Naked Good Reads: How to find Readers

By Gisela Hausmann

Authors: Are you tired of giving away free books, paying for promotions, and waiting for book reviews that never come?

Goodreads is the social media platform where 55 million readers and authors meet.

In her latest #naked book Gisela Hausmann reveals:

•3 Basic rules for effective networking on Goodreads
•how to become a Goodreads Player – playfully
•how to "improve your own profile" so real readers will want to connect with you
•how to pick your quotes so you and your books get found in Google searches (for free, no SEO)
•what to do when you lost track of what your groups are doing
•Goodreads as a Data Library
•and so much more...

Step-by-step instructions and 47 instructional illustrations will help you to improve your Goodreads profile, connect with real readers who actually read and review books, and become a player on Goodreads.

Table of Content

Introduction
Prerequisite
Finding Readers
Data to Consider
Other Social Media Platforms
Who is a reader and who is there to “network”?
How do you really connect – bookwise?
Your Own Profile
Your Books
Other authors’ books
Create Your Own Networking Platform
Sort your “Friends”-list
Become a Goodreads Player – playfully
Be a Networker & a Power Player
3 Basic rules
How to copy a URL of a discussion posting
Comment on somebody else’s blog
Comment on book reviews
Pick your quotes so you'll got found in Google searches
Monitor your notifications
Changing settings to receive “Notifications” only
Interesting Group Discussions
Lost track of what your groups are doing?
Multiplying results via Social Media
Monitor your own “recent updates”
Monitor the interest in your book(s)
How to communicate with Goodreads readers directly
Find Book Bloggers
Recommendations
Goodreads as a Data Library
Top Goodreads Influencers
Goodreads Give Aways & my only Problem
Final Thoughts
Resources

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gisela Hausmann
• Release date: Sep 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370972425

Gisela Hausmann

Her motto:"Don't wait. The time will never be just right."-Napoleon HillGisela Hausmann is an email evangelist, an author, a former film maker and a transportation professional. Some of her books have been featured in the Success magazine, in Entrepreneur and on Bloomberg's podcast "Decrypted." She is also the winner of the 2016 Sparky Award “Best Subject Line.”A unique mixture of wild risk-taker and careful planner, Gisela globe-trotted almost 100,000 kilometers on three continents, including to the locations of her favorite books: Doctor Zhivago’s Russia, Heinrich Harrer’s Tibet, and Genghis Khan’s Mongolia.She graduated with a master’s degree in Film & Mass Media from the University of Vienna. She now lives in Greenville, South Carolina. She tweets at @Naked_Determina

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Hello, I am Gisela Hausmann. I am a 29-year industry veteran who published twenty-one books since 1988. My work has been featured in SUCCESS, Entrepreneur, on Bloomberg, and NBCNews.

Lately, I notice many indie authors’ problems to gain traction for their work. Internet marketers, not book marketing experts, have established their usual Internet sales system, which unfortunately does not work too well for many authors any longer.

The typical Internet marketing strategy is to create a surge of interest by offering the product for free or extremely reduced. In an ideal world, customers who acquired the free or extremely reduced product spread the word, which leads to follow-up sales.

The problem with this strategy is that books are not typical products like kitchen gadgets or seasonal products; it takes time to read books. This leads to authors paying for promotions, getting excited about the number of free downloads, but then - reviews trickle in only slowly and follow-up sales may not even recover the costs of the marketing campaign.

The main problem is that there is little or no dialog about the books because

• Amazon does not reveal who acquired the books

• Book hoarders who specialize in downloading free books may have a waiting list of many dozen books, and

• Aside from the online promotion, there is no real life discussion that supports and boosts sales.

The good news is that indie authors’ interests align with Amazon which started out as the Earth’s Biggest Bookstore. At least we have to assume that Amazon prefers to sell books instead of them watching Internet marketers making money off selling ads for free books.

Most likely, that’s why Amazon acquired Goodreads in 2013, because Goodreads is the social media platform where readers are. Since then, Goodreads has undergone many changes.

Today, Goodreads offers everything authors need:

• discussion forums, including some where authors can ask for book reviews,

• information on who showed interest in your book and added it to their shelves,

• book reviews,

• marketing opportunities,

• data to gauge your progress and make critical decisions of what to do next,

• games and quizzes

• and, much more.

Also, Amazon/Goodreads is probably not done with its improvements yet.

Therefore, you want to have a best presence on Goodreads. Who knows what the site will be like in one or two years. In 1998, four years after Amazon set up their ecommerce store, nobody could guess that it would become the website it is today.

This is not an exhaustive book about Goodreads, it is a strategy book that focuses specifically on what you can do so you find readers and readers will find you. Best of all, everything featured in this book is free.

I look forward to reading about your successes in my Goodreads news feed.

PREREQUISITE

The Mindset

Among the thousands of great brand slogans, Nike’s Just do it is probably the most profound. Even the best information is useless if we don’t act upon it.

This book features a step-by-step action list. It is recommended that you follow this plan so you don’t have to repeat any action steps.

The fine print

That’s Goodreads’ guidelines! - You must read them just like Amazon’s community guidelines. Amazon owns Goodreads. On their ecommerce platform, Amazon will delete reviews, strip reviewers of their reviewer privileges, and even close authors’ accounts if they violate the rules. It’s not a good idea to test their patience.

On the plus side, Goodreads is not an ecommerce site, hence many of the FTC’s guidelines don’t apply. For instance, you can discuss reviews exchanges on Goodreads in group forums which are created for the sole purpose so you can find beta-readers and reviewers. However, be mindful that Amazon might change Goodreads guidelines from time to time.

www.goodreads.com/author/guidelines