Q: What can we do better? > Likes and Comments

A question, for April 2026:

What is your favorite book group, on Goodreads and/or elsewhere?
Why?
What to they do that you really like?
What could we do to be more interesting to you?
What does this group do well?

I'm only in a book club at work but we try new reads—some popular, some from unknown authors. Re-reading Tom Clancy (God love him) and older books gets old. What can this group offer that's more interesting to me? Shameless plug, but let the group read my award-winning novel, Steal the Reaper, for it's next read. Sorry if that's not allowed but this is the type of group I wrote it for.

We mix it up, old and new—the whole spectrum. Generally, we require 1000 ratings to get to the book of the month poll, to keep the quality up. About once a year I do a member author book of the month, and we choose from the many authors who are members of the group. Keep an eye out for it.

Note that even reading a very well known book like Jurassic Park, maybe at most 10 of us read it. We can’t make you a success overnight even on our best month. Maybe 6 of us read a couple of the Murderbot books. There has never been a book where all 300+ people bought it and read it all together. Even a truly great new book like Aggressor or Artificial Wisdom we caught with around 1000 ratings, and they were 5 stars, yet we only had a few of us reading it. When a member-author book is selected, probably only a couple of us read it, and it is rare that more than one of us actually finishes it. If we finish, and say we liked it, maybe a couple more will read it.

I’ll offer this tip, for what it’s worth. I won’t vote for a book that isn’t an audiobook. I’m just one guy, one vote. Jed used AI with Amazon to get his book automatically made into an audiobook, I think for free. You’d have to ask him. I voted for his book. I am one of few that votes every month. It won. I read it. It was easily better than half the books we read … which generally are by authors you’ve heard of. He got a few reads out of us.

Hey, thanks man! Yes, Amazon offered to create audiobooks out of my two novels for free with no effort from me. it's an AI voice. I just had to pick which one from like eight options. Apparently they sound decent?
Also, a quick aside: I think a new murderbot book is coming next month?!

Regarding this reading group, I think it's the only one I've ever belonged to! I joined maybe 4 years ago but didn't really start participating much until maybe 2 years ago. I'm glad I did! I wish more members participated, but otherwise I dig it.

I don't think the site lends itself well to posting and communicating back and forth. I've noticed some BookTubers have a Discord channel and there seems to be much more engagement.
Sharing book hauls, book photos, etc.
Even the Inbox msg I got from this group, i could not see a reply button.

To answer the questions methodically (as engineers do).

This is the only book group I am active in, so I don't have anything to compare with, although the ones I have drifted through, all look very similar on Goodreads - that's the standard Goodreads format by the looks of things, which is a leveller I suppose. So I guess it just comes down to the active users and moderator.

This one is perfect for me. I would rather fully engage with one small group than get lost in a multitude of competing voices and content. I'm quite happy here! If it gets too popular, I may bugger off and try to find another interesting quiet corner somewhere.

I appreciate the straightforward no nonsense way it's set up and moderated with no hidden 'angle' being worked. It's just a small bunch of people chatting about techno-thrillers. It does what it says on the tin. That's refreshing to me.

Don't change a bloody thing!

Evan wrote: "I don't think the site lends itself well to posting and communicating back and forth. I've noticed some BookTubers have a Discord channel and there seems to be much more engagement.
Sharing book ha..."

I personally think these messages are just fine … most of the time. I think they did get rid of direct person to person email just a few months ago, so the private conversation is gone. Agreed … that kinda sucks. Nice at times, but I didn’t use it that much.

I do appreciate more visual stuff, and some movement and talking. Or podcasts, which you didn’t mention.

I did already add book covers to our group page so when you search “thriller” our group kinda stands out with 3 book covers instead of just a few lines of text. Not sure it helps grow us.

Technothriller fans are gonna find us anyway, and non-technothriller fans probably don’t care about the book covers. I did some animated gifs before. Might come back to that. I will add more graphics and links to videos if I can find any worthy … which I generally have not most of the time. I do post related movie trailers, but those are few and far between. Can try to up my game. See if anyone notices.

Of course, all of the members can post that stuff too. I do watch some Booktube (just book videos on YouTube, … there isn’t a thing called Booktube if anyone was wondering) but most of the videos are not that great for our genre. I’m not sure I’m game for making videos myself. Would take some calories.

I appreciate the edits to the group page might make the group more inviting to join but the issue is ongoing engagement. Take a look at the book voting each month, 1% of members voting?

I enjoy techno-thrillers and sci-fi but i can only find sci-fi channels on YouTube so end up watching their content, and that's when i notice them having their own communities (sometimes in Discord) read-a-longs, patreon groups, etc.

I think people find affinity or connection to a host, a personality, and then engagement happens from there. I don't think GIFs will trigger more engagement.
It's a struggle to compete with audio and video media where GoodReads is only text-based.

I don’t think GIFs really make much difference either, except possibly getting your attention if you’re not already in the group and are searching for say “thriller”.

Do you have an example of such a sci-fi group with Discord and such? Maybe I can join a group and see what it is they offer.

Hi guys, jumping in as a relatively new member from Poland. I completely agree with Simon and Steve—the no-nonsense, text-focused format of this group is exactly what drew me in. It’s refreshing not to be bombarded with GIFs and loud promo graphics everywhere.

Jed & Steve—I saw you mentioning the Amazon KDP Virtual Voice feature. I got really excited to try it out for my short alt-history novellas, but unfortunately, Amazon hasn't rolled it out to authors in Poland (or most of Europe) yet! It looks like it's restricted to the US, UK, Canada, and Ireland for now. Such a bummer, because fast-paced techno-thrillers seem like the perfect fit for that AI narration.

Anyway, thanks for the insight on the audiobooks. I guess I'll just have to wait until Amazon remembers the rest of the world exists.

Cheers,
Szymon

Evan wrote: "I appreciate the edits to the group page might make the group more inviting to join but the issue is ongoing engagement. Take a look at the book voting each month, 1% of members voting?

I enjoy te..."

Words in Time YT channel. Click on the latest video and visit the Discord channel in the video description.

Hi,
I'm fairly new here. Confession: this is the first book group I've been in. I did take a look at the whole list of sci-fi looking for themes that interested me. Many are very small groups and the alt was a couple of super big groups.

Technothriller seemed the right size and fits more what I write and the stories I enjoy, except those that are more horror. (Horror's not my cuppa.)

That said... I'm still watching to see how things work here and on Goodreads. I'm not a fan of discord, though. Everyone seems to love it but I find it confusing.

So far it seems straight forward here, but I'm not through all the messages yet.

I too, value audiobooks as my favourite way to consume books, if at all possible. I'm not so keen on AI voices, though. The fluency level is awesome, but there's something about the voice I struggle to connect with as much as a person, right now. I expect that will change over time. Super important if someone's sight impaired. I prefer a real narrator for fiction.

Aside from this book group, I blog reviews on my website. Just my way to help indie authors that I select at random. Although, I do have reviews for some of the big trad books too. Indie books are usually paperback or eBooks and take more time. I try to review optimistic near-future sci-fi technothrillers.

I think the group is well run, enjoyable and allows us to fit the book readings in with our schedules. Plus, I think it's great an indie book gets chosen sometimes. There are some really good novels out there with few reviews because all visibility has to be purchased - a cracking story isn't enough anymore.
Thanks,
Helena