Play Book Tag discussion

I notice a lot of members helping one another with some of the more complex Goodreads tasks that can make participating here in PBT a little bit easier . . .which is awesome!

Perhaps we could collect some of them here so we don't lose them going forward!

Finding Listopia Lists for a Specific Book:

Use the "search books" function at the top of the GR menu, or follow an html link from your Goodreads bookshelf to a specific book/title. "Lists With This Book" (Listopia)* appears about midway down the page. (Below "Friend Reviews" and "Reader Q & A" but above "Community Reviews.")

In other words, just look up the book you are interested in and scroll partway down the page, until you see "Lists With This Book." If the book appears on more than 2 lists, there is a link called "More lists with this book..."

If a book hasn't been added to any Listopia lists, it will state the following under the "Lists With This Book" heading: This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Add this book to your favorite list.

Noting I do this using the web browser on my kindle, so I am not sure if it works the same way in the app? Maybe someone who uses the app could try it and comment here?

*As Annapi pointed out in another topic you might need to look through a few pages to find a specific list. Some popular books have been added to quite a lists.

Original discussion:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Thanks for starting this topic, Anita. It will be helpful to all of us to have helpful tips listed in one area.

Lisa A ⛄ wrote: "Finding Listopia Lists for a Specific Book:

Use the "search books" function at the top of the GR menu, or follow an html link from your Goodreads bookshelf to a specific book/title. "Lists With Th..."

Thank you so much for contributing, Lisa!!! Tremendously appreciated!!!

Anita wrote: " Lisa A ⛄ wrote: "Finding Listopia Lists for a Specific Book:

Use the "search books" function at the top of the GR menu, or follow an html link from your Goodreads bookshelf to a specific book/tit..."

You are welcome. :-) I hope other PBT members add their tips too, especially since there is often more than one method to do a task on Goodreads.

You could add a DNF shelf. Then it won't be either on your Currently Reading or your Read shelf and it won't be included in your Challenge total either. But you might want to think about including these in your Challenge total anyway. I do. If I have started it it, then I usually give it a fair few chapters. In that case I feel I have read it. I choose not to finish it, and I very often rate it as one star, but I consider that to be a genuine attempt at reading the book. So I count it in my 2018 total.

Caitie wrote: "I figured out how to add a DNF shelf as an exclusive shelf, I think we have the same idea!
..."

I'm glad you've got it worked out! Yes I think 40 pages is a good go at it - you know by then whether it has grabbed you or not.

Exclusive shelves:

One property of exclusive shelves is that if you have a book on an exclusive shelf and you look at any type of list or shelf page (pages with listings of books), it will show which exclusive shelf you have the book on. This does not work with regular shelves.

How I personally use this ---- I have an exclusive shelf called 'own-tbr'. I consider this my TBR shelf because it is all the books I own. The GR 'want-to-read' shelf is books I'm interested in but do not own. When the new tag comes out, I can quickly look at the shelf listing of books and see which books I already own (but haven't read).

NOTE: In listopia, on the right side of a list, it will tell you how many books you've read and how many are on your 'to-read'. This is triggered by books on the "want to read" shelf, which is the GR provided exclusive shelf.


I also have a DNF (books I didn't complete reading and reference (for books that you don't necessarily read from cover to cover -- like knitting books, cookbooks).

Finding if a specific book is on a specific shelf:

NOTE: I got this tip from the "A Million More Pages"

This only works if you are accessing GR through a browser (not the app), which tells you the exact URL. I noticed on iPad in Safari, the URL stays goodreads.com

Go to the books main page. On the right side there is a section called genres. This lists the main genres of the book and shows a number of users. If you click on the NUMBER next to one of the genres, it will take you to a page which shows the profile pictures of users that put the book on that genre shelf. Now look up at the URL. The end of the URL will be ‘?shelf=XXX’, where XXX is the name of the genre. For Feb, change the XXX to Asia and it will show you of some has shelved the book as Asia.

Note: GR determines the genres by the number of people that have shelved the book. It is crowd sourcing the information.

Bookmarking specific threads

(Again, must do this on website, not app)

If you participate in challenges where you are supposed to update a specific thread over time, it is useful to save the URL of your specific comment post.

