Last night I was reading a report by Digital Book World called What Authors Want: A Survey of Authors to Understand Their Priorities in the Self-Publishing Era – in which they surveyed nearly 5,000 authors-aspiring, self-published, traditionally published and those who have done both or “hybrids”. One of the facts that jumped out at me was only 57% of the authors surveyed had profiles on Goodreads. I couldn’t believe it. Of all the places not to be engaging readers, Goodreads is a huge miss in the discoverability web. I know there are authors who don’t know how to make goodreads work for them, but not having a profile is inexcusable – it takes minutes to create (and is FREE) and has a long lasting impact on author discovery.
Creating author profiles across the web on the RIGHT websites does 3 important things:
- It boosts your off-page Search Engine Optimization by giving your website (you do have a website right?) back links from high traffic sites.
- So your name and book names show up higher and with more frequency in keyword searches linked to your topic and genre.
- And therefore increases the chances of you being discovered by readers as they search online.
With that said, here are the 12 sites where you need to have an author profile:
•
Amazon author central (Alexa traffic rank: 6) – readers want more information about the authors they read. Makes sure you give it to them.
•Goodreads (Alexa traffic rank: 331) – readers want to engage with their favorite authors. Goodreads is the place they do that more than any other place.
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Smashwords (Alexa traffic rank: 7,407) – Be careful with your profile on smashwords, post once here and you will see it replicated on BN.Com, iBooks, Kobo, and many others.
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Librarything (Alexa traffic rank: 10,206) – curated by superreaders who can make you if they find you.
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Shelfari (Alexa traffic rank: 25,193) – Amazon’s original social reading site is still very important to author discovery. You control the book extras section via this site.
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Authors Den (Alexa traffic rank: 88,282) – Authors can reach many readers by sharing their bio, books, blogs, events, stories, articles, poetry, newletters, videos, and link to their websites.
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Redroom (Alexa traffic rank: 160,367) – a community founded around the idea that writing transforms individuals and sometimes whole societies—whether you’re a writer or a reader, you’re part of something special. It’s a platform built for the future of publishing, an ecosystem where you can have a home, find friends and colleagues, and participate in the marketplace. Red Room is a social hub, a place to discuss and
buy books in every genre, and a destination for exclusive content that will entertain and inspire you.
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Dailylit (Alexa traffic rank: 260,312) – DailyLit brings books right into your inbox in convenient small messages that take less than 5 minutes to read.
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Book Country (Alexa traffic rank: 531,774) – free online community where romance, mystery, thriller, fantasy and science fiction* writers help each other write their best books with in-depth, honest feedback.
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WeRead (Alexa traffic rank: 576,849) – a social reading site a la Goodreads and Librarything.
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Published.com (Alexa traffic rank: 732,337) – Published.com has provided free book promotion for authors since 1997. We encourage all authors to make the Published.com Book Directory their first book marketing move for all new or previously published titles. It’s totally free and comes with no strings attached — it’s our way of supporting independently published writers and artists.
•
Authorlink (Alexa traffic rank: 1,414,809) – All about publishing a book, getting help to convert a PDF to eBook, and keeping up with publishing industry news.
What other author profile sights are out there that you would recommend?
Authordiscovery.com 
http://www.indieauthorland.com is a relatively young site that focuses on self-published authors. It’s fast-growing, though, and has built quite a community around itself.
Thanks for the tip David!
You are right on, David. Good information for a Guild meeting program. Thanks for putting it together. May it go well with you. Alaska Jim
Discover Ficfact —for the fiction author, you can post what’s happening in your world and discover what’s happening in other fiction authors–great find…there is a calendar within where you can see who is popping … if you are planning a massive book launch around yours–see who else is launching that day, that week. You may want to switch your date because they “big boys” will be blitzing the cyberwaves and gathering all the buzz. http://www.ficfact.com
Thanks for passing this information on
Thanks for the info. Here’s a question: I’ve self-published a decidedly literary novel and find most independent author book promotion sites are geared to genre fiction; do you know of sites that cater to literary self-publishers?
Definitely LibraryThing and Goodreads…
Another young and growing site that is committed to indie authors is http://www.biblioconnection.com
Excellent. My editing customers and I thank you very much! 🙂
Thank you! Already have a couple but will start on the rest immediately 🙂
Reblogged this on Where Writers And Authors Meet and commented:
These are some great sites worth checking out and signing up for!
Thanks for reblogging!
Have any of you managed to sign up with We read? Because I filled the form in and then spent ages trying to find the sign up now box above-it isn’t on the form, I gave up in the end!
Could be your browser, try to sign up using google chrome as the browser. Some of these sites don’t work so well with Firefox and Explorer…
Great information. Thanks so much.
My pleasure!
Cool list. About to start marketing SPARKY AND THE DIPSHIT, husband’s memoir. Your list makes me feel a little less overwhelmed. Thanks! ❤
We've got audio and trade paperback. Ebook soon.
Best of luck!
This information helps a lot. Thank you for sharing!
My pleasure!
This is great information. Learning to use these sites is another matter. Any tips for how to approach using these sites? I create profiles then get overwhelmed!
Reblogged this on CKBooks Publishing and commented:
I would add http://www.shewrites.com to this list, though shewrites is more for the writer than the reader, but a good place to connect with other writers.
Other sites I like: If you’re looking help publishing – editing, beta reader, cover design… go to writer.ly or biblocrunch.com.
Great info, but how does a kindle author get their books into the hands of reviewers?
Hi Sandra,
I will write a separate post on this,but one simple way is to find a genre group (on FB or goodreads) and offer to give away a free digital copy of your book in exchange for an honest review. Another way is to build the review mechanism right into your ebook with a call to action. E-mail me at authordiscovery@gmail.com so I can give you more detail…
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[…] an optimized author profile. I’ve already discussed the importance of author profiles in a previous post, but they are exceptionally important on goodreads. A recent stat suggests only 57% of authors even […]
I just joined LibraryThing and posted two reviews. It’s a relatively easy site to navigate.