How to Promote Your Book on LibraryThing

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How to Promote Your Book on LibraryThing

1LShelby
Editado: Mar 5, 2020, 9:03 pm

The short bad news is that LibraryThing isn't a very good place to do direct marketing.

BUT, as one of the largest communities of book-hoarding fanatics on the internet, it is an EXCELLENT place to establish a 'web presence'. Which can be quite helpful to new authors, but only if they do things in a way that leaves a good impression.

So I'm starting this thread as a repository for all advice that I give to new authors.

LIST OF TOPICS

How to add the book you have written
Tags: how to add them, and why you want them
How to add books written by other people to LibraryThing (and why I think this is so important).
Navigating Talk (or How to find the posts you actually care about)
Posting to Talk -- Tips, Tricks and Warnings.
Member Giveaway vs. Early Reviewers

2gilroy
Mar 5, 2020, 3:56 pm

You might also want to gather from threads for the same sort of topic together.
For instance this one: https://www.librarything.com/topic/316002

3LShelby
Mar 5, 2020, 4:08 pm

But first a brief note about the LibraryThing attitude.

One thing that new people coming in tend to not really understand about LibraryThing is that it is principally a site for cataloguing books. If you think about that, you will come to realize that most of the people who actually use LibraryThing have two things in common: First, they own A LOT of books. Second, they care enough about tracking those books to invest in a pretty steep learning curve in order to make sure that they have the best, most detailed and most accurate online catalog (with social media perks). :)

Another thing that makes it popular is that it is an advertisement free environment. LibraryThing supports itself on membership fees and by selling data to libraries (mostly the latter). Not only are ads not posted by LT software, they also aren't allowed to be posted by any of LT's members. A dedicated team of spam assassins quickly identify and flag out of existence anything that looks like an ad.

So the average LTer adores books, likes hard facts, and dislikes hype. Keeping that in mind will help you make your web presence here one that will attract rather than repel the locals. :)

4LShelby
Editado: Mar 5, 2020, 9:02 pm

>2 gilroy:
That's a good plan. I will add a list of links here, after I've finished writing my own posts. :)

Promoting a Self Published Book - Writer-readers (Jan 2020)

5LShelby
Editado: Mar 5, 2020, 5:18 pm

How to add the book you have written

The add books tab is easy to find in LT's main menubar at the top. If you go there and do a search, LibraryThing will try and find a record of your book that is listed online somewhere, and will import that data.

But this is the precious book you yourself have written, so I don't recommend doing that.

Instead, I recommend scrolling down to the discrete link on the left hand side under "Other options" that says "Add manually". Click on that and you will get a fresh, pristine entry form with many fields to fill in.

(What if it's too late, and you have already added your book using the search box? No problem, just click on the pencil icon, so that you can verify everything that was imported and add missing data as needed.)

I recommend filling in as much information as possible, EXCEPT the review and the rating. Giving yourself an enthusiastic review and a five star rating tends to give off "bad vibes".
When you fill in the fields, have your book right there on hand, go slowly, read the instructions and do a good job. If you are an independent author, your copy of your book may end up being the only copy on LibraryThing. Make sure all the data is right.

NOTE:
When I do a manual add the most common mistake I make is not adding the author's name in the Lastname, Firstname format.

When you hit save, then the book is added to your library, and two additional pages are created on LibraryThing if they do not already exist, the book page, and an author page.

Some of the information on those two pages is pulled from the individual book entries, and so it will be filled in already. Some of it must be added directly to the book page or the author page, and so will start out blank.

But after you have added your book the first thing you probably want to do is to "claim" your author page. Get to the page by clicking on your name as it appears as the author of your book in your book listing under the "Your Books" tab. That will take you to the author page. In the right sidebar near the top there should be a box that says "Is this you?". Don't click there yet. First make sure all the books showing up on that page are actually by you. If all the books that show up are by you, then go ahead and click that link. It will create a link between your profile and your author page.

6LShelby
Editado: Mar 5, 2020, 9:12 pm

Tags: How to add them, and why you want them

Tags are one of the many fields in the edit book page. (click on the pencil icon in the listing under "your books". )

Tags are entered as a list separated by commas, like so:
Historical, Romance, Western, good guys wear white hats, anti-violence, poc, cowboys, veterinarians

Why does your book need tags?

Because LibraryThing does not have subject or genre listings. It uses tags instead. Tags are more flexible than genre listings, because any word or combination of words can become a tag.

The most frequently used tags between all the copies of a book will show up on the book page, and the most frequently used tags on all the books by an author will show up on the author's page. You have no control over how other people tag your books, but if you are the first person to add your book to LibraryThing then until many more people add copies, your tags will show up in both those places. So choose them wisely.