When you post a comment and save it, on the right side of the gray bar will be a date/time stamp (only time when first saved). If you right-click, you will get an option to "copy link address" (or something similar --- this message is specific to your browser).
When you copy the link address, you can do several things:

1) copy it into the URL and then save it in your browsers bookmarks. When you want to access, you would then access your bookmarks.
2) If you have a place where you track challenge (like a challenge tracking thread), you can past into a comment window. Example - this should take you to the top post of this thread: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

2.1) Since you may forget what the link is over time, you can create you own reference links. For this, you will have to write some HTML, but it is really easy. (You can find this in the some html is OK like at the top of a text box)
[a href="PASTE-LINK-HERE"]easy to remember name[/a]
You will replace the [ with < and ] with >
Example, I am using the same line, but I am calling it 1st post.
1st post

Thanks for adding these, JoLene!

Not sure where to ask this, but I see that under the heading "other books" that it says to add a your book as tag rather than under that heading. I'm not sure how you do that.

@Robin, I'm not really sure what you are asking so if you can copy where you are seeing this, I might be able to explain further.

Each month we have a "tag" (leftover term from shelfari). This month, it is "Asia". If you read a book that fits the tag, you get 2 participation points when you post a review under the Folder "February 2018: Asia".

You will earn 1 participation point if post a review of other books in the February 2018: Other books folder. We do not add any non-tag books to the group bookshelf.

To post a review, you click on one the titles I mentioned. It will go a listing of all the posts in folder. Above the "last activity" folder, you will see a link called "new topic", which is how you create the thread for your book review.

Caitie wrote: "Robin wrote: "Not sure where to ask this, but I see that under the heading "other books" that it says to add a your book as tag rather than under that heading. I'm not sure how you do that."

Do yo..."

Thanks that helped and hopefully I did it right. Still getting used to this groups format. It is different than the group I was in.

I know that we have a lot of new members, there is a Frequently Asked Questions that covers a lot of the basics.

Lisa A wrote: "Finding Listopia Lists for a Specific Book:

Use the "search books" function at the top of the GR menu, or follow an html link from your Goodreads bookshelf to a specific book/title. "Lists With Th..."

I need to ask what Listopia is and what its used for? I've seen it mentioned in challenges and was able to find it here on GoodReads, just can't figure out what it is exactly. Does that make me dumb? I've been on GoodReads for awhile, other than having books added to my Want To Read list though I know nothing!

No silly questions.

GR allows people to create lists about various topics. Some lists are for to help find books for challenges (books set in XXX, books with red covers, etc), some are to show award winners and some just funny.

On most lists, you can add up to 5 books that meet the criteria or vote on the existing books. The list will be ordered based on number of votes.

Listopia is basically a way for the community to create book lists for a variety of purposes.

JoLene wrote: "No silly questions.

GR allows people to create lists about various topics. Some lists are for to help find books for challenges (books set in XXX, books with red covers, etc), some are to show awa..."

Thanks for explaining that. I definitely understand it a little bit better now!

Let me also add that we (Play Book Tag) do a couple of annual challenges each year, and one of our annual challenges this year involves the Listopia lists! That's why there are directions in this thread on how to find them. :-)

LibraryCin wrote: "Let me also add that we (Play Book Tag) do a couple of annual challenges each year, and one of our annual challenges this year involves the Listopia lists! That's why there are directions in this t..."

I think I saw the thread for that discussion, which is what led me to wonder what it was! I found Listopia and am now falling down a rabbit hole filled with clicks galore on that little green "want to read" button! This isn't going to end anytime soon! :-)

How to Add a Photo to a Post:

If you're trying to add an image that isn't a book cover, you will have to use HTML. The image has to be sourced online, so you will need a URL to the picture you want to add. If the picture is on your computer, and not hosted online, I recommend creating a Photobucket account (where they will provide you with URLs to each photo you upload). As soon as you have this URL, insert it between the quotation marks here:

img src=""

then add a bracket to each end (< and >) and paste that into the text field.

Credit: Goodreads Help

I feel a bit silly asking this late in the game, but how do you look at the list of books under a tag? Going to the 'more genres' link and clicking on a tag more often than not gives me a page that includes new releases, most read this week, lists, Etc. What I'm looking for is the full list of every book that has been shelved under a tag in descending order of how many people have tagged it. The only way I've found so far to find that list is to find a book I already know has the tag and click on it there. But this month we have tags I am less familiar with, and I'm realizing I should probably just figure this out.

