I signed up to Goodreads three months ago, determined to drag myself into the digital age. After several hours and countless cups of tea, I negotiated my way through the Goodreads author programme, created my author profile and listed my books. I waited for the emails to start pinging, the followers to start flocking. Perhaps something else was needed to blow away the digital dustballs. I had to find some friends! Goodreads obligingly searched through my Facebook contacts and linked me up with a few familiar faces. I decided I’d better have something to talk about and quickly began looking for authors to follow, mostly Scottish authors whose worked I admired. Now all I had to do was go into 'My Books' and list every book I'm reading or want to read. Goodreads obliged me by making a few suggestions. And voila! I waited. The days went by. Followers: 0. I began wondering what was the point of all this. But why! I cried, into the virtual void. Is this not a place for people who think all day about books? How could I be a social pariah in this, my most ideal of environments? I noticed many other authors who seemed to be in a similar situation. Perhaps it's because maintaining a digital profile can be a bit of a challenge to us socially awkward authors. And is having large number of followers when you're not Ian Rankin or Dean Koontz indicative of quality? As an experiment, I joined a couple of Goodreads groups. A few people offered me reviews in return for cash, but the quality of their reviewing left much to be desired. I even started my own group about Scottish fiction, but quickly dropped the idea thinking that the time spent nurturing a following outweighed the possible benefits. So now I’m facing up to the fact that I’m just not very good at this sort of thing. There are other ways of promoting your work that are more fun, and produce better results. If that makes me the digital equivalent of a British Telecom phonecard, them I'm proud of my primitive status. Goodreads is what it is, and so long as I don't expect anything other than some interesting book recommendations and a forum to place reviews and the odd article, should anyone ever want to read it, then I won't be disappointed.