How to Create Author Profiles on Goodreads & BookBub
Goodreads, BookBub & Author Profiles: Building Your Discovery Presence
Before a reader buys your book, they research it. They check how many reviews it has, what those reviews say, whether their friends have read it, and whether the author seems like someone worth following. Goodreads and BookBub are the two platforms where that research most often happens — and a complete, active presence on both directly influences whether that research ends in a purchase.
This guide walks through how to set up and use each platform, what's worth your time on each, and what to avoid.
Goodreads
Goodreads is the world's largest book discovery and review platform, with over 150 million registered members. Readers use it to track what they've read, discover what to read next, follow authors they love, and write reviews. It sits directly in the middle of the book-buying decision for tens of millions of readers.
Goodreads is also, importantly, a reader-first community with a strong culture of protecting that identity. Authors who arrive primarily to market get a cold reception. Authors who participate genuinely as readers — who happen to also write books — are welcomed.
Joining the Goodreads Author Program
The Goodreads Author Program gives you a verified author profile with expanded features beyond what a regular reader account offers. To join:
- Create a standard Goodreads reader account (or use your existing one)
- Search for your book on Goodreads
- Click your name on your book listing to go to your author page
- Click "Is this you? Let us know" to request author status
- Goodreads will verify and upgrade your account, usually within a few days
If your book isn't on Goodreads yet, you or your publisher can add it manually. It's worth doing as early as possible — readers can add books to their "want to read" shelf before the book releases, which builds pre-launch momentum.
Completing Your Goodreads Author Profile
A complete profile signals professionalism and gives visiting readers something to engage with. Fill in every field:
- Author photo: Same professional headshot you use everywhere else
- Author bio: Use your 250-word version. Goodreads readers respond well to warmth and specificity — who you are, what drives your writing, and a human detail or two
- Website URL: Link to your author website, not your publisher's page
- Twitter/social links: Add any active social profiles
- Influences: The authors and books that shaped your writing. This is searchable and connects you to other authors' fans
- Member since / genre: Fill in accurately — Goodreads uses these for recommendations
Managing Your Books on Goodreads
- Claim all your titles: Make sure every book you've written is linked to your author profile. Check for duplicate listings (common when metadata varies) and report them to Goodreads for merging
- Add your book before it releases: List your upcoming book with its cover, description, and release date as early as possible. Readers can shelve it as "want to read" immediately, and those shelving numbers are visible social proof that builds ahead of launch
- Keep descriptions current: Your book description on Goodreads should match your best Amazon description. They're often out of sync
- Series links: If you write a series, make sure all books are linked as a series on Goodreads. Readers who finish book one will click directly to book two if the series connection is visible
What to Do as an Active Goodreads Author
- Rate and review books you've genuinely read. Participating as a reader is the most effective thing you can do on Goodreads. Your reading activity shows up on your profile and demonstrates you're part of the community, not just using it as a billboard
- Update your "currently reading" shelf. Readers follow authors partly to see what they're reading. Keeping this current is low-effort and keeps your profile active
- Write a Goodreads blog post around your launch. Goodreads gives authors a blog feature that posts directly to follower feeds. A launch announcement, a behind-the-scenes post, or a reading list related to your book's themes are all worth publishing here
- Respond to Q&A questions. Readers can submit questions to authors on Goodreads. Answering them thoughtfully builds connection and keeps your profile active
- Follow comparable authors. When you follow another author on Goodreads, their followers see this activity. It's a minor but consistent visibility signal
Goodreads Giveaways
Goodreads offers a paid giveaway program that puts your book in front of readers who have it on their want-to-read shelf or who follow your genre. Giveaways generate "want to read" shelving activity, which increases your book's visibility in Goodreads' recommendation system.
- Print giveaway: $119 for a standard listing, $599 for a featured listing. You provide the physical copies and ship them yourself
- Kindle giveaway: Same pricing tiers, digital delivery handled by Amazon
- Best timing: Two to four weeks before your release date to build pre-launch want-to-read numbers, or during a launch week to accelerate early momentum
- Realistic expectations: Giveaways rarely produce a large number of reviews — most winners don't leave one. Their value is in the shelving activity and visibility, not guaranteed reviews
Goodreads Groups
Goodreads hosts thousands of reader groups organized by genre, theme, and reading challenge. Participating genuinely in relevant groups is one of the best long-term awareness strategies available on the platform — and one of the most underused by authors.
