Submitted by TraditionalCourage t3_yqlg8w in books
I realy like the website, but I'm not seeing enough interactions in it as number of the friends I have there is hardly even 10. I've already used its friend search function which goes through my facebook and email contacts; but very limited luck.
No one is reading my reviews there, nor react to my status updates, which is kinda inducing an isolated feeling, lol.
There are groups in Goodreads??? Where?? How? What do they do?
Edit: aahh that's why I never came across the groups on the App: on Android, "it's not currently possible to join new groups using the app. We recommend using our desktop or mobile sites to do this."
ooooh, yeah. The goodreads mobile app is straight trash for the community part of the site. I'm usually on it when I'm at work and on a desktop.
With the new format, do you know where I could find their QNA for every book? I can't find it as easily
I didn't ever use that feature...but sometimes authors answer questions about their books on their author pages. Good luck!
I dont have any friends because I’m a jackass. What’s your excuse?
You have no friends because you are too shy to talk to people
I have no friends because I'm an asshole to everyone
We're not the same
I pick a few good reviews on books I like, click on the reviewers' names and use the "compare books" link. If we have a lot of books in common and their member page shows recent activity (especially of the review or comment variety), out goes the friend request. This is a more time-consuming method but I find it a fun activity on its own.
Wait, there's a compare books link?! (Goodreads is a a weirdly chaotic app...)
I've never been able to find the option to compare books in the app (android), I think it's only available in a browser (just like half the features I use sigh)
in a browser you can click a drop down menu on someone's profile and it'll show you all the books you've both added to your pages and give you a similarity percentage for books you've both read/rated. it's pretty neat :D
Ah, it's a browser-only thing too... I'm right there, sighing with you. It looks like I'll have to haunt the browser version too. Thanks!
I only use Goodreads to track my reading. I'm honestly not interested in other people's reviews because I like to read a book with "fresh eyes". The friends I have on Goodreads are just people I know on real life.
I have maybe lesser than you lol
My Goodreads friends are a mixture of IRL friends, current and former coworkers, and a handful of random people who sent me friend requests out of the blue that I accepted (I don't do that on other social media, but on Goodreads it's whatever). I think a lot of other people find friends by joining groups.
Seems to me like most of the accounts I run across with high friend/follower accounts are people who deliberately cultivated a large following because they are book bloggers. I have no interest in becoming one of those, and their reviews will always display before (and therefore help to hide) mine, so I just write my reviews for me. If someone else finds and enjoys my review that's cool, but I don't expect it.
Newsflash: "friends" on social media are really not your friends.
I am opening an exception for goodreads, I sometimes click compare books and OMG they read a lot of the same obscure stuff I did also, and there is a special category of real friendship which is liking the same books and being able to talk about them.
What you read that and love it also? You also hated that? That might not be real friendship but it is a kind of friendship for some specifically rare viewpoints...
If you actually chat with them on regular basis (not just like each other's posts or whatever you probably meant), then they absolutely are.
I think perhaps it comes to mentality? What do you want out of Goodreads? I don't have many friends on Goodreads but I like the aspect of basically just using it as my own reading journal. If people like what I have to say, they do engage and I've had a few reviews that have have gotten good organic engagement/discussion. But mostly, it's for me to track what I read each year and my thoughts on those books. People engaging is just a nice bonus/excuse to talk about books.
If I want actual discussion, I find reddit is actually better for that.
I agree with this! I use Goodreads for my own personal tracking only but I don't see much people discuss books on there.
Usually once I'm done with a book, I will come to reddit, search the book up and then have discussions from there!
None of mine are people I know from real life. Quite a few are people from book-related subreddits. A few are people from Twitter. Most are people who my Goodreads friends interacted with and I liked their reviews.
Groups are the way. But beware, you can quickly have too many friends there and all the sudden your feed is filled with people pimping their self published crap. I finally had to sit down and cull my friends list back down to about 25 people whose reviews I’d enjoyed and who make an effort to read mine too.
Most of mine came from r/52book, where I post my reading lists and monthly wrap-ups/progress.
At the beginning of the year, r/bookclub had a thread where you could introduce yourself and post your goodreads account, so I added and was added by a lot of redditors because of that. It's been great because all of us for the most part are reading the same books at the same time, so there is a lot of interaction and interesting comments/reviews.
>No one is reading my reviews there, nor react to my status updates, which is kinda inducing an isolated feeling, lol.
How about you reach out to others instead? Do you want dopamine hits from likes or interacting with people? Because if you want to interact from people, you can reach out on your own, read reviews by newest, click on like when you see a good point or argument, comment on a review if it is interesting.
It can be kind of organic, to meet strangers by hanging around small fandoms, commenting on new things, or following people whose taste or reviews you like.
52book subreddit does a yearly Goodreads username swap
I have 2 “friends” - my best friend and some random dude who reads totally different books. I have no idea why he’s there, but it’s been almost a year. I use the app only to track my reads.
Join some groups, maybe that can help.
Start liking and commenting on other people’s reviews. If you think you might like their reviews in the future, send them a friend request or follow them.
Groups, for sure.
When I joined, GoodReads was popular and so simply linking to social media carried over a ton of real-life people.
