Over at Goodreads, a team of authors played a game of exquisite corpse and wrote part of a short story together. Participating authors included Charles Yu, Robin Sloan, Anne Lamott and Ally Condie. Now you can help them finish the story:

What’s the best way to celebrate May’s National Short Story Month? With a brand-new short story, of course! We’ve enlisted 15 brave and brilliant authors, starting with Pulitzer Prize winner Jennifer Egan, for a bout of Exquisite Corpse—the classic parlor game popularized by the Surrealists, wherein each participant continues a story based only on the previous person’s lines. All of the writers are seeing the full story for the first time with this post, but our Internet experiment isn’t over. Last up was the legendary Margaret Atwood, and now it’s your turn. Keep the game going in the comments section!

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Amazon’s acquisition of Goodreads is a textbook example of how modern Internet monopolies can be built … The key is to eliminate or absorb competitors before they pose a serious threat. With its 16 million subscribers, Goodreads could easily have become a competing on-line bookseller, or played a role in directing buyers to a site other than Amazon. Instead, Amazon has scuttled that potential and also squelched what was fast becoming the go-to venue for on-line reviews, attracting far more attention than Amazon for those seeking independent assessment and discussion of books. As those in advertising have long known, the key to driving sales is controlling information.

What do you think? The Guild cited Animals Make Us Human by Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson as an example. The book has 123 customer reviews at Amazon, but 469 reviews on Goodreads.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The online retailer did not share the terms of the deal and expects to finalize the acquisition by the second quarter of 2013. The deal drew mixed reactions from online readers. In addition, AppNewser collected non-Amazon alternatives to Goodreads.

The founder of LibraryThing predicted in a post: ”Now that Goodreads is just Amazon, the time and money publishers spend on Goodreads is like everything else they do with Amazon–good in the short term, but suffocating them in the long-term.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Goodreads recently asked 1,000 members of the social network publishing’s burning question: What convinced you to read the book?

They revealed the results at the Tools of Change (TOC) conference (chart embedded above). Overwhelmingly, most readers relied on real life conversations: “trusted friend,” “everybody was talking about it” and “book club” were the top answers. Here’s more about the survey:

“Discovery” is a huge topic in the publishing industry, especially as more and more books are published each year. For this presentation, we took a different tack. Rather than just ask a general “How do you discover books?” question, we went to recent readers of two popular books on Goodreads and asked: “What convinced you to read this book?” The two choices were Gone Girl (which was the most reviewed book on Goodreads in 2012 and the winner of the Mystery & Thriller category in the 2012 Goodreads Choice Awards) and The Night Circus (a debut novel from 2011, which was a finalist in the 2011 Goodreads Choice Awards).

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

After a long Ask Me Anything interview on Reddit, novelist Michael J. Sullivan collected some advice for writers using Goodreads. His advice can spare many writers some bad experiences on the network.

Here is his most important piece of advice: “The most important thing to remember about goodreads is that members of this site REALLY hate self-promotion. Primarily because too many authors come to the site and do drive-by posts and leave. This makes their radar on such matters very sensitive. The key to goodreads is to become a member of the community first…and mention your writing only in context and when appropriate.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Social Times has more about the new rules:

In an email to group moderators, the company said yesterday that “Sexual role play is now not permitted in any group or any other part of the site.” More specifically, “Romance is permitted in role-play games, but pornographic content and explicitly sexual content or scenarios are not permitted. We’ve made the decision that this is not appropriate for our site.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

We’ve collected some links that will help you promote your book without spending any money at all.

Six Ways To Promote Your Book on a Budget

1. Visit these free sites to promote your eBook.

2. Pitch articles, interviews or blog posts to media outlets. Read our How To Pitch Your Book to Online Outlets post for more details.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Melanie Leeson

She hopes to read the 131 titles in the original Baby-Sitters Club book series.

Here’s more from her blog post: “If time permits I will also read the Mysteries, Super Special, Super Mysteries, and any of the the other supplemental books. My plan is to stick with the books pertaining to the main members of the club and only shoot for the spin-off series if I’m incredibly crazy.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Over at Goodreads, you can monitor your reading goals at the 2013 Reading Challenge. In 2012, 303,232 participants resolved to read 17.8 million books.

Follow this link to join the free 2013 Reading Challenge. Simply log in and answer the question: “My goal is to read ____ books this year.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Goodreads counted 13 million users this year, those avid readers publishing a staggering 20 million book reviews.

In an infographic about the company’s growth, Goodreads revealed that Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn was the most-reviewed book, counting 22,383 book reviews. John Green had the most added quote from The Fault in our Stars: “I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, then all at once.”

Click the image above to see the complete Goodreads infographic.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

They include Goodreads tips, a funny comic about eReaders and adding your audiobook to Spotify.

Click here to sign up for GalleyCat’s daily email newsletter, getting all our publishing stories, book deal news, videos, podcasts, interviews, and writing advice in one place.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

We’ve linked to samples of all the winners below.

All these authors were nominated and picked by Goodreads users. Did your favorite writer make the list?

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

New Adult fiction has climbed our Self-Published Bestsellers List for months, and Goodreads has noted an explosion of new readers as well. The social network for readers has released a chart mapping how many New Adult books are being rated on the site.

As you can see by the graphic embedded above (click to enlarge), the chart has a steep growth rate. If you want to read more about the genre, check out our What Is New Adult Fiction? post for free samples and definitions.

Here’s more from Goodreads: “Publishers and readers are already embracing it, and here at Goodreads we’ve recognized the rapidly growing interest with our own genre page … We see the positive signs of readers taking to the new genre on Goodreads. Beginning in 2011, there was a spike in the number of readers identifying books as New Adult through custom shelves and rating books in the category. Two examples of recent New Adult success are Slammed by Colleen Hoover and Easy by Tammara Webber. Also, The Perfect Game by J. Sterling is a New Adult book that is trending well.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

New Leaf Literary agent Suzie Townsend negotiated the deal. The New York Times has the scoop:

On Wednesday, New Leaf announced that HarperCollins had signed Ms. Carmack to a three-book deal that includes “Losing It,” for a sum in the “high six figures.” The HarperCollins “Losing It” e-book will be available before the end of the year. A print version will follow in the spring.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

How does a self-published bestseller start? In the graph embedded above, you can trace the actual path of a hit indie book.

At a PubWest presentation called “How Readers Discover Books Online,” Goodreads founder Otis Chandler shared some fascinating statistics about how a book’s popularity spreads on Goodreads. Looking at Slammed by Colleen Hoover, Chandler mapped how the book traveled from giveaways to bloggers to a book deal. Here’s more from the founder:

Slammed was published in early January of 2012. The book didn’t get a lot of attention those first few months, which illustrates how tough it can be for a first-time author. But Hoover smartly took matters into her own hands, running a pair of Goodreads giveaways in late February and early March. These are free for authors/publishers to set up—the only cost is in mailing the book to the winners. It immediately got the book onto people’s shelves and generated a few reader reviews, which is vital for any new book. Then, in late March, a few prominent bloggers her in genre wrote about the book, spreading the word to their many followers on Goodreads through their reviews.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.