Cozy Mysteries discussion

This is posted elsewhere in the group, but we wanted to make sure that everyone sees it. We ask that all authors, editors and anyone in publishing please read this before posting.


GoodReads is all about sharing books, including those that you've written. We have no problem with authors making posts to promote their books, but we have set up a few guidelines.

1. If you want to promote your book, you must be involved in the community. If you join solely to promote your book and do not enter discussion, you are spamming. As of 10/3/10, if a self-promotion topic is posted and the author has not participated in any discussion, or has posted only the most cursory of comments, his/her topic will be deleted. If the author repeatedly posts self-promotion outside of the proper folder (i.e. in unrelated topics), the posts will be deleted. The moderators reserve the right to remove members who post spam comments without warning.

It is simply rude to join just to try to sell your books and not respect the community's rules by ignoring them OR the community's members by spamming them with book promotion and reviews. This will not be tolerated here at Cozy Mysteries.

2. All self-promotion topics MUST be posted in the Self-Promotion folder. This seems obvious, but we have had to move several posts from the wrong folders. All self-promotion topics posted outside of the Self-Promotion folder will be deleted.

3. Please create only one topic for each book you are promoting. In other words, if you've already made a post about one particular book, and you'd like to post a review or the like, post that as a reply to your topic. Don't make a new topic.

4. We ask that authors who do participate in our group discussions don't use large signature blocks promoting their books on the bottom of each post. It's still advertising.

Clarification: We will allow a single line or bookcover. We're not going to police everything. But when the signature lines are full paragraphs, often times larger and longer than the thread comment, then it becomes too much.

5. We have set up a folder for authors needing help where you can ask questions of our readers or other group authors. Feel free to use that. All self-promotions however, still need to go in the self-promotions folder. There is a difference between asking for help and pushing your latest release.

Edited 6/5/2017

6. If a poll states not to add your own novel (but you may vote for it if added by others), then please FOLLOW THE RULES. Your book will be disqualified if an author adds their own. Inviting friends to join Goodreads, just to make a profile, join our group, just for them to vote for your book is also prohibited. A group poll is for our group members, not to be used as a self-promotion blitz for your new release. Failure to follow this rule has already resulted in an author being booted from the group.

7. Authors will not add their own books to the group bookshelf. We've caught authors doing so, with the release date listed in the notes section. There is a very specific folder set up for self-promotions where you can list your new releases. We encourage authors to join in our various discussions, we just ask that authors only promote their books in the specific places we've allowed. To do otherwise, feels like you're pushing your books at our group members, which is upsetting.

Failure to follow our group rules will result in any offending threads or comments to be removed, and possibly the author removed. Most authors are nice folks, so I'm sorry if this sounds harsh but we've had a sorry few who've gone around the rules, pushed the rules or flat out broke the rules and upset our small community. This is what we're trying to avoid.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to message one of the moderators. Thanks!