Author Carol Malone discovers LibraryThing?

Today we welcome back author Carol Malone as she shares another amazing aspect of the writing journey – that of getting your book in front of as many people as possible, using LibraryThing.com. Enjoy!

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Is it like Dr. Suess’ “Thing One and Thing Two?“ Not quite as poetic or colorful. LibraryThing.com, is “A home for your books,” and “A community of 1,700,000 book lovers.”

LibraryThing is a site on the web for authors and readers to connect. The group provides more features than GoodReads. It is similar to Facebook in that you add friends, and meld together your thoughts about books and reading. The community appears to be vast and extensive in their interest base for the members. It looks like a place to make superior connections as an author, and a place to help with promotions. But readers are encouraged to comment, and/or review, and together the entire community can have access to a multitude of books.

LibraryThing members extend worldwide, and the books that are cataloged already total 88,573,075. That’s a lot of reading to do. There is the usual sharing of books either you own, the books you’ve read, books you’d like to read, and even a category for books you own and can lend out. You contribute to the description of other books and add tags, ratings and book reviews. They feature something called “Common Knowledge” which includes details of an author and their books.

Joining is a simple process – Just follow these user friendly steps:

1. Go to https://www.librarything.com/ and CLICK on the box JOIN NOW; you’ll be asked to enter your name and choose a password then confirm it, and add your email; or you can join through your Facebook or Twitter account.
2. Then you set up your profile.
3. Upload pictures of yourself and your library in the MEMBERS GALLERY.
4. Make sure to mark if you want comments public or private.
5. Edit your account settings in your profile page.
6. Start adding your friends and search for those who may already be on the site.
7. Add Your Books by following the step-by-step directions on the “About” page.
8. You can add your book list from Goodreads using in “Import” feature.. There are steps to follow to do this so you don’t have to do double-duty.
9. Adding books to your library automatically connects you to people through a “Work page,” and gives you library-quality data about the books you’ve entered and shows you who else has the book, and what they have said about the book.
10. You can next set up your author page – much like Amazon’s author’s pages.
11. Join a group or many groups in your fields of interest.
12. You can share you LibraryThing library to anyone on your blog with a widget or through tags of the books you’re currently reading.

It’s important to set up your home page and start adding books right after you create your account. This way LibraryThing.com will begin of help you make connections. When you enter you’re the books you’re interested in, you’ll automatically get recommendations. These recommendations come as a list of automatically generated books that might be of interest to you. There are reviews, stats, memes. You can tag books and authors you have a preference for. You can view lists of author pictures with their books, which I believe is similar to GoodReads.

The central focus of LibraryThing.com is sharing your books with steps similar to adding books in GoodReads, although not formatted as colorfully as GoodReads. And there is a limit to how many books you can add without being charged. So if you are a prolific reader, you might need to pay a fee to house your ginormous collection.

You can add friends and share lists. You can view your friend’s books, what they review and their book ratings. And you can leave comments much like Facebook on your friend’s book selections either privately or publically.

One feature I like is the “Zeitgeist Overview” section. You can view at a glance top rated items like: libraries (within LibraryThing.com), top authors, top tags, most prolific reviewers, top 25 books, etc. One interesting fact is that some person has reviewed 35,799 books. Wow! That person doesn’t do anything but read. How great is that?

Besides adding books that you have read or want to read, you can add your local book events like contests, venues to meet up, workshop announcements, readings, promotional tours, even sing-a-longs. I don’t think GoodReads has anything like that.

There’s a “TALK” feature that allows you to start discussions on a variety of topics – lots of them have nothing to do with books. One I found particularly interesting is “Male porn stars only earn a third as much as female ones! Oppression!” Like I said, you can find any topic to discuss.

The section under the title, “GROUPS,” lists all sorts of writing/book related groups. I found one that was of interest: “Hobnob with Authors.” There are genre groups from Fantasy to L-Chi’ang Chao Poetry. There is something for every taste and practically every interest.

What I like about LibraryThing is a thorough introduction to the site with step-by-step instructions under their “About LibraryThing“ tab. You are walked through the process to set up your profile, load your books, and make connections. In other words, it is extremely user-friendly.

What today’s authors are looking for is exposure, exposure, exposure. LibraryThing is another in the cosmic social media universe that allows an author to connect with friends, readers and fans in a way I’ve not seen before. If you join, can you let me know what you think of their features?

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carol Malone has successfully combined her three passions – sports, writing, and romance. With her 5-Star rated book “Fight Card Romance: Ladies Night,” she became the first woman to climb under the ropes of the boxing ring in the male dominated territory of the Fight Card book series. Her story is a genre mash-up of happily-ever-after and kick-in-the-pants, fist-pounding action. If not hammering out new tales that entice her readers to scramble into a front row seat for thrilling tales of physical endurance or swoon to stories of tender passion, Carol’s reading, watching sports on TV, or hanging with her author husband on the Gold Coast of California. She’s always ready to talk sports and amour. Follow her on her author page on Facebook. or Tweet her on Twitter. She invites you to please come to her website and subscribe to  her newsletter for all her latest book releases.