About three years ago, Donalyn Miller (http://bookwhisperer.com/) introduced me to http://www.goodreads.com/ as a tool she uses in her classroom. I signed up for an account, and started to keep track of my own reading. At first, I went on it rarely. I had few friends that also used the site, so it was hard to justify spending time publishing reviews and ratings if my purpose was to share with those close to me.
This summer, I participated in National Writing Project http://www.nwp.org/, and my friends list grew. I decided to give it another go. 7 months later, I've determined that the social sharing with my friends isn't the most important feature of the site. It is nice to see what a few key fellow readers post, but I get so much more from it.
Authors have pages on the site, which often links to their blogs. Within the site, there's a way to send them messages too. I've used this feature more than once. For instance, my students are in love with Alyson Noel's Immortals series http://www.alysonnoel.com/. They lamented the fact that there weren't any more books to read. I told them that we could actually send her a message on the site. They helped me compose a short fan message to her, and were thrilled when she responded with a thank-you-very much. Making an author a real person is one way to increase the popularity of reading stories by that author. I can't keep those books on my shelf, because the kids are passing on the word about how Noel tells a story that they love, and that she even talked back to us. Her message was only a few lines long, but that was all it took.
Interestingly, authors can connect with users too. One day I received a message from Brannon Hollingsworth to be his friend, along with an invitation to join his contest to receive an autographed copy of his book. I won, and he responded via a youtube video response . Since then, we've exchanged a few messages about the possibility of cooperating on a project. I read his book quickly, and posted one of the most detailed reviews that I've ever written. I felt I owed that to him. Thankfully, the book was good, I gave it a 5 stars.
Every day I check the free giveaways button to see if there are any books that I might be interested in. Whenever I win, I feel like I've won the lottery. I look forward to my free book coming in the mail. Sometimes I hate the free books, sometimes I love them. But, it is building my bookshelf with more books I can share with my students. This is huge, as any public school teacher knows. I'm lucky enough to get a new free book every couple weeks.
If you haven't tried Goodreads, do yourself a favor and sign up now.
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