Hopefully it's clear what I'm asking. :D

Amy, I cannot believe that I’m actually the one to respond to you on this. Considering I am the lowest tech person in our entire group. But I have figured a few things out. So when you click on the three choices. You can actually click on each of the choices and it takes you to the shelf, that does exactly what you’ve described. With the descending order of the most votes. In addition to that, what the feature does when you get to the genre shelf, is it tells you what books are on your want to read list. So as you’re looking for the titles, it flags it when you’ve already read a book, or want to read it. Which is incredibly helpful. Because instead of going to every title, you could even flip through the pages and find the ones that are already on your list. Hopefully that’s helpful and that makes sense. That’s part of the research I do when I see what the choices are. I flipped through the list and see what matches I have.

Oh, I didn't realize they were links! That helps a lot. It also helped me figure out that if you go to the bottom of the 'see all genres' page there's a link to 'see all shelves', and clicking on that will give you the list of all the tags, where you can search for the ones you want, so I can explore other tags as well. Thank you so much!

Amy N. wrote: "I feel a bit silly asking this late in the game, but how do you look at the list of books under a tag? Going to the 'more genres' link and clicking on a tag more often than not gives me a page that..."

Hi Amy,

There's another approach you can take to determine how to look at the list of books under a tag.

If you go to:

www.goodreads.com/shelf

and then enter the tag you are interested in into the search box,

voila - - a list of books that people have tagged accordingly. You can see how many times each book has gotten that particular tag to assess how well the book might "fit".

So um.
Hi.
I'm new here, and I guess it helps to make lists/tags in addition to/when you review one.
I'm wondering why that is.
Also I'm supposed to add photos.....of a book?
Is this a social media marketing thing or what?
Thanks for your replies in advance.
Steven

Hi Steve!! Welcome! Um, are you new to Goodreads, or just to our group (Play Book Tag). I just want to give you more context if you are new to Goodreads!

Anita wrote: "Hi Steve!! Welcome! Um, are you new to Goodreads, or just to our group (Play Book Tag). I just want to give you more context if you are new to Goodreads!"

Anita wrote: "Hi Steve!! Welcome! Um, are you new to Goodreads, or just to our group (Play Book Tag). I just want to give you more context if you are new to Goodreads!"

Anita wrote: "Hi Steve!! Welcome! Um, are you new to Goodreads, or just to our group (Play Book Tag). I just want to give you more context if you are new to Goodreads!"

Hi Anita!
New to both.
Context is always welcome,especially since I'm very much the newbie.

Steve wrote: "Anita wrote: "Hi Steve!! Welcome! Um, are you new to Goodreads, or just to our group (Play Book Tag). I just want to give you more context if you are new to Goodreads!"

Anita wrote: "Hi Steve!! We..."

Hi Steve, just want to say welcome! I will let the experts help you navigate !

Welcome Steve.
Overall GoodReads is a social media site for book lovers, which is owned by Amazon. Ultimately Amazon is trying to sell more books by connecting people (readers with readers, readers with authors), which they do by providing various functions.

Groups (or forums) are ways to find people with like minded interests. As an individual, you join a group which allows participation in discussions and any other group activities that the group organizes (group reads, challenges, etc). For PBT, we function like an online book club where instead of reading a specific book, we read a theme.

The other huge service that GoodReads provides is that it allows you to organize your own reading life and also do reviews of books that you read. In simplest form, you can mark a book as want to read, currently reading and read (and give a star rating or in depth review). In addition, you can also create your own book shelves to further organize your reading. This is entirely optional but the data is then aggregated for use for others searching for a book. Example, you like to read fantasy so you put several of your books on the fantasy book shelf. This information is then on the main book page as one of the main genres for the book.

There is a lot of information about the books that are maintained by site librarians who are volunteers, including edition info, series info, etc.

My recommendation is to dip in your toe to figure out what are the most useful features for you. I personally don’t ever do anything with pictures. For PBT, we do ask that you write a very minimal review for books you read with us, but we are low pressure and I suggest that you just read through some of the posts to get a feel.

Steve wrote: "Anita wrote: "Hi Steve!! Welcome! Um, are you new to Goodreads, or just to our group (Play Book Tag). I just want to give you more context if you are new to Goodreads!"

