I signed up for the Absolute Write forums – http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/. I had been a longtime lurker under another user name, but this time I dove right in. It’s really a great resource for finding current information about writing, publishing, marketing and all of that. If someone there doesn’t have the answer to your question, they’ll at least have some strong opinions about it. They have subforums for all genres and one specifically for self-publishing and another for promotion, so I definitely encourage you to check it out. I had to be manually approved to start posting and to edit my profile, but I was approved in less than a day.
And the reason I bring up these forums now is that the postings in there led me directly to the Goodreads Making Connections group. Before, I was sort of vaguely aware you could offer your book to reviewers on LibraryThing and Goodreads, but I hadn’t really looked into the logistics. Turns out the Making Connections group is actually a pretty easy and friendly way to go about it.
The reviews are not specifically Goodreads reviews, but also Amazon and other sites as well.
How to Get Your Book Into Goodreads Reviewers’ Hands
Step 1. Get a Goodreads account. Or get another one, if you already had one under a different name from the pen name on your current book.
Step 2. Check out this How to Use the Author Program page, because it’s full of information.
Step 3. Claim your book. This is pretty easy and fast, except.. that I ran into a snag. I wrote the Flaming Geeks author bio in the plural, so they rejected it as an author, because it was an organization. So.. the account still exists, but it’s not an author account and it can’t claim its book. I expect to have better luck with Juliet Rich!
Step 4. Find the Making Connections group. That link should work, but if it doesn’t, just go to Groups and then search for “Making Connections”.
Step 5. Join the group.
Step 6. Read some of the posts so you know your way around.
Step 7. Sign up your book in the ARR: Authors Requesting Reviews thread.
Step 8. Reply to the Email you get with the requested information.
Step 9. They’ll start a thread for you. Monitor that thread daily so you can send out the requested copies.
Step 10. Profit. Reviews. Yay, reviews!
Does It Work?
Stay tuned and I’ll let you know! I’m starting off with 1 review on my trivia book, so even 1 additional review would be double my count.
Shout-Outs
Thanks to pretty much everyone who participates on the Absolute Write forums, and particularly the administrators and moderators. And thanks to the people running the Making Connections group on Goodreads and the reviewers who are eager to review. There’s lots of great people out there in the book world.