Groups worth finding and joining for Cedar Fort authors include LDS fiction reader groups, Christian book clubs, pioneer and Church history enthusiasts, inspirational fiction readers, and faith-based nonfiction communities. Search by genre and topic to find active groups in your niche.
The participation rules are the same as on Facebook groups: contribute to discussions, answer questions, recommend books you've genuinely loved. Don't join exclusively to promote your own work.
What Not to Do on Goodreads
Goodreads has a strong, protective reader culture and a long memory for author misbehavior. The following mistakes have ended careers on the platform:
- Never respond to negative reviews. Not to correct factual errors, not to thank them for reading, not to ask what they didn't like. Goodreads readers consider their review space sacred and author intrusion — even polite intrusion — is treated as a serious violation. The community will amplify the incident
- Never ask friends to shelve or review your book in bulk. Coordinated shelving or reviewing is detectable and considered manipulation. Goodreads removes accounts for it
- Don't use your author account to rate your own books. It looks exactly as bad as it sounds
- Don't mark one-star reviews as "not helpful" in retaliation. This is trackable and will get noticed
- Don't engage in Goodreads groups primarily as a promoter. Readers will mark your posts as spam and you'll be removed
The guiding principle: Goodreads is a reader space that authors are guests in. Act accordingly.
BookBub
BookBub is a book discovery platform with over 80 million readers who have opted in to receive personalized book recommendations by genre and category. Unlike Goodreads, which is community-driven, BookBub is primarily a curated recommendation engine — its readers trust it specifically because it's selective about what it promotes.
BookBub operates two distinct things that are easy to confuse: a Featured Deal program (highly competitive, extremely effective) and an author following system (free, underused, and valuable).
Setting Up Your BookBub Author Profile
Claiming your BookBub author profile is free and takes about fifteen minutes. Go to partners.bookbub.com and register as an author.
Complete every section:
- Author photo: Professional headshot, consistent with other platforms
- Author bio: Short version (100 words). BookBub reader bios should be warm and focused on what you write, not your credentials
- Website and social links: Add all active profiles
- Add all your books: Each book needs its cover, description, genre categories, and retail links. Keep these current and accurate — BookBub's recommendation system uses this data
- Genre categories: Choose carefully. BookBub's categories are how readers find you, and selecting the wrong ones puts you in front of the wrong audience
Growing Your BookBub Following
When readers follow you on BookBub, they receive an email notification when you have a new release or a price promotion. This is a direct, high-intent audience — these are readers who liked at least one of your books enough to follow you and want to know when you have something new.
Strategies for growing your BookBub following:
- Mention it in your email newsletter. "Follow me on BookBub to get notified of new releases and deals" is a simple ask that converts well because your newsletter readers are already your warmest audience
- Add a BookBub follow button to your website. BookBub provides embeddable follow buttons for author websites
- Include it in your book's back matter. Alongside your newsletter signup, a BookBub follow ask in your back matter catches readers at peak enthusiasm
- Follow other authors in your genre. When you follow an author on BookBub, it's occasionally surfaced to their followers as a social signal. More importantly, following active authors in your genre keeps you aware of promotional patterns worth learning from
- Apply for Featured Deals (see below) — a successful featured deal dramatically increases your follower count as thousands of readers who bought your discounted book discover your profile
BookBub New Release Alerts
When you publish a new book and add it to your BookBub profile, BookBub sends an email alert to all of your followers notifying them of the new release. This is free, automatic, and one of the highest-converting book announcement emails available — because the recipients specifically asked for it.
This is why growing your BookBub following before your next launch is worth consistent effort. Every follower you add now is a guaranteed notification delivered at your next release.
BookBub Featured Deals
A BookBub Featured Deal is a paid promotional email sent to a portion of BookBub's subscriber base in your genre, featuring your book at a discounted price. It is the single most powerful book promotion available to most authors — and the most competitive to get.
Featured Deals typically require your book to be priced at $0.99–$2.99 (or free) for the promotion period. BookBub's editorial team selects books based on:
- Review count and average rating (generally 50+ reviews minimum, 4.0+ average)
- Book cover quality
- Description quality
- Author platform and sales history
- How recently the book was previously featured
Acceptance rates vary by category but are generally low — many authors apply multiple times before being accepted. Pricing varies by genre and deal type, ranging from a few hundred dollars for smaller categories to over $1,000 for popular genres. The return on investment, when accepted, is typically strong: a successful Featured Deal can sell thousands of copies in a single day and generate a permanent lift in also-bought associations and review count.
