You can view my Goodreads author profile, if you want to see what they look like. Click HERE. (And, hey, add me as a friend! I've been going through and adding people, but there's a limit on how many invites you can send out each day. But there's not a limit on requests you can accept!)
Instead of reinventing the wheel and telling you how to set your account up, I figured I'd point you to Goodreads own write-up on it. The information they expected was simple, and being able to send them a link to my Amazon Author Central profile was a help, as well. I sent in the request in the evening, and it was approved when I got up the next morning.
Three of mine were listed under the name Shannon Kenoyer-Lawrence. One did not have me listed at all. I was able to fix this issue easily by posting to a forum they have for that purpose. THIS LINK will take you to a help page on various issues you may need to resolve with your books. After I posted each issue separately to the forum, one was fixed within minutes, the other within a day. This was another place having the Amazon Author Central account helped things: I was able to put a link proving Amazon had already vetted me on those books. I imagine it would have been more complicated than that if I didn't have this simple proof.
Once I had my books set up, I fixed up my profile by adding photos, updating my profile information, adjusting the settings, connecting my blog to the account so my posts will show up there (you can also create a new blog there,) and all those good things. I then went through and started adding some of my connections, and I joined a couple groups, though finding other groups I'd like to belong to will take some time.
There are a lot of options I'm not utilizing on there yet, such as posting upcoming events and doing giveaways of books. They have author widgets you can put on your blog and Facebook, but I don't think I'll be using those until I have novels out. Though I'm curious as to how others in collections have utilized Goodreads.
I've got a lot more exploring to do, but it's a good start. I'd love to hear how you use it as an author, and any tips you might have!
Do you have your Goodreads author account setup? Do you utilize any of the extra features? If you're in collections with other folks, do you use Goodreads for those, or do you just use it for novels? Have you had any bad experiences on there? Do you have any tips or tricks?
May you find your Muse.
Book image by OCAL, clker.com
