Another Opportunity – Shelf my book on Goodreads

The Deal

As many authors know, Goodreads has an enormous amount of readers logging in everyday writing reviews, recommending books, and participating in forums.  Similar to Amazon “tagging” and their customer communities, Goodreads has a feature called “shelves”.  From their website they describe shelves as follows:

shelves

You start with three default shelves (read, currently-reading, and to-read), but you can also create your own bookshelves. Shelf names range from classics and coffee-table-books to childrens-lit and sci-fi — you can create any category that suits your personal taste. Some of our favorite shelves include to-reread, guiltypleasures, chicklit and overrated-drivel

When you “explore” books on good reads, you find the following page:

click on the image to go there!

As you can see, there are a number of “popular” shelves.  For example the “young adult” shelf has 25, 329 books!

Wouldn’t it be great to be the top book on the “young adult” shelf?  Unfortunately, that’s a big task, you’d need 1270 people to put your book on that shelf.  That’s a pretty big task (twilight has the top spot – surprise surprise).  But other shelves are not as crowded.

I’m going to show you how to create a shelf and add a book to it.  Here we go!

Create a shelf

I’m going to use Dee Marie’s book Sons of Avalon to illustrate how to do this.  First go to the goodreads page for the book you want to shelf.  At the bottom of the graphic, you can see a section  called bookshelves.  I’ve already placed it on the default “read” shelf as well as a custom “arthurian legends” shelf.  Now I’m going to add a custom shelf call “good read” and place the book on that shelf.

The first thing to do is click on the edit all the way at the end of the bookshelves line.

Choose Shelves

What you will see is a drop down box appear with the standard choices “read”, “currently reading”, and “to read options”.  Below that there is an option to add new shelf. Here, I’ve type in the new shelf name “good read”.

Once I type in the name of my shelf, I click on create and viola, the “good read” shelf is now a choice for my custom shelves.

I can add Sons of Avalon to this shelf by clicking on the box next to the newly created “good read” shelf.

The Result!

Now when I go to the “good read” shelf, here’s the result – Sons of Avalon is number 3 on the “good read” shelf!

New page on TMBOA

For goodreads authors who would like to participate in the “shelf my book on goodreads” project, go to the “Shelf My Book” page and leave a comment which includes:

* The Link to your book on goodreads

* The name of the shelves you’d like your book placed on (around 4 to 5 shelves)

Your book will then be listed on the “Shelf My Book” page where others will go to shelf it!  Please visit the “Shelf My Book” page and shelf other author’s books on Goodreads!  Good luck!

Review – Cutting the Cheese

Cutting the Cheese – Coming out can be Gouda

Rating: 4 of 5

Author: Edward C Patterson
Available: Paperback, Kindle

Uncertain, confused, and feeling lost after coming out, Luke Oliver searches for answers to this new world in which he now belongs.  Finding the bar scene full of too many unspoken rules and regulations unknown to a newbie, Luke suddenly finds himself invited to the ostentatious home of one Roy Otterson where a meeting of a local gay and lesbian activist group is to take place.  Intimidated by not only the grandeur of the home but by it’s occupants, Luke quickly finds himself relegated to the kitchen drafted to the “cheese brigade” where houseboy Kelly Rodriguez and live-in playwright Mortimer demonstrate the proper size and shape for the cheese cubes to be served during the meeting.

One by one, members of this illustrious activist group arrive at the meeting quickly turned party and Luke begins to wonder if perhaps this lifestyle is for him.  But then Branch McPherson arrives whom Luke has admired from afar.  Unfortunately, Luke has invited a date and when Charles (Chaz) Remsen arrives, his personality lights up the party more than the time square crystal ball on new years eve.

Edward C Patterson offers a hilarious and engaging look into the challenges and opportunities one faces when coming out.  Each of Patterson’s characters are carefully crafted and I enjoyed meeting each one and seeing how their hopes, fears, desires, and manias would play out as the ever building collision course of personalities, hormones, jealousies, agendas, and love climaxed at the novel’s conclusion.

As I read Cutting the Cheese, I couldn’t help but be reminded of The Bird Cage though Patterson’s characters are more engaging and entertaining than the best Nathan Lane produced on the big screen.  Patterson’s humor and cadence are spot-on throughout.  For cheese lovers, Patterson offers no less than twenty-eight different cheeses as titles for each of his chapters – enjoy!