I forget which sub it was, but I picked up a few from here on Reddit when someone put out a thread where people who wanted to share could post their goodreads id.
I prefer older books, currently on a mystery/thriller binge, but do fantasy, historical fiction and a variety of others depending on my mood. If you like the same, pm me and we can get each other's info.
I'm not on Goodreads all the time, but I do read others reviews, what they are reading and will toss out the occasional comment and some likes.
I have random people add me because I post some reviews they liked I suppose. I'm also a Goodreads Librarian and may be in some other groups - I assume people see and add me out of curiosity.
Yeah be yourself, introduce yourself, meet people, have fun, it will just happen!
>I've already used its friend search function which goes through my facebook and email contacts
Not me using a completely different e-mail and name for goodreads...
>which is kinda inducing an isolated feeling,
I use goodreads as an online list of books I've read or want to read, not as social media.
This probably doesn't help you but just wanted to tell you that you're far from the only person without friends on that app.
Most people I've talked about goodreads are using it the same way I do and are ignoring all the social media side of the app
I don't. I observe people with thoughtful and insightful reviews but I don't feel need to make "friends"
I only have 2 girls from my book club as friends and we read the same book every month, so it's quite funny 😂 but at least I can see whether they liked it or not based on their rating
i have about 300 friends because i had posted my goodreads on reddit (different sub)
I have no friends on Goodreads.
I’m part of a Sci Fi and Fantasy Books fan group on Facebook and everyone just shares the link for their profile for everyone else to add them…if they choose to of course.
Bold of you to assume I have friends in goodreads but I do not lol
I use Goodreads only to track my own reading & the review section is mostly a reminder for myself 🤣 but I really did not know that there was such a thing as "groups" that you can join there? That would make me visit the app a lot more!
I honestly have no idea how I have friends on Goodreads. Maybe four or five of them are people that I know irl and talk to about books. The rest seem to just appear. I’ll check one day on a whim and the number will have gone up by a dozen. The functions I use Goodreads for, though, are to take little notes on books and to write reviews (because I find it fun to do so). Everything else is superfluous so I barely interact with people on it at all, beyond maybe making a note specifically for one of those four or five people I know irl about how much they would like a book or passage or whatever.
I would say explore, search for the books you’re interested in, look through the reviews section, see what opinions you resonate with, request their friendship if you like their profile and reading shelves. If you watch booktubers you can try to find their profile… most of my friends on Goodreads are people I don’t know, but who are very inspiring. After all, it shouldn’t even be such a stress, you’re there to monitor your reading and find more books “socially”✨🥹
I've had people request to follow me after reading my reviews. Or it will come up in my feed that one of my friends on Goodreads followed someone new, so I'll check out their account and see if I want to friend them too.
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I have one friend and they're someone I know IRL. I don't use the social aspects of Goodreads. It's really just a digital bookshelf for me to keep track of the books I have read, where I'm at in the books I'm currently reading, and the books I'm interested in reading.
ETA: I don't even read the reviews on Goodreads, or look at the star ratings for that matter.
I just add my bookclub friends on there.
I joined Facebook groups a while back and gained Goodreads friends via those groups. I also follow bookish content creators I enjoy and people who I see pop up on multiple (mostly indie pub) books I have enjoyed or am interested in. Following allows you to see that person’s updates.
I’ve had interactions with a few users who sent friend request after seeing a review I’ve posted of a lesser reviewed book we have in common.
Do you send request or do you wait for them to come to you?
I don't have many friends, but I think I like it that way. I've had a couple of random people friend me, but they would like every review that they came across and it filled my feed up with those; it annoyed me because I like to see what my friends are reading. I ended up unfriending them.
I think it would depend on what kind of books you are reading and whether you are member of any groups. I mainly read old fiction (+200 years old) and non-ficition literature, and rarely got any reactions back when I used goodreads (I quit back in June this year, due to losing the ability to adding new books).
There are, however, probable more people visiting your profile - and reading your reviews - than you think; I got random reactions and friend-invites from people now and then.
I have some IRL friends/family members and then any time someone I follow on IG or TT links their Goodreads, I’ll follow them!
I only have 25 friends on Goodreads. Some of them are IRL friends. Some are random people who read somewhat similarly whose friend request I accepted. Some are from when some person from a Cyrillic-using country hacked my account and they added a bunch of people.
I follow a bunch of people whose reviews were interesting and some booktube people since I'm way too shy to send random friend requests to people I don't know.
I'm all over the place with my reading - manga, graphic novels, non-fiction, history, fantasy, sci-fi, horror, thriller/mystery, historical fiction, literary fiction, romance, etc. I don't review much but generally speaking I read and rate a lot (although long COVID has put a bit of a dent in that). I'm always happy to make new Goodreads friends though provided they aren't going to just promote their self-published books.
Honestly because of TikTok. A lot of people on book tok will share their goodreads
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The friends I have in GR have been the ones I added a decade ago, lol. Now, I only use GR to track my books.
Get a few friends then friend their friends
heykittums t1_ivoua3p wrote
Join some groups. Most of them have a "introduce yourself" or "meet some new friends" threads. That's how I've found all mine.