The Suspense of It All! discussion

Ask for help and/or share your wisdom about the trade.

This is not a writing tip, but a tip on how to get more exposure here on Goodreads, besides joining groups. I posted this in your sister group ('Some Like It Hot') but thought I'd post it here, as well, in case your members don't all cross over between the two.

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Do the following to get more members to add your books to their 'to-read' and 'currently reading' shelves, which increases your visibility. When I started doing this, it increased my books being shelved by a LOT.

Here's how you do it:

1) Click 'Home'
2) Under 'Author Dashboard' section, click 'Visit your dashboard'
3) Under 'My Books' section, click the 'add ebook' link

I create an ePub file that gives the reader 'x' amount of chapters to preview. At the end of that last sample chapter (which normally leaves them with a cliffhanger), I put a link to where they can purchase the book, if they want to read the remaining chapters of the full book.

You can either select to have members read only through the Goodreads' online reader or whether they can also download the file. I hardly had downloads, so now I just select the online reader only.

A 'read excerpt' button will show up under your book's cover on the book page, and your book will also be put on the 'ebooks' page under 'Explore' (click on the 'sort by' drop down menu, then select 'recently uploaded' to see it appear).

Goodreads must advertise new books added to this page (or possibly some other 3rd party), because every time I add a new book there, I get a slew of members adding my book to their 'currently reading' or 'to read' shelves for several days. It's a great way to get visibility for your books.

Anyway, thought those who didn't know about this, might want to check it out and try it out for yourselves.

Much success to you!

Thanks! I'll have to give it a shot. I have two chapter teasers in my writings, but I can't tell if anyone sees them.

Yeah, the 'writings' area doesn't give as much visibility as what I mentioned above (I also have sample chapters in my 'writings' area and they hadn't brought in the shelvings until I did the above).

I'm sure you'll see a huge boost to members shelving you when you do it. You'll have to wait about an hour or two before that 'read excerpt' button shows up under your book title, but after that you should see a slew of members adding your book to their shelves for several days.

Good luck!

Wait a minute, Kristie, you are already doing the above, lol. I just looked at your profile and you've got that 'read book' button, so you've done this already! But it seems you're offering your FULL book to read for FREE.

LOL, and you've got a TONS of members shelving you! Good going!!

I did some giveaways, which is where I got most shelvings. It says 'read book', but I believe it stops at 20% or so. I would love to have someone check that out. The only one that shouldn't be an excerpt is The Musician & the Alien - that one is a free read, since it is a short.

Okay, after looking at your 'Blinding Justice' book, it does stop at Chapter 4.

What I would recommend to you is that you don't do it that way. Goodreads gives you a choice to display it as an 'excerpt' so you should do it that way, so the 'read excerpt' button displays and won't give readers the impression that they're expecting the full book. That could put some people off.

You'll have to remove your book and redo the 'add book' again, but in my opinion, it will be more accurate to what you're offering and you'll not upset anyone (if you know what I mean?)

Yes. Thanks. I'll make that change this weekend. It might also give me that bump you were talking about.

I have another tip to add here. I posted this in two other groups and thought those interested here might benefit (I've updated this one with latest sales info):

--------- my post ---------

I have something exciting to share, so hopefully some of you authors will do what I did and it may help boost your sales like it did mine!

If you have a paperback version of your book (or if you don't, get one made for free at Createspace or wherever you choose), then enter it in the Goodreads 'First Reads' giveaway contest!

I had 14 sales this month (averaging 2 - 3 sales a day) on my newest book 'When You Loved Me' before doing the Goodreads giveaway and when I had looked at my sales reports, it jumped to 33 all of a sudden! My jaw dropped. I was so excited, I had to call my hubby at work to tell him, lol.

Then a few minutes later it jumped again, then again, until as of this writing it is now at 207 sales. Going from 14 to 207 happened within a 7 hour time period.

Anyway, if you're getting good reviews on your book, but your sales are only trickling in on a daily basis, try this out and see how it goes for you.

I have to believe this boost was due to the GR 'First Reads' giveaway, unless Amazon decided to feature my book or something. I really can't see what else would do this kind of surge in sales. Anyway, I really recommend that you DO IT, if you haven't already. You just never know, you know?!

I truly hope that you have the same results that I am having with this awesome marketing/promotion method that Goodreads so wonderfully provides us authors!