To apply: log into your BookBub Partners dashboard, click "Apply for a Featured Deal," select your book and the promotional price, and submit. You can apply for the same book multiple times. If rejected, wait 30–60 days before reapplying, and consider whether improving your review count or updating your cover or description might improve your chances.
BookBub Ads
Separate from Featured Deals, BookBub offers a self-serve advertising platform that lets you run image ads targeted to BookBub readers by genre, comparable author, and device type. BookBub ads appear in the daily deal emails and on the BookBub website.
BookBub ads work differently from Facebook or Amazon ads — they require a visually compelling image (your book cover alone rarely performs well; a designed ad image does better) and they tend to work best for discounted books rather than full-price titles.
BookBub ads are worth exploring once you've exhausted the free profile and following strategies, have a strong review base, and are comfortable with basic ad management. They have a steeper learning curve than Amazon ads but reach a highly book-specific audience.
Other Author Profiles Worth Maintaining
Beyond Goodreads and BookBub, a handful of other platforms are worth a complete profile even if you're not actively building a presence there.
The StoryGraph
The StoryGraph is the fastest-growing Goodreads alternative, particularly popular among readers who want more nuanced mood and theme-based recommendations. It's smaller than Goodreads but growing, and its users tend to be engaged and review-active. Create an author profile, add your books, and check it occasionally. Its influence is likely to grow.
Library Thing
LibraryThing is an older platform with a smaller but highly engaged membership that skews toward serious, eclectic readers. It's worth having a complete profile and claiming your books, but it doesn't require regular active participation for most authors.
Apple Books
If your books are available on Apple Books (which Cedar Fort titles typically are), you can create an Apple Books author page through Apple's Author Pages program. This requires an Apple ID and a brief application. Readers on Apple Books discover authors through these pages, and the platform is the second-largest ebook retailer after Amazon.
Barnes & Noble Author Page
Barnes & Noble allows authors to claim and complete an author profile on barnesandnoble.com. Like Apple Books, B&N is a secondary but meaningful sales channel, and a complete profile improves how your books appear to B&N shoppers.
Keeping Profiles Consistent
Your author photo, bio, and book information should be identical — or as close to identical as each platform's format allows — across every profile you maintain. Inconsistency signals neglect and makes it harder for readers to feel they're in the right place when they find you.
Create a simple document with your three bio versions, your author photo file, your book covers, and your book descriptions. Update this document whenever any element changes, then update all profiles from it. The whole refresh takes under an hour and should happen any time you have a new book, a new photo, or significant new credentials.
Profile Maintenance Calendar
Most of this is set-and-maintain, not set-and-forget. Here's a realistic cadence:
- Monthly: Check Goodreads for new reviews worth responding to (via the editorial reviews channel, not by commenting on the review itself), update "currently reading," post a Goodreads blog update if you have something worth sharing
- Each new release: Add the book to all platforms as early as possible, update your bio if anything has changed, apply for a BookBub Featured Deal
- Every six months: Review all profiles for accuracy — bios, photos, book listings, links. Update anything stale
- Annually: Reassess which platforms are worth active effort based on where your readers are and where the communities are growing
Checklist
- ☐ Goodreads Author Program claimed and verified
- ☐ Goodreads profile complete: photo, bio, website, influences
- ☐ All books added to Goodreads and linked as series where applicable
- ☐ Currently reading shelf active
- ☐ Relevant Goodreads groups joined
- ☐ Goodreads giveaway planned for next launch (if budget allows)
- ☐ BookBub author profile claimed and complete
- ☐ All books added to BookBub with accurate genre categories
- ☐ BookBub follow button added to author website
- ☐ BookBub follow ask added to email newsletter and book back matter
- ☐ BookBub Featured Deal application submitted (or on the calendar)
- ☐ StoryGraph profile created and books added
- ☐ Apple Books author page claimed (if applicable)
- ☐ Barnes & Noble author page claimed
- ☐ Master profile document created with bio versions, photo, and book info
- ☐ Six-month profile review scheduled
Next step: Your profiles and platform presence help readers become familiar with you as an author as well as your books. The next highest-leverage task before your launch is making sure your book is as easy to find as possible on the platform where most book sales happen.
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P.S. to those who have stumbled across this article and haven't yet found a publisher, we invite you to learn more about our team. You can also submit your book or find out about our self-publishing service.
