Bill Tammeus: Example of Great Author Pages on Goodreads

Our publishing house team has encouraged authors to get involved in the Goodreads community online since our founding in 2007, the same year Goodreads was launched. (Here’s Wikipedia’s overview of the company, now owned by Amazon.)

Among our previous columns about Goodreads is this one by Susan Stitt that remains relevant today, headlined: Making the most of Goodreads’ author resources.

Today we are renewing that call to authors to develop a presence on Goodreads. We’re doing that by illustrating an excellent example from among our own authors: Bill Tammeus, author of Love, Loss and Endurance: A 9/11 Story of Resilience and Hope in an Age of Anxiety.

First, Goodreads participants—a community of 90 million readers—are best known for posting thoughtful reviews of books.

This past week, for example, our publishing house team celebrated with Bill that his new book was reviewed by one of the venerable Goodreads reviewers, Clif Hostetler, who has reviewed nearly 1,000 books since he joined Goodreads not long after it was founded.

Excerpts from Clif Hostetler’s review of ‘Love, Loss and Endurance’

Here is some of what Hostetler wrote. You can read his entire review on Goodreads.

This book is part memoir reflecting on one family’s experience of a 9/11 loss, and it is part commentary on the misuse of religion in the justification of terrorism. The author is the retired former Faith columnist for The Kansas City Star who had previously spent nearly 27 years on the paper’s editorial page. … The memoir portion of this book shows the writing skills of an obviously experienced writer. The portion of the book reflecting on current affairs reads much the same as his columns from this time with the KC Star. … One thing that becomes apparent in the family memoir portion of the book is that differences in the ways in which various family members deal with sorrow and loss can create friction between family members. This book contains intimate and emotional descriptions of parents struggling to let go, a widow seeking normalcy for her children by moving on to remarriage, and adult siblings with bruised feelings and misunderstandings. Readers can learn from these stories of the complex and varied ways a family tragedy can push and pull on interfamilial relationships in unexpected ways.

So, first: “Thank you, Clif Hostetler!” He is a reader and reviewer who none of us at the publishing house knew about until his post showed up on Goodreads. We’re now glad we’ve met him online.

Bill Tammeus: Example of a Great Goodreads Author Page

After a lifetime as a writer for newspapers and national magazines, Bill is a master of media connections, so it’s not surprising that he has a well-set-up Goodreads author page.

To other authors who may be reading this column, we all say: Please, go and do something similar so that your readers can find you in this huge and vitally important community of readers.

Care to Read More?

But, wait! To understand the multi-faceted media outreach that Bill continues to pursue each month, take a look at two other recent appearances.

Newsweek magazine just published his column, headlined: 20 Years On, What Have We Learned?

In that column, Bill begins:

Twenty years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, including my own nephew, Karleton Fyfe, the U.S. military intervention and endless diplomatic work in Afghanistan have managed to replace the theologically inflexible Taliban with, well, the Taliban. It would be understandable if those of us advocating peaceful solutions to extremist threats simply folded now and admitted that human history is just one act of violence birthing another and another and then another. But that reality doesn’t relieve me or others of the responsibility to work for a more peaceful future. That’s one reason September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows was launched in February 2002.

 

Then, Bill also appeared in this video report on NBC affiliate KSHB in Kansas City under the headline: Long-time KC journalist remembers nephew lost on 9/11 with new book

What Bill is doing is vital to the discoverability of his book. Our publishing house chooses new book projects based on their relevance to timely national conversations unfolding across the U.S. and around the world. Bill’s wisdom as a veteran author is that becoming an active part of that national conversation requires a tireless attention to possible media opportunities.

Thank you Bill for all you are doing to make the world a better place!