My best to you all!!

Thanks, PS!

@Kristi - You get good reviews on your books, so this may work for you. One thing you might do is to edit your ISBN at your Goodreads book page. When I click on the 'Amazon Kindle' button, it goes to a '404 - Not Found' page. You want to make it as easy as possible for potential customers to access your books at Amazon.

So, add/enter the 10-digit ISBN also (not only the 13-digit one). I noticed that all the books with only the 13-digit ISBN goes to the '404' error page.

Thanks again! Last time I asked a GR librarian to fix it, but I didn't know what they did to fix it. I will try what you suggest tomorrow. :-)

Is there a trick to creating an epub file of the first few chapters? I've not done that before since my publisher generally handles that, but I love the idea of posting an excerpt here on goodreads and these tips are great!

There are free epub converters online that I have had mixed results with. Calibre is one. I'll look up the others when I get on my laptop. I have had the best results just downloading the epub from Nook after I publish, but if you only want to do a couple chapters, a free converter would be more practical. I'll get back to you.

Kristi wrote: "There are free epub converters online that I have had mixed results with. Calibre is one. I'll look up the others when I get on my laptop. I have had the best results just downloading the epub from..."

Thanks, Kristi!

@Tamsen - I use Calibre.

@Kristi - What kinds of problems are you having with Calibre?

@P.S. - most likely the 'I didn't take time to read the directions thoroughly' kinds. :)

- Oh, and when you download the app they try to get you to add on a bunch of extra programs that I don't have any desire to add. Didn't catch it the first time and had to uninstall 2 or 3 of them.

@Tamsen - the other one that I got interrupted in the middle of trying, but that looked promising was Lulu. That (I believe) is an online converter, so no downloading programs.

My tip on this would be to make sure you have a good block of time to try a couple of them out. You will need to follow their directions, and myself, I am easily distracted and if I lose my place in the directions I have to start over. That gets frustrating.

Beware downloading 'free' software, (like 2epub, if I recall) as they often have tagalong programs that will potentially screw up other programs you may have - such as virus and security, that sort of thing. Or especially web browsers and search engines, which will override your preferred default (if you have set one). They aren't necessarily virus programs, just annoying.

Good luck, and feel free to post your experience! Every success (and failure) has a lesson to benefit us all.

Here's another tip pertaining to the Goodreads 'First Reads' Giveaway ...

Create your paperback at about the same time you create your ebook. Run the Goodreads 'First Reads' Giveaway right after you publish. This way, you stay on the 'Hot New Releases' list in your sub-genre longer, because you are dropped after your one month anniversary.

Here's my experience on this ...

I published my last ebook on July 23, 2013. The paperback went live around August 3, 2013. I ran the Goodreads 'First Reads' Giveaway on August 7, 2013. Sales boomed on that day, so I have to believe that giveaway was responsible.

I landed on the Amazon's 'Hot New Releases' list in my sub-genres. The day I was dropped (August 23 - one month from my published date) my sales slowed down real fast. I got in a good two weeks worth of awesome sales, but had I done this on July 23rd, it might have been even better =)

But I'm not complaining, because it was an awesome experience, and there's always the next book that I will do the same with, but do the giveaway sooner to take advantage of the entire month of eligibility on the 'Hot New Releases' list.

I recommend you do the same.

Oh, and I would also recommend running the giveaway for ONE book for a TWO WEEK period. Then run a second giveaway of the same after the first one expires. Unfortunately, I didn't do this, I ran one giveaway for the entire month. But I'm going to try doing the two giveaways back-to-back on my next book to see if there's another boost with the second giveaway.

Hope others are getting good results if you've tried it.

Thanks, P.S.!

Thanks, P.S. - I've got another coming out October 15th so getting all my ducks in a row and this is super helpful! I did add an excerpt to my most current release based on your tip and it did land on a lot more shelves so we'll see!

Great, Tamsen! Good luck! Report back your results =)

And remember ... just run the giveaway for ONE book at a time. There's no need to give away more than one book in a single giveaway. It's better to give away ONE book several times so you're seen more often.

I think some people give away several books thinking that they'll get reviews from it, or that it'll draw in more entries, but I don't believe that happens. Before I ran my giveaway, I looked through various other giveaways and some giving away only ONE book had more entries than some who gave away 20 copies. Thus I figured number of copies don't matter.

