by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
It has taken me a long time to warm up to Goodreads. As a writer, I’m still very wary of some aspects of the environment over there. But I’ve grown to use it as a tool, both as a reader and a writer.
I recently posted about my experience using Goodreads giveaways. I’ve also started using a few Goodreads widgets…carefully. Today and next Monday I’ll be covering a couple of widgets that I’m using there and Friday Chrys Fey will be talking about three other important things to do with Goodreads.
The way I’ve set up my website is for each book to have its own page, which helps with title SEO and visibility. I’m starting to add the Goodreads review widget on my book pages for a little visual interest and perhaps some social proof. I won’t add them to all of my book pages because I don’t want to slow my site down when it starts loading. I’m thinking the last few releases would be good enough.
But! We need to tinker with the settings on the widget a bit. Below are the default settings:
Goodreads is a tough environment for writers. Reviews on the site (even for good reviews) are frequently a lot lower than what you’d see on Amazon. I think this is because readers mark books as a reminder to themselves how they liked a book/series compared to other books/series. It makes sense, but can be rough on authors who are used to higher ratings.
The review widget on Goodreads defaults to a minimum 1-star rating. Obviously, we don’t want to have 1-star reviews on our website.
Don’t get me wrong–as writers, we need those lower reviews in order to prove that real readers (not just Mom, Dad and Sis) have read our books. But those lower reviews don’t make for great sales copy.
I’d advise that you change the minimum rating to 3 or 4 for advertising purposes. Here are my changes:
You can see that I changed the ISBN (necessary for them to pull up the book), changed the number of reviews to show to 3 (because I didn’t want the widget to take up the entire page), changed the minimum star rating, and altered the header text. From there, you hit submit and then copy/paste the code into a webpage (using the ‘text’, not the ‘visual’ compose setting). Then you end up with something that looks like this:
Next Monday I’ll cover the Goodreads widget for Facebook (Friday look forward to a post from Chrys Fey covering three things you’re probably not doing on Goodreads, but should).
Have you spent time on Goodreads? As a reader, a writer, or both? Do you use widgets?
Photo on VisualHunt
I’ll have to try that. I didn’t know there was a review widget.
A recent discovery of mine. :) You and I might be the last ones to know about it, though!
Honestly, Elizabeth, this is something I hadn’t thought about before. Like you, I’m a bit uneasy about Goodreads. But still, this sounds promising. Thanks.
Goodreads is not my favorite place to hang out! You have to put your author armor on to go there. But they do have some useful features.
I’ll let my authors know about that.
Thanks for the great post! I love how you walk us through the process. I’m staying away from GR for now, but do you know if there’s an Amazon review widget? Thx!
You could use an Amazon affiliate widget (I haven’t done this, but more info is here): https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/tips/t10 . It states: “Customer Reviews” Reviews submitted by Amazon users for the item being displayed are shown on your aStore product detail pages.” I don’t know if it’s customizable or if we’d end up with all our 1-stars at the top!
I do use the Amazon preview widget (think it’s called Kindle Preview). More info on installing it here: https://beta.elizabethspanncraig.com/business-of-writing/kindle-preview-embed/
I’m still warming up to Goodreads, but the review widget looks good. I assume it keeps current reviews at your website. Embedding Amazon reviews doesn’t. On the other hand, Amazon gives you better control of what displays on your book page.
Good info on the Amazon review embed! Thanks for that. I haven’t used it.
Goodreads is supposed to keep it current, yes. I like the way the widget looks and haven’t noticed too much of a slowdown in terms of loading speeds. I like it for Facebook, especially.
I don’t play much on Goodreads either. Nor am I ready to add a widget to my website. But I may be next month or next year. So thank you for this info. I did set up a giveaway, but I haven’t announced it yet. I made a note to visit again Friday to see what Chris has to say. Since I do basically nothing there, I’m sure I can use her help :)
Happy Monday!
She has some good ideas!
Thanks for coming by!
Reviews are subjective. What I find as a good read (no pun intended) might not be enjoyed by another. It happens all the time. You’ll see ones and fives from strangers who read who read the same book. I feel like reviews from random strangers isn’t healthy if we buy into some of the silliness. It’s easy to be sucked into the negativity of others. Helpful reviews is another thing. With that being said, the widget does look interesting and helpful.
Teresa
I know what you mean. Sometimes after really enjoying a book, I’ll look up the reviews online…and wonder if I read the same book as everyone else! It’s amazing what readers like and don’t like. And Goodreads is a really rough environment for writers. I was glad to see that the widget could be tweaked, considering it’s basically functioning as sales copy/social proof.
You just remind me how far out of the game I am right now, but there’s a seed of a thought planted. I’ll have to swing back around here when life permits for actual promotion.
It’s the kind of game where you can always jump back in when you’re ready! Hope you get a chance to have more of a breather this summer. :)
Fascinating! I didn’t know the widget existed at all!
Hope it helps!