Using your Goodreads Giveaway for Maximum Advantage
This past Friday I wrapped up my first Goodreads Giveaway and thought I’d share some of the tips, tricks, and results I learned from doing it.
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Contest: Win an autographed copy of ONE BAD TWELVE!
Head on over to GoodReads.com for your chance to win an autographed copy of my crime fiction short story collection, one bad twelve! The contest ends in just 2 days, so hurry up!
Registering at GoodReads gives you the opportunity to participate in reading groups, chat with authors, and enter daily giveaways to win many other books, as well. It’s a great site that brings readers and writers together.
Giddyup and enter to snag that copy of one bad twelve for your very own at http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/23491-one-bad-twelve.
A Brief Rant on Bad Reviewers
Lord knows independent authors couldn’t survive without the wonderful amateur book reviewers on sites like Amazon, Goodreads, and Librarything.com. I love my thoughtful reviewers (the 2-stars and 5-stars alike) and often thank them for their time. If I ever hit it big in e-publishing, it will be because of them.
But there’s a particular kind of reviewer that drives me crazy. Their approach or conception of what it is to rate or review a book is deeply flawed, unfair, and–frankly–unhelpful to other readers. I’ve boiled down what bothers me about this kind of reviewer in a simple statement:
Your dislike for a genre or format does not constitute a fair criticism of a work.
Why Goodreads Is Making The Switch And What That Means For You
Why Goodreads Is Making The Switch And What That Means For You.
Book reviwer and blogger “Books: The Cheapest Vacation You Can Buy” points out in this post that Goodreads has moved away from Amazon for its basic book information, finding Amazon’s requirements “too restrictive”.
I’m not sure what that means, exactly, and I haven’t followed up independently with GR to see the whole story, but for authors and readers/reviewers with tons of content on the GR site, you may want to check your account, as some books will need to be “rescued” by January 30, 2012, i.e., have their title, author, and content matched.
Although this seems to affect few titles, the ones that are will lose their matching, so reviews and ratings will be floating around in GR space, opinionated orphans without a home.