NetGalley

Seriously, this Amazon-Hachette battle is taking up so much of my attention, it’s hard to focus on anything else.

But I will valiantly try. Today I’m going to tell you about my experience with NetGalley.

I’m going to steal directly from NetGalley’s site to tell you what they’re about:

Do you review and recommend books online, in print, for your bookstore, library patrons, blog readers, or classroom? Then you are what we call a “professional reader,” and NetGalley is for you. Registration is free, and allows you to request or be invited to read titles, often advance reading copies, on your favorite device.

Are you a publisher, author, or PR professional launching a new title, series or season? NetGalley offers a way to provide secure, digital versions of your titles to our community of professional readers, and your own contacts.

Hopefully that makes sense to you – NetGalley is a service that gets review copies of books into the hands of serious readers.

It was during my (never-ending) self-publishing research that I first realized I could actually access this service. At first it seemed impossible – these types of services have traditionally catered to big publishers. The big publishers have lots of titles to promote. Review services charge a fairly substantial annual fee. It’s worth it for a publisher, promoting many titles. Not so much for a self-publisher with one, or two books.

Then I found out about these Co-ops that have sprung up to help individual authors use services like NetGalley. This is the one I used.

I paid for two months which was really affordable, and Kellie – my contact - sent me a really good questionnaire to fill out. I had to fill out a similar, but MUCH longer questionnaire for my traditional publisher when OIM came out and I liked filling this one out much better because a) it asked for stuff I had already had to figure out / prepare in the course of publishing APS, and b) I was sure all the information would be used.

Kellie then set up my NetGalley page for me – here it is – and we were good to go.

I still have quite a while left to run on my NetGalley term, but I’m already really happy with the results. APS has more reviews on Goodreads, Amazon, etc. in just a few weeks, than OIM does after a year. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again; reviews are IMPORTANT. I believe reviews influence readers to take a chance on an author they haven’t previously known.

The NetGalley readers give good reviews. Good in terms of thoughtful, detailed, reasoned. I’ve really enjoyed reading them. It’s interesting to see the common themes, and the very individual things readers pick out. Mostly, it’s just nice to feel a close connection to my readers.

So, NetGalley:

(1) Will I use it again? YES

I thought I’d say more, but guess that’s all I really need to say! I’m satisfied with this as a promotional tool, and I love dealing with Kellie. If you’re self-publishing I vote that you try this.