Goodreads is the world's largest community of book lovers, with over 135 million readers and members. And the best thing about it? Everyone on there wants to talk about books. Goodreads is great at helping readers discover the next book they will love. Additionally, it is a wonderful site for publishers and authors to connect with potential readers.

Goodreads has created tools and profile pages that allow authors to talk to readers and promote their books in a unique way. This is what Goodreads is about building a strong reader community. What you may not realize as an author is that there is a role for you in this community as well.

Get on Goodreads Before You Publish

The first step for using Goodreads effectively as an author is joining the community. Even if your book isn’t out yet, it’s a good idea to join the site and connect your Kindle account.

Once you have a sense of what your book will be — even if you don't have a cover yet — you can share your title and synopsis to Goodreads to build excitement before your release. You can either create a book listing yourself or you can ask a Goodreads librarian or expert team member to help you.

Generate Reviews

Many readers check a book’s reviews on Goodreads to help them decide whether to buy it. A high average rating from many reviews is ideal, but receiving lower ratings is not necessarily bad. Readers find books with a mix of positive and negative reviews from one to five stars more trustworthy than books with only positive reviews, which might be faked. Five, four, and even three-star reviews are considered good on the site.

The second thing to consider with your reviews is that you want to get them as early as possible before your book launches. This helps build excitement for your book's release and helps more readers discover it. You can get early reviews by sending out advanced review copies and encouraging people to leave you a rating.

Thirdly, one of the best ways to get reviews on Goodreads is by adding a link at the end of your ebook. Somewhere in the final pages of your book, if you leave a link to your Goodreads and encourage people to leave a rating, it allows people to easily access your listing while your book is still at the top of their minds.

Write in the Annotations of an Existing Book

Once your book has been released and has been enjoyed by some readers, consider writing some Kindle notes and highlights.

To do this, go to your book on Kindle and see what the most popular highlighted passages are to get an idea of which parts resonated most with readers. You can add some special insider knowledge about them in the notes, and when you share these author annotations on Goodreads, it sends a notification and an email to every reader who follows you or who added that book to their ‘want to read’ shelf.

Readers love getting extra insights and the author’s behind-the-scenes notes on their favorite books. This is a great way to remind people about your book and promote readership.

‘Ask the Author’

On your author profile page, you can also turn on questions and answers. Think about times when you want to activate a Q&A around a particular book to get the most engagement. You can even promote the Q&A outside of Goodreads so that when people like your Q&A posts, your profile will appear in front of their friends and followers on the site.

Goodreads Giveaways

Giveaways are one of the features Goodreads is most known for, where authors give away copies of their books to readers as a way to promote them. Keep in mind this requires a budget to employ. Premium giveaways list your book higher up, so if you run a series of giveaways, Goodreads recommends running the premium one first because it will get more people to add it to their shelves.

Our final takeaways? Don’t be afraid of the site, and don’t avoid it! Goodreads can be a great tool for authors if you’re willing to take some time and build your following. Goodreads allows you to control your brand, control your book, and control what’s said about it. Take part in the community, and you will find it very rewarding in the long run.

This article was adapted from Published Podcast’s 60th episode, “How to Promote Your Book Successfully Using Goodreads with Mimi Chan.”