Besides tagging for topic/genre, add tags to highlight other aspects such as the time-period, the location, and important themes. So more examples of possible tags would be: 1920s, Victorian, England, Mars, coming-of-age, vengeance, space flight, fairytale retellings

If you need help thinking up good tags, search for similar books, and see what tags they have been given.

But don't use too many tags. As the tags accumulate, LibraryThing will add emphasis to the tags that are used more often. In the meantime all the tags will be given equal weight. So if you add too many tags right at the start, the really important information, like the genre, will get lost in the clutter. Eight or nine tags is probably more than enough.

Also, please don't tag your book "best book ever" or anything with an implicit value statement. Especially when there is still only one copy of the book in the system, it is painfully obvious to LT users that tags like those were added by the author. Just stick to the facts.

7LShelby
Editado: Mar 5, 2020, 6:12 pm

How to add books written by other people to LibraryThing (and why I think this is so important).

First, why it is important?

LibraryThing is about cataloging libraries, or in other words, collections of books. Many of the social features are built around comparing one person's library to another, and the automatic recommendations are based around seeing what books commonly show up in the same libraries.

If your book is left in a library all by itself, that sort of says to the LT software (and community), "This is a book that nobody who owns any other books would like". This is probably not the message you want to be conveying.

So I strongly recommend adding at least a couple dozen books to your LT account. 200 books is better. (And I bet you are all thinking -- when do I have time to add that many books? It isn't as hard as it sounds, as I explain below.)

But first, which 24 books should you start out with? You want to pick books that are similar enough to your book that you think people who like that book would also like yours. But I advise against just adding bestsellers. Because so many people own bestsellers, the connections between these wildly popular books and other books tend to be diffuse. Also, best-sellers are often "weighted down" in LibraryThing comparison routines. It doesn't hurt to add them, but they might not be as helpful as some books that you really love, that aren't quite as popular. Those are the sorts of books that will create the strongest connections with yours.

How to add them?

The easiest and fastest way to add books to LibraryThing is probably to download the LibraryThing app for your phone or tablet. The app comes with a barcode scanner, that uses your device's built-in camera. So after telling the app you want to add a book using the barcode scanner (two clicks) you walk over to your bookshelf, pull off a book, scan the barcode. The app says "is this the book you want?" you click to say "yep, add that one" and tah-dah, you have added a book. Using the app, scanning the first 24 books will probably take only ten minutes or so.

Afterward, either every time you buy a book, or every time you finish reading a book, launch the app, and scan the barcode. Over time the size and interest of your library will increase.

If the app is not available, typing the ISBN into the add books tab's search box is probably the second fastest way. If you set yourself a goal of visiting the site once a week, and adding five books at each visit, you will reach the 200 book target in less than a year.

8LShelby
Mar 5, 2020, 6:13 pm

I'm thinking I might want to add a message explaining CK here.

9LShelby
Mar 5, 2020, 7:23 pm

Being an active member in a reading community can be useful to authors but it is necessary to balance the time commitment. "Drive by posting" is rarely effective, since the whole point of being a part of a community to develop social ties with its members. So you need to be willing to invest time to get any return.

LibraryThing has some advantages and some disadvantages as a place to connect with readers.

One disadvantage is the anti-ad ban, which authors can run afoul of by accident, simply by being a bit too enthusiastic about their books in the wrong places.

Another is technical. You will receive no email messages telling you that someone has replied to you in Talk. You can get email messages for posts to your profile page, but not for anything posted to one of the groups. So if you want to participate in Talk, you will need to return to the site on a reasonably regular basis, and check for new posts. (This was done on purpose, BTW, to discourage casual use.)

On the other hand, the collective number of books bought yearly by people here is phenomenal. The busiest group on the site is for people who try read 75 books or more a year. It is almost a hundred times busier than the group for people who are only trying for 50 books a year.

Navigating Talk

I believe that when you first go to the Talk tab you are shown a list of every thread on LibraryThing, with the most recently posted-to topics at the top. I think those are the default settings.

Frankly, I find every post on the site to be a bit much, and the odds are pretty good that you will too. So check out the left sidebar. It has filters listed that will show you only some of the messages. My Talk tab is set up to show me "Groups and Posts" (Fourth link from the top, first link after the "Your World" heading.)

This filter shows you only threads that are from Groups you have joined (or watched), or threads you have posted to, or that you have 'starred' (favorited). If you have just joined LibraryThing and have joined no groups and have posted no posts, and have starred nothing, after clicking this filter, your Talk tab will be pretty darn empty. So the next thing to do is probably to join some groups.

