Goodreads, for authors who find it baffling
Goodreads is a reader community that happens to have an author program bolted to the side of it. Nearly every confusion an author has about the site comes from assuming it is the other way around.
It is where readers keep shelves, log what they finished, rate books out of five and argue about them with other readers. You are allowed in. You are not the audience, and the room was not built for you. Behavior that is ordinary on a sales channel — pushing the book, answering an objection, correcting a customer — reads as an intrusion there, and it produces the one genuinely bad outcome the site has to offer.
So the useful frame is small: do a short list of housekeeping jobs properly, then behave like a reader.
Claim the author profile
Your book record usually exists before you touch anything. It gets created from retailer data, or added by a reader who shelved a copy they bought. What has not happened is you being attached to it.
The author program is free. The shape is the same as everywhere else: prove you wrote the book, then edit the page — photograph, biography, your titles gathered under one name. The same discipline that makes retailer author pages work makes this one work, and it is covered already in Author profiles, and why they are worth an hour. Spell your name identically to the way it appears on the cover and in your metadata, or you will end up as two authors holding half a backlist each.
Make the book record correct
This is the part with the actual return, and it is dull, which is why it gets skipped.
The cover. The record carries an image, and it is often wrong — a placeholder, an old edition, or a version uploaded before your final artwork. Readers browse this at the size of a fingernail, so the cover that survives is the one that was designed to survive that.
The description. Use the same blurb you use on the stores, so a reader who meets the book twice meets the same book. See How to write a blurb that sells the book.
The series. Link the books into a series and number them. This is the single highest-value field on the page: it is what makes book one visible to somebody who just finished book three, and an unlinked series is three orphans. The visual half of the same job is in Series covers: the same shelf, three books along.
The editions. Paperback, hardcover, large print and ebook are separate records that belong to one work. Where they are not grouped, your ratings sit in four piles and each pile looks thin. Getting them combined is a request, not a setting, and it is worth making.
In the Cover Maker. The thumbnail check shows your cover at browsing size, where these records live, and the ebook cover exports at 1600 × 2560 — a clean image for any record that wants one. Start a book → · about the Cover Maker
Ratings run lower here
Averages on a reader community sit below the averages on retail sites, because people rating for other readers use the whole scale and people rating a purchase mostly use the top of it. Readers there know this and read the number in context. A respectable book carries a respectable average, not a perfect one.
Treating that number as a problem to be fixed is how authors get into trouble. It is not a fault in the book and there is no lever you should be pulling on it.
Reviews also appear before your publication date. That is normal: advance copies circulate, and the people reading them post when they finish. If you ran a campaign, this is the campaign working. See Getting early reviews without breaking a rule.
Be a reader in public
The one activity that reliably does you good is the one you would be doing anyway. Shelve what you read. Rate honestly. Write the occasional review of somebody else's book, generously and in your own voice. Recommend the writers you actually admire.
This works for the same reason it works on a feed: it puts you in front of readers of books like yours, without asking them for anything, and it costs nothing because it is just reading. The parallel argument is in Social media, for authors who would rather be writing.
Giveaways, groups and lists
Three categories of feature get asked about constantly, and all three change terms often enough that any specific figure printed here would be stale before you read it.
Giveaways. A promotion that puts copies in front of readers who enter for them. Formats, costs and eligibility vary; check the current program before you plan around it.
Groups. Reader communities organized by genre or topic. Most have explicit rules about authors promoting their own work, and those rules are enforced by the readers who run them. Read the rules of a group before posting in it.
Lists. Reader-built rankings of books by theme. Being on one is mildly useful. Organizing votes for your own book is visible, tacky, and precisely the sort of thing that gets noticed.
The rule that matters more than the rest
Never argue with a review. Not a reply, not a correction of a factual error, not a thank-you that turns into a discussion. Never ask a reviewer to change or delete one, directly or through a friend. Never mass-message readers.
The worst thing that can happen to an author on that site is a public argument with a reader. It gets screenshotted, it travels further than any of your promotion ever will, and it stays attached to your name long after the book has been forgotten. It is also entirely avoidable, by closing the tab.
Make yours
Everything here is built into the tools, and they are free to use: name your book, bring your manuscript or your artwork, and work as long as you like. You only pay when you want the files without the preview watermark.
Next: Asking for reviews after launch, without breaking a rule · More: Getting early reviews without breaking a rule · Author profiles, and why they are worth an hour · Social media, for authors who would rather be writing