Monday, December 14, 2015

Goodreads Author Account

I previously did a post about setting up your Amazon Author Central account. Well, last week I realized I qualified to switch my regular Goodreads account to an author account. It's taken a few steps, but it was pretty simple overall.

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.

Once it's approved, you can search out your books and have them added to your profile. Three of my books were instantly added under my name the moment it was converted to an author account. It asked me to confirm, and I did. Easy-peasy.

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

22 comments:

Karen Baldwin said...

No, don't have an author account yet. Still haven't dipped my toes into social media and marketing.

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

Yes I do. Most of the books I've written or contributed to have me listed, but not all. Thanks for the tip on how to fix that.

Murees Dupè said...

Thank you so much for sharing on how to get things set-up. I do have a Goodreads Author account, which I also set up recently, but couldn't figure out how to add my book. I will go check it out now. Thanks, again.

Yolanda Renée said...

Thanks for sharing all that, I've had an author account for awhile, but usually I stumble across the solutions, and then quickly forget them. Writing them down like you did is wonderful. Thanks!

Arlee Bird said...

Something for me to think about for the future. I've been bad about just keeping up with my regular Goodreads account.

Arlee Bird
Tossing It Out

A Beer for the Shower said...

We both have one, and we... don't really use it much. But hey, I added you as a friend, so that has to count as doing something.

cleemckenzie said...

I'm set up with my author account and I do have the anthologies listed as well as my novels. I'll drop by and add you as a friend!

Susan Gourley/Kelley said...

I'm groaning here as you remind me of something else I need to update. I followed you.

DMS said...

I have a Goodreads author account and just went on and followed you. :) I definitely don't utilize all the capabilities of the account, but I am learning and adding as I go. It definitely has a lot of wonderful features and the customer service has been so helpful anytime I have had to contact them. :)
~Jess

S.P. Bowers said...

Great info! I have a Goodreads account but not an author one. This will be very helpful in setting one up.

Traci Kenworth said...

I don't have one yet. I only have one anthology to my name so far. I suppose I will in the future. Thanks for the tips!!

Shannon Lawrence said...

It seems like once you dip your toes, there's no going back.

Shannon Lawrence said...

It's super easy. Good luck!

Shannon Lawrence said...

I hope you got it added! For new books, they had a specific way to do it, but the instructions were in there with everything else, I think.

Shannon Lawrence said...

I would completely forget if I didn't blog it. I spent quite a bit of time figuring everything out and getting it all set up.

Shannon Lawrence said...

I was terrible at keeping up with my regular one. Not sure how good I'll be with the author account.

Shannon Lawrence said...

Have you done giveaways on there, or do you stick with your blog for that?

Shannon Lawrence said...

Great! How much do you use it?

Shannon Lawrence said...

No kidding. There's so much we have to stay on top of.

Shannon Lawrence said...

Customer service is definitely great there. I had one response within about ten minutes.

Shannon Lawrence said...

Great! I hope so. After combing through and working things out, I figured it was worth passing along.

Shannon Lawrence said...

It wouldn't hurt to set it up with that one anthology, but I also understand waiting. No sense in having yet another thing on your plate until you're ready.