All threads on Talk are posted in a group. The group name is appended to the front of the thread subject in the list.

Hobnob With Authors is a great group to join because it is the authorial "safe zone" where you can talk about your own books as much as you like, and nobody will chew you out for violating the Terms of Service. If you haven't already joined, you can do so from the Group Page, which can be reached by clicking on the Hobnob With Authors link at the top of this page. Every discussion thread has a link to the group it belongs in right at the top. To get to the top you can click the up arrow in the header of each post. It's faster and easier than scrolling.

When you go to join a group, you will notice that the option to "watch" the group instead also exists. Joining is a public action. You will appear on the list of members for that group. The group will show up when people go to your profile. Watching is private. To you there won't be much difference, but nobody else knows what you are watching.

There are many other groups that can be joined besides this one, of course. If you go to the Groups tab, it shows the most active groups on the site, the "Official and Standing Groups" (Hobnob appears in this list) the ones with the most members and so on. You can also search the groups by name, by keyword/tag and so forth. Before joining a group you might want to check how active it is. There are a lot of essentially dead groups, that might not be worth joining. On the other hand, less active groups are easier to keep up with.

The 75 Book Challenge is the busiest group on the site (5 times as many posts as the next busiest group.) I tried joining it once, and discovered that it overwhelmed my Talk tab. Unless you want to live on LibraryThing, you either need to not join that group, or to join it, start your thread and star all the other threads that look interesting and then unjoin it, or you need to be absolutely ruthless at x'ing threads (which permanently hides them).

10LShelby
Mar 5, 2020, 8:55 pm

Posting to Talk -- Tips, Tricks and Warnings

About Content:

Don't just talk about yourself.
(It makes me sad that this needs to be said, but apparently it needs to be said.) Read what other people say, and respond to it. Ask questions. Engage in a dialogue, not just a monologue. Other people will connect to you faster and easier if you engage with them, instead of just talking at them and hoping they will engage with you.

When talking about your book...
In Hobnob the only restriction we have about talking about your own books is to please not start a thread just about your book. Other people haven't read it yet. They have nothing to say. The conversation will start and end with that one post. Otherwise, as long as it is relevant to what we are discussing, mention your book all you want.

Outside of Hobnob you need to be careful to make your posts not look like ads. My rule of thumb is that if the post only mentions one book, and that book is mine, I'm in trouble. So when someone posts a "Looking for fantasy books with no magic" or something like that, if I jump in and start babbling about my own book right away, that is a no-no. But if I mention four other books first, and tack my own on at the end, nobody is offended.

Likewise, if on the thread listing the books I have read this year, if out of the 100, 6 books happen to have been written by me, it doesn't bother anyone at all.

Starting a new topic...
First, the how to: Go to the group page, and right above the list of current threads there is a link that says "start a new topic". The subject line can only be edited if you go back and edit right away, so check it for typos quickly. :)

In Hobnob the threads that seem to get the most replies are ones that ask questions that both authors and readers can answer.

Outside of Hobnob, It all depends on where you are, so just be on topic.

TECHNICAL ISSUES

Replying to other posts
All posts you make will show up at the bottom of the thread, even if you hit 'reply' somewhere way up by the top. So it helps to include a post reference when you reply. LT helps out with this. Type a greater-than sign, and immediately following it the number of the post you are responding to. LT will add the name of the person who made that post, and turn it all into a link, like so:
>1 LShelby: becomes >1 LShelby:

Touchstones
LT also will link to books and authors if you surround the book with square brackets and the author with double square brackets.
[The Lord of the Rings] becomes The Lord of the Rings
[ [J. R. R. Tolkein ] ] becomes J. R. R. Tolkien

Formatting
LT allows you to use html formatting codes such as <i>Text</i> for Italics and <b>Text</b> for Bold.

To add a picture use
<img src="url of picture">

So, if you wanted to add a cover image to a reading thread, go to your books, click and hold on the cover you want to post elsewhere, and when you get the context menu, choose copy.
In the post, type: <img src="
paste in the url you just copied
and then type: ">

The result should look something like this:

11LShelby
Mar 5, 2020, 8:58 pm

A Message about Early Reviewers and Member Giveaway will enventually go here.

12LShelby
Mar 5, 2020, 8:58 pm

And this is a place holder in case I think of something else I want to post about.

13LShelby
Mar 5, 2020, 8:59 pm

Everyone please feel free to post links that should be included in my links compendium, questions, suggested improvements and so forth.

14Amanda36
Editado: Jul 23, 2021, 1:38 pm

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