Anita wrote: "Hi Steve!! We..."

Hi again, Steve! Sorry for the delay . . .I'm in the midst of a crazy move. I'm not sure I could have stated it much better than JoLene did in the message above.

At baseline, Goodreads is a wonderful place to track your own reading (what you have read and how much you liked it and when you read it and what you plan to read) and to learn about new titles. It also tracks some nifty statistics about your reading and has book giveaways.

In addition to those basics, there are HUNDREDS of reading groups - - which are kind of like online book clubs. Whether you like sports or mysteries or science fiction, you can find a group with like-minded people. We are only ONE such group of zillions.

Our group is founded around the notion that people love to talk about books, but not necessarily all read the same book each month. So each month, we vote on a theme, and everyone reads a book that fits the theme. This month it is dystopia. Next month we will be voting on whether we want "faith", "poetry", or "espionage". You are most welcome to join in the fun here. We are a very friendly group with many longstanding members. In fact this is our 10th year in existence.

We also do a couple of big reading challenges each year and sometimes some smaller games for prizes.

In any event, welcome to Goodreads! We hope you find your place here.

Ohhh dystopia....
How very timely.
Also a form of speculative fiction that I enjoy.
Thanks for the answers.

AJ wrote: "Does anyone know how to hyperlink in Goodreads posts. For example on Wordpress for Goodreads I might say "Join Goodreads here" and the word "Goodreads" if clicked would take you to https://www.good..."

If you click on the link on the upper right side of the comment box that says "some html is ok," you will see the html to type for a link. I always copy it and paste it into my message. Then I just replace where they say "my link text" with what I want the link to be.

I have made the mistake several times of accidentally starting a new tag/shelf using only a couple of letters.

I can't quite figure out how to remove a shelf once it has been added.

Does anybody know how to do that?

Hi B&B, Right next to the word "Bookshelves", you'll find "edit" written in aqua. Open that up with your mouse. You'll find a list of your book shelves. There are X's to the left of each shelf. For the shelves you want to delete, just press on the corresponding X's with your mouse. At the very bottom of the list of bookshelves to the right, there is an "I'm done" box to press with your mouse. I hope this makes sense to you.

Holly R W wrote: "Hi B&B, Right next to the word "Bookshelves", you'll find "edit" written in aqua. Open that up with your mouse. You'll find a list of your book shelves. There are X's to the left of each shelf. For..."

Thanks, Holly. I've been trying to find how to do that. I eliminated 8 shelves I had accidentally made with 2 or 3 letters.

Booknblues wrote: "Holly R W wrote: "Hi B&B, Right next to the word "Bookshelves", you'll find "edit" written in aqua. Open that up with your mouse. You'll find a list of your book shelves. There are X's to the left ..."

I do this all the time! I make more typing errors like that when using an ipad. The screen is small, the letters are small and some keys are too sensitive. I have to periodically go in and remove or rename tags, and fix tagging errors caused by trying to touch a small box on the screen with a big finger.

I also have to frequently change books back from "read" to "want to read" (I really don't know how they get changed in the first place), and to get rid of redundant or unused tags.

NOTE - you can also change the name of tags using the same edit feature. If you have a large number of changes to make, bulk edit is very useful.

I recently read a book that has no tags or genres associated with the book. How can I add tags to this book?

Patty wrote: "I recently read a book that has no tags or genres associated with the book. How can I add tags to this book?"

When you add the book to your own shelf and tag it, I believe those tags are compiled as tags for the book. That's why it shows how many people tagged a book a particular way - - that's an aggregation of what we do on our shelves.

Anita wrote: "Patty wrote: "I recently read a book that has no tags or genres associated with the book. How can I add tags to this book?"

When you add the book to your own shelf and tag it, I believe those tags..."

That's what I want to know. How do I tag it. I know how to add the book to my shelf but not how to tag it.

Patty wrote: "Anita wrote: "Patty wrote: "I recently read a book that has no tags or genres associated with the book. How can I add tags to this book?"

When you add the book to your own shelf and tag it, I beli..."

The name of your shelf is the tag. For example, if you name your shelf PARIS and put Murder on the Left Bank on that shelf, it is now TAGGED at least once as PARIS. And if you search PARIS in genres, or check shelves for that book, it will show up. Tag, shelf, and genre here on Good Reads are all the same thing.