If you want reviews, better to do a 'Read-to-Review' instead, by giving out FREE ebooks to reviewers.

Anyway, that's just my opinion based on my observations, research, and my own experience.

Wishing you GREAT results on your giveaway campaign!

Is it too late to do a give away on a book published two years ago? Or is it better to do new? I'm going to check into adding an excerpt from my book as well. Thank you again for all your tips. Wishing I would have happened upon goodreads when my book first published.

Charlene wrote: "Is it too late to do a give away on a book published two years ago? Or is it better to do new? I'm going to check into adding an excerpt from my book as well...."

I think you get a bigger bump if you do it on a new book, but you can do giveaways for any book. And I think putting an excerpt to the new book would be very smart.

@Charlene ... As Kristi mentioned, you can do it on an older book. I did it on one I published in 2012 last month. I didn't have the spike in sales, but it still gets members putting the book on their shelves which translates to more visibility.

*UPDATE* on my findings ...

Well, I did a Goodreads 'First Reads' Giveaway on my latest book last month and it didn't generate the spike in sales that my previous book did (the one I wrote about in my above posts here).

So, it could've been that the spike was a coincidence with my giveaway and something else triggered it (which I'm still clueless about because I didn't run any other promos, so there are no stats on where the sales spike came from).

I still think the Goodreads 'First Reads' Giveaway, along with adding an excerpt, is an excellent way to get a lot of members shelving our books, and some of that may eventually turn to sales =) It's still very good exposure for authors.

That being said, I have a theory that if you can get about 10 - 20 sales in a couple of days on a new book early on in its release, it'll spike you into the the 'Hot New Releases' list which may be how further larger spikes in sales happen. I'm thinking that might've been what happened for me that time I had the outrageous sales, lol.

On my current book I'm working on, what I might try this time is to offer a one or two day sale on its release and see what happens.

My book won't be ready for publication until early to mid-November, but I'll report back here if it works =)

Hope all is going well for everyone!

On the one or two day sales, I saw one reader comment on another thread that by the time he saw the post about the one day sale, he had missed it.

I think if I were to go that route, I will have a five day sale, and/or announce it in advance, giving it a bump on the day so people can see it.

Yes, most definitely good idea to announce in advance. Also, many authors have had successful sales promos with submitting to Pixel of Ink.

I've come back to share another tidbit for anyone interested =)

If you're an author of a series (or a series lover as a reader) and haven't heard of FictFact, you need to check them out.

As a reader ... you can get notified when a series you follow releases the next book, keep track of books you've already read, and much more. If you're being inundated with too many emails from mailing lists, then this is a way to get notified of all your favorite series at one place. Make sure the author/series is on there. If not, add them to the queue or let the author(s) know to add them.

As an author ... if you don't use mailing lists like Mailchimp (and since Amazon's 'Follow the Author' takes about 3 weeks to notify a new release—at least that's been my experience), this is a GREAT way to still be able to let your readers know when your next book is out promptly.

If you're like me, I had the dilemma of not being able to use Mailchimp because I write under pseudonyms. Mailing lists like Mailchimp require your real name and address to be displayed (even if you don’t use a pen name, you still might not want your personal info to be known). I didn't want to go through the hassle of a virtual mailbox or creating a business entity, so FictFact solves my dilemma!

I just put this following note >> To be notified when the next book is released, sign up at FictFact << at the end of my book.

Since I had only found out about FictFact a couple of days ago, I don't have results yet to my theory of using this platform as a replacement for Mailchimp, but check them out for yourself and I’m sure you’ll see their value too.

*CREDITS* ... I found out about FictFact when I perused a Goodreads group called SOS: Serious Overload of Series. Thanks goes to the SOS group for sharing that info!

Thanks, PS! Keep us posted on the results.
I just released Book 2 of my series, and it's not too late to add it to new orders.

Thanks PS!
I just released Book 2 of my series, and it could be a year before I get Book 3 done, so this could really help any fans I manage to get. Plus, it's not too late (never too late) to add the text you mentioned to new orders.

Keep us posted on your results!

Kristi wrote: "I just released Book 2 of my series, and it could be a year before I get Book 3 done, so this could really help any fans I manage to get."

Definitely! And CONGRATS on your new release!