The Benefit of Reader Reviews

Guest post by Corrin Foster, Sr. Director of Book Marketing & Promotions, Forbes Books

No book marketing initiative exists in a bubble. While each has a purpose, benchmarks, and expectations, how a book marketing strategy works together to build book visibility and sales momentum as a whole is what’s most important. At the center of this philosophy, reader reviews are the golden thread that ties together every element of a successful book marketing campaign. These candid reviews penned by avid readers hold the power to transform casual browsers into buyers and from buyers into fans, followers, and author devotees. They guide readers through the millions of reading choices, to the book that most meetss their needs, whether that’s solving a specific business problem, providing the best gluten-free recipes, or offering a fantastical escape from everyday life. 

Reader reviews are the golden thread that ties together every element of a successful book marketing campaign.

Need more reasons why reviews are vital to a successful book marketing campaign?

  • Reader reviews are the social proof that helps to convert browsers into buyers. They make readers feel confident in their buying decision and excited to read a new book. Generally speaking, the more reviews a book has, the more people read that book. And no matter where they are buying or borrowing the book, they’re likely checking the reviews on Amazon and/or Goodreads before doing so. 
  • Reader reviews help advertising convert to sales at a higher rate. If ad dollars are being spent to drive potential buyers to Amazon to buy your book, those potential buyers need proof that the book is worth buying. Ads generally begin to convert to sales at a higher rate once there are 15+ reviews on the book page, so make that your first reader review goal. 
  • Reader reviews have legs. They get shared online on retail sites, reading communities, blogs, and social media. They get shared offline between friends at brunch, at book club meetups, and in chit-chat with coworkers. 
  • Reader reviews keep books active in Amazon’s product recommendation algorithm. Reviews create page activity. The page activity tells Amazon that there is interest in a book and they should recommend that book to more potential readers. 
  • Reader reviews lead to more reader reviews. When readers see other readers sharing their opinions, they want to join in that conversation. That’s called buzz! 

You never know when or where someone will sing a book’s praises, but that cannot happen without actively engaging with reading communities like NetGalley. 

Here are some ways you can get started connecting with readers.

  • Make your book available on NetGalley. NetGalley is the first touchpoint between authors, publishers, and readers. They are enthusiastic readers, supporters of authors and independent bookstores. They are responsible for the success of many books. 
  • Proactively seed books with your author network. Identify 15-20 people who would be willing to review the book the week of publication. Give them a copy of the book 4-6 weeks prior to publication so that they can begin reading and be ready to review.
  • Take advantage of the giveaway functionality of reading communities like Goodreads, StoryGraph, and LibraryThing. Every book you giveaway is a potential review and every review is an opportunity to attract a new reader. 
  • Respectfully follow up with readers the week of publication.Thank them for their interest in the book, share any wins that may entice them to make it their next read (great trade review? Amazon bestseller? Readers love to know that!). Encourage them then to share their honest review on Amazon, Goodreads, or wherever they choose to engage. 
  • No hounding readers for reviews! Every avid reader has a stack of books to read and yours might not be at the top of that stack. Give them time to read, enjoy, and form their opinion. And remember that sometimes the best review is no review. 
  • Encourage honest reviews. As a publisher, we never like to see a critical review for one of our books, but readers should be free to share their opinions. Diversity in reviews not only helps books appeal to the right readers, it deters the wrong readers from buying a book and leaving a future critical review. Remember, it’s not about avoiding criticism, it’s about embracing the diversity of opinions that ultimately guide the right readers to your book while helping others avoid a mismatched reading choice.

Reviews act as a bridge between the author and the reader, offering valuable insights into the book’s quality, appeal, value, and relevance. They create a buzz; an ever-expanding conversation that draws more readers into the fold. To harness this potential, engaging with reading communities like NetGalley and proactively involving your network in reviewing your book are essential steps. 

In a world where readers have more choices than time, the importance of reader reviews cannot be overstated—they are the underlying heartbeat of long-term book sales and visibility.

In a world where readers have more choices than time, the importance of reader reviews cannot be overstated—they are the underlying heartbeat of long-term book sales and visibility.

Corrin Foster, Sr. Director of Book Marketing and Promotions, Forbes Books

As the Sr. Director of Book Promotions and Marketing at Forbes Books, Corrin Foster develops and executes strategic book launch marketing campaigns and works directly with authors to help them build their brand, establish authority, and connect with readers. With nearly 20 years of branding and digital marketing experience, Corrin holds an MBA from Indiana University, completed the Yale Publishing Course, and was a Publishers Weekly Start Watch Honoree.

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10 Common Questions

NetGalley is a vital promotional service hundreds of publishers and authors use to enhance their marketing and publicity campaigns, but with so many ways to use NetGalley we know you may be wondering where to start! From widgets to wishes, promotions and reports, NetGalley offers tons of features to ensure your books get the enthusiastic launch they deserve. Whether you’ve just started with us or you’re a longtime user in need of a refresher: Hello, welcome, and read on for some NetGalley publisher must-have information!

1.  How do I invite contacts to view my title?

Seamlessly send pre-approved digital copies of your books to your own trusted contacts using the NetGalley widget. The widget can be used anywhere a link is used—just copy and paste it into an email with your custom pitch. YOU retain your personal connection with the recipient, while ensuring they can easily access the book on their preferred device.

