Good grief, Goodreads
Should Goodreads Authors be seen but not heard?
I’m a Goodreads author and I’ve been on Goodreads since 2010 — even longer if you count a previous account. Wait, that rhymed, didn’t it?
I’ve over 4,000 friends and followers there. I use it mostly to track what I’ve read and what books I review.
The extent of my self-promotion on Goodreads until this year has been, well, being a Goodreads author. That’s it.
I recently held a virtual launch party to mark the opening of my Patreon community. This including sending invites across all of my social media accounts — except for Twitter where I just tweeted about it because there’s no easy way to contact 15,000 people directly.
I invited my ‘friends’ on Goodreads to the virtual launch party and offered to review a book (theirs or someone else’s or a book of their choice) for any Goodreads member who joined my Patreon community and to make them a Top Friend on Goodreads so that I see all of their updates.
The overwhelming majority of people ignored it (as expected) but a handful joined the community and were made Top Friends on Goodreads. True to my word I’ll review any book for them for free — luckily no-one has made me read Harry Potter yet.
