A little while ago I posted a blog about How to set up a Goodreads Author Page by claiming yourself as the author of a book (presumably that's not a false claim on your part).

Today I want to add a short blog about how to tie a new book to your already established Goodreads Author page.

One of the challenges you will face with Goodreads is that you can publish a new book and it can simply not appear on your author page as your book. You can also find that your book shows up twice (two editions, one paperback, the other ebook) and one of those will be tied to your author page, while the other will not.

I had this happen recently with my latest book (Arestana III: The Harry Quest). One of the versions (ebook, I think) showed up and was automatically tied to my author name. The other version (print, I believe), was not tied to my author account. When I finally discovered this, I also discovered that the book that was not tied to my account already had some reviews on it. The good news is that those reviews end up grafted into my Goodreads profile, so there should be no worries if this happens to you.

If you find that a book or an edition of your book is not tied to your account, you can solve this in a simple way. Contact Goodreads.

NOTE: you can find out if your books are not tied to your account by simply searching Goodreads for your book.

But first, you need to know why this happens

A book can end up not tied to your account because of a number of reasons, two of which are:

Your name could be a common author name and Goodreads may tie it to another author.Initials. If you use initials in your name, Goodreads require periods and no spaces between multiple initials. So, for example, my book could show up on Goodreads as written by Shawn P B Robinson. Goodreads won't tie that name to my author account unless it is written by Shawn P.B. Robinson (note lack of space between initials and a period after each initial).

So, the solution is simple. You head into the Goodreads forums and leave them a message. Currently, the forum link can be found here.

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/19621895-goodreads-author-profiles-needing-merging-by-gr-staff-pt-25

When you leave your message, leave a VERY simple message. NO conversation. Don't be polite. Don't be friendly. They ONLY want facts.
So, leave a message like this:

"Please link this book to this author page:"
followed by the link to the book that is not tied to your account and a link to your Goodreads author page.

As a Canadian, it is difficult for me to leave a message without the flowery politeness, but Goodreads just wants the information so they can deal with it. Nothing more.

Goodreads will also not likely respond in any way. You'll just find your book showing up tied to your Goodreads author page and that's that. One of the great things is you can sometimes get this done within a few hours.

One more note. The forum link to getting this fixed by Goodreads changes now and then when the forum post gets too long. Let me know if the above link is not linking to the right place, and I'll try to get it updated. You can find that link again here.

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/19621895-goodreads-author-profiles-needing-merging-by-gr-staff-pt-25

Shawn

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