After trawling through the mire of paid promotions which are on offer to self-published authors, it struck me that some of the best of them are free. Goodreads springs to mind, although not everything is truly free (like the Goodreads Giveaway offer), most of the forums and connections available to you with readers are free of charge.
Why is this?
Well, maybe because Goodreads is all about connections. Rather than having books shoved at them, readers make their own connections with other readers and use their readers’ community to decide what might be a good read for them. Goodreads also has a great categorisation system. I discovered this recently when attempting to place my book in different genres on the site. This is not possible for an author to dictate, which is great.
No, rather like Netflix, the site uses meta data gathered from readers’ reviews, impressions and reviews of a book in order to decide which categories and genres it appears in. In other words, readers rule!
Vive Goodreads!
P.S. If you are interested in my Goodreads Giveaway for Borderliners, it is open until 5 April 2014.