It can take GR a little time to show it though.

You can shelve a book on as many different shelves as you want. For example, using Murder on the Left Bank example again, I would also shelve it DETECTIVE.

Thank you so much, Theresa for helping.

Also, Patty, when you look at My Books, you will see all your books listed, and there is a column called shelves. There's a little edit button, and you click on that to add the book to more shelves.

If you need to add a shelf, that takes place using the button on the left hand navigation bar on the My Books page. There's a button that says Add Shelf. You can add any shelf you want.

Patty wrote: "Anita wrote: "Patty wrote: "I recently read a book that has no tags or genres associated with the book. How can I add tags to this book?"

When you add the book to your own shelf and tag it, I beli..."

Looking at your shelf here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...

I see a link under your rating column that let's you add a book to a shelf. I have customized my own page to include a column called Shelves.

Patty wrote: "I recently read a book that has no tags or genres associated with the book. How can I add tags to this book?"

FIRST you have to have your MY BOOKS page set to "table view" ... top right you'll see four little squares (like a window) which is "cover view" and immediately to the left of that is a symbol with three horizontal bars.... THIS is table view. Be sure you are in table view.

NEXT ... click on "settings" ... a bit farther to the left on that same line with the table view. You'll get a pop-up with a number of column headings. You want to be sure you have "shelves" selected.

NOW ... for each book on your bookshelf you'll have the option to edit the shelves/tags/genres for each book. Click EDIT ... you'll get a pop-up. Start typing the tag you want ... for example "family drama" If you already have that tag /shelf in your history it will pop up. If you do NOT already have it, you'll get an option to "add family-drama shelf"

Hope that helps.

Also, Patty .... very new books (or even old books) which few people have read/rated/shelved may not have any shelves listed on the main book page. Goodreads uses some sort of secret algorithm to decide which tags make it to the main page, and one of the deciding factors is the number of people who have tagged it.

Book Concierge wrote: "Also, Patty .... very new books (or even old books) which few people have read/rated/shelved may not have any shelves listed on the main book page. Goodreads uses some sort of secret algorithm to d..."

Correct--there have to be enough people. Several GR people and I helped to get an award winning novel I read some years ago to have genres show after I joined an older conversation. It has a niche audience, she only wrote one novel (she mainly writes short things), etc.

Book Concierge wrote: "Also, Patty .... very new books (or even old books) which few people have read/rated/shelved may not have any shelves listed on the main book page. Goodreads uses some sort of secret algorithm to d..."

You are the one that answered my question on how it gets shelfed on the main book page. The way I understand it now is that Goodreads has to first shelf tags for this book and then we can add to it. Thanks for clearing this up for me.

Patty, people individually need to add "shelves" (aka tags) to their books first.

I think there have to be a few before GR will then display them for others to see. (I think this is what Book Concierge and Karin were trying to explain.)

There are a couple of different ways to add shelves/tags to your own books that you've added in your "library".

1. On a book's page, AFTER you have added it to one of your exclusive shelves (Read, Currently Reading, or Want to Read), you should see a section that says "MY ACTIVITY". This is immediately under the main info about the book at the top of the page.

In that My Activity section, you should see "Shelves" and it will show which of your three exclusive shelves the book is currently on in your library (one of the three I mentioned above). Beside that, you should see "edit". Click "edit" and you can add as many additional shelves (or tags) as you'd like.

2. When you are finished a book, you mark it as "Read". At that point, a popup appears for your rating, your reviews, etc. There is also an area here called "shelves" where you can add your own shelves (or tags).

(Oh, and 3. BC explained how to add tags from your My Books page. Both of my ways start at the book's page.)

Does this help?

LibraryCin wrote: "Patty, people individually need to add "shelves" (aka tags) to their books first.

I think there have to be a few before GR will then display them for others to see. (I think this is what Book Con..."

I knew how to add shelves to my activities. I was wondering how they were added to a book's main page and Book Concierge answered that for me.

Patty wrote: "I knew how to add shelves to my activities. I was wondering how they were added to a book's main page and Book Concierge answered that for me. ..."

Oh, I see. Ok!

I really struggle writing the book reviews, especially after reading the reviews on here. Can someone give me some good pointers? I don't review all the books I read on here because I feel mine are not very good.