Guest Post: NetGalley

Recently, I posted about NetGalley and today we feature Kristina Radke, Community Concierge, who sends frequent updates and information about all the latest book offerings from small and large publishers who have joined their service. I find this to be a wonderful way for book reviewers to get new titles via direct downloads and have used them myself. I asked NetGalley to answer a few questions in detail, and here are the responses:

What is NetGalley?

NetGalley is a service that delivers digital galleys to professional readers such as reviewers, bloggers, librarians, booksellers, media, and educators. If you read and recommend books, you can request digital galleys from over 100 publishers for free! If you’re a publisher, you can offer secure digital galleys to the NetGalley community (over 36,000 members as of today) and/or to your own list of contacts.

Who started it?

NetGalley was created by Rosetta Solutions, and was acquired by Firebrand Technologies (who offers various digital solutions for publishers such as Title Management and the Eloquence metadata distribution service) in 2008.

Where does it live?

NetGalley is a virtually virtual office! Our parent-company Firebrand Technologies is based in Newburyport, MA, but the small NetGalley team is spread across the U.S. We have members in the New York area (Manhattan, Brooklyn, New Jersey), in California, and in Seattle.

Why did you create it?

NetGalley was created to give publishers the ability to offer secure digital galleys, which allows publishers to reduce the costs of printing and shipping physical galleys and get more galleys in the hands of qualified professional readers. Not to mention reduce publishers’ impact on the environment. Digital books are about as green as they come!

How does it work?

Publishers upload their galleys, plus any promotional information like book trailers, tour schedules, etc., to the site. Once the file has been added, they can invite their own contacts to view their title on NetGalley. Plus, members can find new titles through the Public Catalog, where they can request galleys. The publisher will then approve or decline those requests based on their approval preferences.

Once approved, readers can download the galleys to a number of different devices, and even share feedback/reviews directly with the publisher.

Is there a cost to the publisher? I know it's free to the reviewer.

Yes, it’s true that this is a free service for professional readers! For publishers, the pricing is based on how many titles they have active at any given time. For publishers who would like more information, please email us. 

One more question: What if a reviewer is interested in a title, but it's not yet available on NG?

The list of available titles on NetGalley is completely up to each individual publisher. Some publishers put a wide variety of titles on NetGalley, including some back-list titles, while others only highlight their seasonal front-list titles and archive them from the site upon publication. My suggestion is to check back often! New titles are added every day.

Be sure to sign up at NetGalley.

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Dani Greer is founding member of the Blood-Red Pencil, a book reviewer, editor, writer, blogger, artist, blog book tours teacher and chaperone, and special projects coordinator for Little Pickle Press. In her spare time... oh, never mind.