The Uncollected Stories of JD Salinger. Moby Dick Big Read. Discoverability, Part I: What the heck is it, and why does it matter? It seems like one of the outcomes of the various conferences and seminars we attend throughout the year is hearing ad nauseum the next big catch phrase in publishing.
A couple of years ago it was “vertical is the new horizontal,” and I spent weeks trying to wrap my brain around what that actually meant for the agency, our clients, and the future of the industry. Over the last six months or so, I have attended a veritable alphabet soup of conferences from BEA (BookExpo America) to DBW (Digital Book World), with In Re Books (New York Law School's “conference on law and the future of books”) thrown in for good measure. The big catch word this time was “discoverability.”
At the top of everyone's list of challenges facing publishing was “the problem with discoverability,” or how to connect readers with their “next great read.” A way to allow for better discoverability involves the meta-data of these algorithms, which are tags publishers assign to each book. Gnooks - Welcome to the World of Literature. Discoverability, Part II: How to use Goodreads to solve the discoverability problem. As we discussed in our last post, one of the most pressing problems currently facing publishers, booksellers, and authors is that of book discovery.
Given the advancement of eBooks and the increasing numbers of self-published authors, the market has become inundated with content, leaving readers in a daze of titles and authors from which to choose. This trend has forced the publishing industry to question how consumers can find books at all, let alone their next favorite read. Cue Goodreads, a social media site for finding and sharing books: Goodreads' mission is to “help people find and share books they love” and, at the same time, “improve the process of reading and learning throughout the world.” With a growing community of over 14 million users, Goodreads enables avid readers and writers to share what they are reading, show how they are rating books, and recommend books to others.
Build Your Author Platform It is important to personalize your author profile as much as possible. Goodreads. Amazon Buys Goodreads. Hide captionThe Amazon Kindle e-reader could see greater integration with Goodreads, following Thursday's announcement that the online retail giant was buying the the social book-recommendation site.
Ted S. Warren/AP The Amazon Kindle e-reader could see greater integration with Goodreads, following Thursday's announcement that the online retail giant was buying the the social book-recommendation site. Amazon, the online retail behemoth that has made a much-publicized foray into publishing, has just bought Goodreads, the social book-recommendation site. "Amazon and Goodreads share a passion for reinventing reading," Russ Grandinetti, Amazon vice president for Kindle Content, said in a statement on Thursday.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. On Goodreads' blog, co-founder Otis Chandler called the move exciting. "We truly could not think of a more perfect partner for Goodreads as we both share a love of books and an appreciation for the authors who write them," he said. Goodreads - Growing as a Popular Book Site. LibraryThing - Catalog your books online.
Good writing on the web. Poetry. A few good bloggers.