Sue Knott's Blog: Knott The Screaming Type - Posts Tagged "goodreads"

Goodreads seems to be such a tremendous tool for authors and readers alike. I'm still trying to figure my way around it. ['m guessing there is far more here than I have as yet uncovered.

Today, I asked someone who is reading one of my books to be my goodreads friend. I don't know if that is weird or not. I don't even know what, exactly, it means to be a goodreads friend.

I only have one "gf" at the moment, a person who read one of my books and asked me to be her friend. The only thing that I know that friendship means right now is that I get to see what she's reading. I find that very interesting and valuable! The more I know about my readers' literary tastes, the better I feel I can write books that truly connect with readers.

I am so very busy writing, that I find it difficult to keep with all the new and different offerings in the social media world (and everywhere else!). But, I try to devote a little time to it each week.

If any of you have insights you'd like to share with me about how you use the friend feature on goodreads, I'm all ears. And if you want to friend me, I'd be so honored to be your friend.

Seeing what people are reading feels a little "stalkery"...that may be too strong a word, but it definitely feels like spying (in an impersonal way). But, as a former advertising copywriter, I am used to collecting and analyzing data on people's habits and turning that into useful insights that improve products and communications. (As an author, I've been doing this by reading reviews on various books and analyzing what readers like and don't like. I suppose I am a total research nerd.)

I've read in the trade press that goodreads will be starting to sell books sometime this year...don't know if that's speculation or a fact, but it will be interesting to see what happens in the book world when/if that comes to be.

Am I the only person who is always thinking there’s a bigger story behind every story or some bizarre motive behind the simplest thing?
I can’t even read the newspaper without getting frustrated that the better story is so NOT THERE. Some silly little for instances: a man confronts someone robbing his home and shoots the intruder in the butt. Why isn’t anyone telling us exactly how the shot managed to be in the guy’s butt? Sounds like he must have been running away to me.
Or, my favorite: a delegation of (I believe Russian, but it could be some other Communist block country ‘cuz it has been awhile and my memory ain’t what I’d like) diplomats arrives in some European country (I think it was France) and is met by the local diplomat who calmly converses with the new guys, then walks over to the edge of the parking ramp and unexpectedly jumps to his death (5th floor). Really?! You can put that in the newspaper with a straight face and leave it at that?
To bring this back around to publishing, I finally looked at the profile of “xyz” who gave my novel, “Catching On Fire” a single star rating. I think it’s important to know why people don’t like your book. For the most part, the few low ratings come from readers who adore literary fiction. All is well and good with that. My novel is popular fiction. It is designed to entertain and enlighten the masses, not the elite.
Sooo, I look at this xyz from Karachi, Pakistan, and he/she has rated 15 books and given them all one star. And it appears that some of those books are part of the same series. Why would anyone read another book in a series when they rated the first book with one star? Is this person really from Pakistan? Are they trying to make a comment on American popular fiction? Do they not understand the star rating system? It just seems like there must be a story there and I would love to know it. (Not as much as I’d like to know what was going on with that diplomat who “jumped,” but I’d still like to know.)
And why do so many Goodreads members have “xyz” as their screen name? I feel like there’s a private joke or insider club that I am hopelessly clueless about.
That is all for tonight.

It never fails. Even if I proofread my goodreads post before hitting that "publish" button, there always seems to be a typo I missed. (Perhaps I shouldn't post at ridiculous hours of the night when I'm bleary eyed -- but that seems the only time I can steal for posting.)

Assuming that the new Amazon ownership might add some financial backing or better management, why not throw those resources into a functionality that lets us edit our posts post posting? (Don't you love that that sentence makes sense? Or that I have two "thats" in a row in the next one?)

Just throwing it out there.