Goodreads

my author page and stats

As an author, I have a special dashboard on Goodreads, the website where readers can share ratings and reviews about books as well as take part in reading challenges and other book-related things.

I’ve shared screenshots that I took today of my dashboard. Naturally, I’m always interested in seeing if anyone has added a review, but the thing I like to look at here is the “to-read” number under each of my seven titles. This shows me the number of readers who have marked my books as ones they want to read. For each book that number is larger than the “currently-reading” number. It’s nice to know that there are people out there who plan to read each book at some point and who have bothered to announce their plan to do so.

I don’t use the full power of Goodreads like I should, but when I check for new reviews and find one, I always feel a little thrill of excitement that someone not only bothered to read one of my books but that he then took the time to post a review that might lead to someone else opting to read the book, too.

For example, I stumbled upon this little gem of a review a week or so ago that was written in February:

Don D.’s summary of the novel is spot on.

“Last in the Class” has only been out two months, but it’s been favorably received so far, and these reviews sum it up nicely without giving too much away.

Personally, as a reader, I don’t put a lot of stock in reviews before I read a book, but after I’ve finished a book for my column, I sometimes will read through the reviews on Goodreads to get a feel for the overall reaction to the book — since I write about classic literature, each novel I read has hundreds of reviews for me to scan before I light on one or two in-depth ones that add to the sense of the book I’ve already reached on my own.

As an author, though, I do hope that positive reviews will help guide new readers to me. After all, I’m an entirely unknown, small-time, self-published author from a tiny town in one of the least populated states in the country. I don’t have a marketing team to guide readers to me, I don’t have a huge fan base spreading my name by word of mouth (the most powerful promotional tool), I don’t have the money to pour into ads, I don’t have the time to focus all my energy on self-promotion, and I don’t have the know-how to do a lot of what I should be doing to boost my sales — therefore, every single positive review on Goodreads helps validate me as a “real” author in the eyes of people who’ve never heard of me or my books.

Every positive rating helps, too. You’ll notice that I have more ratings than reviews. For example, “The Clearwater House” has 50 ratings and 5 reviews and an overall 4.14 star (out of 5) rating. Fifty ratings is a solid amount of ratings for a writer like me. I’d love to see my other books acquire that many someday.

If you use Goodreads and haven’t yet rated one of my books, please do so. This isn’t a plea for a 5-star rating — I would expect you to be honest — but rather a plea to help boost the number of ratings I have so that other readers will see that number and then, perhaps, give one of my books a try. If you like to write reviews, too, go for it, but that would be the cherry on top of the sundae, the rating.

I haven’t done much with StoryGraph, another app where readers can rate books, but I do have it on my phone. I know there are other book rating sites and apps available, but I haven’t expanded into them as of yet. Goodreads is sufficient for me for now because it is so well known and used that it reaches a wide audience of readers.

Naturally, I pay attention to the reviews I have on Amazon, too. Some of the same reviews appear on Amazon as are on Goodreads, and “The Clearwater House,” since it’s my oldest book, has the most ratings/reviews on Amazon, too. I think browsing consumers pay more attention to Amazon reviews while the more avid readers pay closer attention to the reviews on Goodreads, but I might be wrong about that.

Any good review written anywhere, though, is a boost for my books and for me as an author. Negative reviews, as long as they aren’t written simply for the sake of being mean (and sad to say that there are readers out there who enjoy review bombing certain authors), are appreciated, too, because they offer insights that I might not have considered.

Until next time. I’ll leave another chapter of “Last in the Class” for my paying subscribers below the paywall. Upgrade now, so you’ll get in on my next book as I write it and so that you can access all the past issues and read all of “Last in the Class” that way.

Upgrade to “paid” status, too, simply as a way to help support my writing journey. If I weren’t on my school pension, I wouldn’t be able to do this, and even on that, I only squeak by, so any amount is greatly appreciated — it’s a gift to be able to write or do something for my writing each day after those 30 long years I spent as a teacher.

Tammy Marshall