Tip from Tara: Put Your Book On Goodreads!!!

I used Grammarly to grammar check this post, because Pudgy Pug and I had a tussle over the keyboard. She wanted to post more demands for treats and discuss her latest bowel movement--NOT appropriate content for Book Babe! Anyway, who knows if she got a paw in or not.

I felt it past time to post this. Authors, here is a HOW-TO Guide for putting your books on Goodreads. I'm tired of doing it for you. *insert sweet smile* And truth is, sometimes I see a book on Amazon I want to read and I go to GR to mark it so I don't forget about it...and it's not there, and I just don't bother. That means...I forget about it and that book never gets read. So bookmark this!

First of all, if you haven't already applied for a Goodreads Author Account, you need to do so. First, you need to use Goodreads as a user, just a plain average reader, and once you have 50 books on your shelf, you may email Goodreads and apply for an author account. I advise you to make your plain-Jane account the same name you will be wanting your author account under so the combining of them goes smoothly. As a Goodreads author you will be able to edit your own books, rather than have a librarian do it for you all the time.

Anyone can add a book to the database, to my knowledge. If you are just adding your book for the first time, or even adding another edition of the same book (cover change, publisher change, etc...please put ALL editions on the site. Reviewers like to mark the edition they are reading specifically), this is what you can do:

Do a search in the Goodreads search box at the top. Type in the title of your book, add a comma, your author name.

If the search does NOT pull up your book, then you need to add it. Look to the right of the list...

You'll see this:

Click on the words: Manually add a book.

You will then see this screen:

It is as simple matter of filling out the form. Author name, title, numbers, blurb, language. In the upper right there is a place to upload the book cover. It's best not to swipe it from Amazon but use your jpg.

Click on:

And you are done!!!!!

Now, if you have added another edition of a book already in the database due to cover change, publisher change, etc, this is where you WILL need to enlist the help of a librarian. You can almost always find someone willing to do this as it takes seconds... Often you can go into a Goodreads help group such as: Goodreads Feedback and ask for help. Mention the book title and your author name and ask if someone would combine the editions for you.

BUT, you can EDIT the data on any of your titles. Simply go to the book's page by using the search engine and clicking away--or use your author dashboard--and click edit details in the book's description. Please see what I've circled in the following screen shot. This is pretty tricky to find.

Clicking on that will pull up that same form you saw to first create the book. Change whatever data needs to be changed. Perhaps someone else entered your book and didn't have the ASIN number or something and you need to add that. Be sure to add your reason for changing data.

Click on Save Changes.

I hope this helps.