Social networking is powerful. One-third of the world uses social networks regularly. Studies show that 81% of shoppers use the Internet to help them make purchasing decisions. While physical book clubs and reading groups still exist, online communities for book lovers make it easy for readers to share the books they are reading and their thoughts about them with a much wider audience. Social networking sites for books allow readers to connect with other readers around books.
On these sites, readers can keep an online record of the books they have read and those they want to read. They can share these lists and their reviews of the books they read with others in the community. Best of all, many readers use these communities to discover new books to read.
These online book lover social networking sites offer authors a great way to harness the power of communities. You can use these online book communities to develop an audience and gain more readers for your books. As an author, you can join these communities and interact with readers. These social networking book sites provide you another channel to promote your books and talk about them with interested readers. As an author, you can also set up a profile and engage in advertising.
Online Book Communities
You have probably already heard of Goodreads, the largest and most popular of these online book lover communities. Goodreads is the largest site for readers and book recommendations in the world. It boasts more than 7.3 million members, from casual readers to bookworms.
However, Goodreads is not the only book lover community on the Internet. Here are five more you can join to harness the power of community to promote your book.
LibraryThing
This community hosts 2,100,000 book lovers. LibraryThing connects readers to people who read the same books.
Booklikes
BookLikes helps people share their reading life and discover new books. It's a blog platform designed for book lovers.
Riffle
Riffle is a vibrant community of book lovers. Riffle inspires people to read more books by connecting them with librarians, avid readers, authors, and deals on books they’ll love.
Bookstr
Bookstr connects books with people. The site makes discovering books entertaining, informative, and socially engaging.
GoRead
GoRead combines an author/reader community with an e-commerce bookstore. The site offers members “Litcoins”, a digital currency they can exchange for books in the GoRead’s book store.
Keep in mind, the key to making the most of these online social networking communities for readers is the same as with every other social network. The majority of your activities should be about connecting and providing useful information to others through joining the conversation and rating and reviewing books.
