Ugh. I just fell down the rabbit hole of NetGalley. Have any of you heard of it? I saw it on Goodreads because a bunch of people were posting that they got pre-release copies of books for reviewing. I checked it out and am now starting to "review" books. LOL. I hate doing it (if I don't like the book), but I thought it is a great way to get brand new (not-yet-released) books for free and be ahead of the curve. I just read two books of poetry, and have two thrillers on my "shelf" to read/review. I'm not sure how they select people, but I'm assuming the more you review, the better your chances of getting selected to get the new books. You get a rating, so that is one tip... don't try to get a bunch of books all at once. It is better to get one, review it and then start another because your percentage looks better (I didn't figure that out until it was too late). Anyway, I thought I'd let you know so you can check it out!
I have not heard of this, but recently, a friend of mine made a comment in passing about doing something similar for Amazon, and getting deals on other things in return.
I know a lot of my scrapping friends are book reviewers, and LOVE it! I am not a reviewer... I don't have it in me to be critical/constructive of someone else who can write a book, whereas I don't think I could
I'm too lazy to review when I could be reading instead! As it is, most all my books come from the library. But it sounds fun if you've got the time and desire!
I find that if I'm trying to review a book, I'm not really reading it for enjoyment but spending my time analysing it instead and don't enjoy the story in the end.
Ditto. I just want to move on to the next book! I'll give a book a star rating, but will usually never take the time to write something up.
i'm sure it is an absolute rabbit hole! i write little 'liked this, didn't like that' reviews on goodreads becos i find other ppl's reviews useful (to an extent - i cant say i've read many of the loooong ones with gifs etc - i dont need a play by play or indepth analysis) and becos sometimes i don't finish a series all at once and it helps jog my memory - i use the hidden notes section on the odd occasion. i think free for review books would feel too much like 'work' for me and i'd have to get it together with grammar and capitals and punctuation etc. (thats where i'm most lazy) i must say in terms of criticising others/their work it can get over the top and personal - some of the ones i've read are almost verbal bashing IMHO and it just makes me wonder how some ppldont get banned from the site
So do you get to choose what you read and review, or do they just send stuff at random? Because I'd love to do this, but only if it's something I'm interested in reading!
You go in and "request" books that you want to read. They may or may not let you get them. It seems completely random to me as to how they decide. I read/reviewed a couple of cookbooks and they featured my reviews on the site, but then another publisher totally turned me down for a cookbook and a gardening book. So you never know what you're going to get, but they don't assign to you. You request/receive. I've gotten turned down for a ton, but have been able to read a bunch of the ones I wanted too. It is weird. You don't want to request a ton at once either. I learned that the hard way. LOL. They have a "suggested" review rate of 80%, so if you have a bunch to read/review at any one time, it lowers your score and you may not get approved for other books. Once you get above 20 books reviewed and have an 80% rate, they give you a badge, that is supposed to help improve your rating (for approvals). If you sign up, when you create your bio/profile, be sure to include how many people you may reach with your reviews, because apparently some of the publishers look for that. There isn't a specific place to put it, but a couple of people have told me to just put it in your profile section. There is a NetGalley group on Goodreads that you can join. There are threads you can ask questions and find out more info too. And there is another place I just found out about too. It is called Blogging for Books. I just signed up Friday and requested the first thing I saw, which turned out to be a game, it is on the way in the mail, so I'm pretty excited about that. It seems that they only let you have one at a time though. http://www.bloggingforbooks.com/
Does anyone else work through NetGalley? I've kind of gotten into it, but I'm struggling to get "approved" by a couple of different publishing houses that I have books I really like! My guess is I don't have enough reviews under my belt for their preferences, but it's frustrating!
@scrapsandsass Thx for sharing this info with us, otherwise I don't think I ever would have heard of it. I signed up last night and this morning got my first book to review. It took a while to get my downloading settings figured out and then of course I screwed it up by typing the email wrong LOL. But I'm all set up, download the book to my kindle app and will start reading a YA book I requested.
