On May 21, Goodreads launched its "Ask the Author" function, a feature that allows readers to submit questions to their favorite authors. The 54 authors participating in the launch include Margaret Atwood, Khaled Hosseini, and James Patterson, and in the coming weeks, all of the authors in the Goodreads Author Program, over 100,000, will be able to opt in to "Ask the Author."
"Asking authors questions has long been a tradition at bookstores, online and in groups on Goodreads," said Patrick Brown, director of author marketing at Goodreads. "The problem was that these great answers, which obviously the authors had put a lot of time into, were getting lost. They weren't easy to find, they weren't something that you could share with your friends when you found something you really loved, and there was a clear opportunity for Goodreads to create something better."
Goodreads unveiled the feature on its blog yesterday—with a reveal of all of the authors available for questions from the roughly 25 million users on the social network. Other writers include Dan Brown, Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Cunningham, Wimpy Kid author Jeff Kinney, and National Book Award-winner James McBride.
