, nillywilly, their tortureporn and Fifty Shades derivates, which are about as realistic and consensual as Darth Vader.

I can't say I'm happy about this, and they do go on my "never to even try" and "BDSM-fail" shelves. I know that quite a few people wanting realistic/SSC BDSM stories do check these shelves.

So it's really shooting yourself in your own foot adding your books to lists they don't belong in. Additionally I think it's a tad tacky depending on what sort of list it is.

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

I probably houldn't have posted late night half asleep. I didn't mean to ramble quite so much or make it sound like I suspected OP was going to spam listopias. I actually don't suspect that because spammers wouldn't ask before spamming.

There are, outside of Listopia criteria creators specified, not a lot of "rules" on using (not even on authors adding own books). Partly because never used to have a lot of problems with (usually some joker putting a fetish erotica on a list of favorite childrens books type of things).

The listopias are just really being heavily hit by sockpuppet accounts and commercial accounts paid to flood them. And the a-holes flooding them don't bother reading criteria (some just search and flood the most popular ones ; others will search keywords — like the BDSM mentioned above — and flood whether book belongs or not).

Putting a book on a few listopias it belongs on is a whole other situation, author or not. But, not always welcomed by readers. Listopias were somewhat displayed in book page as "hey, look what favorte lists readers put my books on."

(goodreads so far, presumably because voting is involved and because other readers spend the time to add/vote books to the original listopia, hesitated to let listopias be edited much by their creators. It's been suggested that listopia creators set criteria saying things like "...reserve the right to remove any book" "authors welcome to add..." "authors may not add..." "indie publications only." "no indie publications."...)

I have way more of a problem with the paid-to-flood-listopias/votes mass activity than an author adding their book to an appropriate list. I think if list creators didn't have to go through librarians or staff to maintain their lists, this community could kill off spam faster and makes it better for readers and authors.

It's gotten really bad and is ruining a feature a lot of readers used to enjoy. But, again, I didn't mean to sound like you would do that -- just explaining why you might head into consumer boycott territory by accidentally offending list creator and list users.

[Anna]

Thanks for the advice. I haven't spent much time on the social parts of Goodreads before now, so I wanted to learn about just these kinds of unspoken rules. It's a shame that a system like Listopia has been so exploited, because it really seems useful for finding interesting new books.

[Rena]

For what it's worth, I've stuck my eBook on (I think) a grand total of two lists. It has not translated to any sales. Listopia is a time-suck, really. Promotion is better spent elsewhere, it seems.

[Rita]

Thanks, Rena, you've saved me the trouble!

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

Rena wrote: "For what it's worth, I've stuck my eBook on (I think) a grand total of two lists. It has not translated to any sales. Listopia is a time-suck, really. Promotion is better spent elsewhere, it seems."

All of us commenting are goodreads members. I suppose if a reader wasn't and was unfamiliar with the listopias it wouldn't be such a joke that an author was touting being #2 on Kenny's reading list for his "Favorite Dogsled Stories" as if book was #2 on "Goodreads Favorite Dogsled Stories"...but, it is at best "misleading" advertising.

[Sophie]

Yeah I have no problem per se with an author adding their book to a list, if it fits the list criteria. As long as they don't try to raise the book's standing in the list by making spam accounts to vote for it or telling all their friends to vote for it.

[Carmiel]

Hi all, thanks for this discussion thread. Is there a way to just "add" your own book to a topic in listopia without "voting" for it? As far as I can tell, I only have the option to vote...

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

Carmiel wrote: "Hi all, thanks for this discussion thread. Is there a way to just "add" your own book to a topic in listopia without "voting" for it? As far as I can tell, I only have the option to vote..."

I don't think so. I think you can only sort of do that when creating your own listopias.

Makes it a bit of a joke to most goodreads members when we see authors promoting their book as being #whatever on whichever-goodreads-listopia because many of us know there is no such thing (other than the annual Goodreads Choice awards) as a "goodreads top" anything listopia and instead are just listopias created by individual members (which could be the author, the author's publisher, the author's mom, etc. as far as that goes) or some list that only three of 20+million members even voted on...

[Carmiel]

Got it...well, I voted and then UNvoted for my own book once I realized what that meant...it seemed like the way to add my book into categories (like Amazon has) but obviously I misunderstood! Is there a way to do that with goodreads--to make your book searchable by topic, as opposed to genre? Thanks for your help!

[Susanna - Censored by GoodReads]

I would definitely suggest that you shelve your book (i.e., put it on your own shelves) in descriptive categories, like "romance" or "historical fiction" etc., because a book here only needs two people to put it on such a shelf to generate a "genres" listing, and one of the shelvers can be the author. A book having a genres generated for it can be useful for people trying to find new books.

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

Not just genre -- goodreads used to use shelves like other sites used tags and keywords. Many members explored shelves, particularly ones for books they enjoyed or were quirky enough to catch their attention.

Then goodreads got weird about shelf names, stopped displaying on book pages, restored only some claiming were "duplicative" on others, then for a while put back, -- I'm not sure what they are doing with shelves anymore. It's no longer easy to just click a shelf name and explore (most seem very determined to throw you back to genres).

Likely will change again; I thought they worked well as tags and as cataloging. Sure has screwed with a lot of group activities that used to generate thousands of reviews by making it difficult to explore shelves.

But, while they are deciding what they're doing with shelves -- shelves are as close as you get to tags or keywords here.

[Susanna - Censored by GoodReads]

Shelves were a lot more useful to me, as a reader, than genres. But what do I know? I'm just a reader and site user.

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

It actually saves me time now that shelves are harder to use (except during some group games/challenges). They were a bit of a rabbit hole for me where I'd lose hours browsing books, sometimes buying and sometimes just adding to wishlists or sampling. Follow a link from a book page or from a friend/followed's post on my updates feed with a quirky shelf name or a shelf named for something I was interested in ...