Secure widgets use an email address or a list of emails to secure your title. Only recipients who log in to a NetGalley account with this pre-approved email address are authorized to use that widget.

You can also choose to create an Open widget, which is not assigned to any email addresses, and can be used by anyone who receives the link. We recommend sending open widgets to trusted contacts, like an editor who will assign the title to a reviewer. No matter what, you can always see who has accessed your titles in your NetGalley publisher account. 

Here’s some suggested language to use, which includes a link to our Device Guide and support team. We encourage publishers to customize the template language, but this should give you a strong foundation!

NetGalley Widget FAQs

2. How can I tell who has accessed my book?

Find this information by navigating to the Title Details page of your book and clicking on Approval History in the left-hand sidebar. This will take you to the Members with Access page, which breaks down these members into various categories—Approved, Auto-Approved, Read Now, Widget Invites, and Wishes Granted. You can see if a member has clicked to read or listen to your book. You can also find this information on your Detailed Activity report.

Request History FAQ

3. What is the difference between Private, Read Now, Available for Request? 

Publishers have complete control over who can access their books on NetGalley. You have a few different options: Private, Read Now, and Available for Request. 

Private: NetGalley members won’t know your title is available on the site unless you invite them to view that book using the widget, or if you use the book’s link to collect wishes.

Read Now: Members will have instant approval, so it’s best to use this option when you want to approve all requests automatically. Publishers often use the Read Now option for special promotions—like making a title available to Read Now for a limited time or number of downloads—or for special content like samplers, excerpts, catalogs, or backlist titles.

Available for Request: You will make the decision to approve or decline each member’s request to access that specific title. You can also allow requests from only certain member types for specific time periods—for more information, click here.

Title Availability FAQ

4. What does auto-approving a member do?

Many publishers have a VIP list of readers, like ALA-member librarians, trusted reviewers at media outlets, and bloggers who reliably provide great reviews for your titles. You can make their day by auto-approving them! Once a member is on your Auto Approved List, any requests they make for your titles will be automatically approved, so they don’t have to wait for you to see and approve them manually.

Auto-Approved Members FAQs

5. What file types are best to upload to NetGalley? 

 NetGalley publishers can upload 3 different file types for digital review copies: ePub, mobi, and PDFs. Audio publishers can upload zipped MP3 files.

An ePub file is preferable for most books on NetGalley and, if an ePub is uploaded, there’s no need to upload a PDF– the ePub will always take precedence over a PDF file, because it provides a better reading experience for our readers. Our file recommendations can be found here.

Content File Troubleshooting and Optimization FAQs

6. How can I test my own files?

Testing files on your computer is simple; you can do so directly from your publisher account! 

To test the NetGalley Shelf app and Kindle app, you can begin by using the widget to grant yourself access to the book. Be sure you have a member account to test with! First, create the widget in your publisher account, then paste the link into a new window or tab. Please note that before navigating to the widget URL, you must sign out from your publisher account—or you may want to use a private/incognito window. Once you click the link, simply sign in to your member account and follow the next steps:

Recommended: To test on the NetGalley Shelf App, first download the app to your iOS or Android device, sign into your NetGalley reader account, and you’re done! If you’ve already accepted the widget you sent yourself, the book will automatically appear in your NetGalley Shelf App!

On a Kindle device: First, ensure that your Kindle email address is on your NetGalley member account in Settings, under Reading Preferences. Also be sure that kindle at NetGalley dot com is approved to send to your Kindle. You’ll only need to do this once.

After you’ve accepted the widget you sent yourself,  simply click “Send to Kindle” from the title details page for the book in question.

If you prefer to download to your computer or another Adobe-supported device, you will need to download Adobe Digital Editions on your computer and sign in using your Adobe ID. Afterward, go to the Title Details page of your book, where you’ll want to click the orange arrow next to Upload/Preview Files in the left sidebar. Click the file type you’d like to test (PDF or ePub), and your file will download.

Previewing Your Files FAQ

7. How can I use the NetGalley reports?

NetGalley reports are an incredibly useful tool for a publisher using the site. You can find them by navigating to a title’s Feedback page or by clicking the purple gear icon on the right-hand side of the Manage Titles page. We have five reports available on NetGalley: Detailed Activity Reports, Feedback Reports, Snapshot PDF Reports, Opinions Reports, and Active Title Reports. Whether you’re looking for consolidated information about reviews submitted for a title (try the Feedback Report!); want to see a summary of the activity for all your titles that are not archived (we’d recommend the Active Title Report!); or if you need to know about every interaction between a title and the NetGalley community (the Detailed Activity Report is perfect for this!), we’ve got you covered. Our reports can help you understand trends, identify media contacts interested in connecting with an author, and even show what your readers are most excited about regarding your titles.

Reporting FAQs and NetGalley Advanced Reports

8. How can I book additional marketing promotions?

NetGalley’s marketing promotions are extremely effective tools to highlight your titles on the site and to access our member community. There are many creative promotions you can book through NetGalley US, with options for any budget and type of book. View the 2021 Media Kit here.  (Our UK promotions are available here!) We encourage publishers to book promotions early, since dates are often booked months in advance. Please note: In order to participate in our promotions, your title must first be listed on NetGalley.

NetGalley Marketing FAQs

9. How do I receive/change email notifications?
To change the email address that receives all alerts, simply navigate to your account Settings, by clicking your publisher name at the top right of your dashboard. In the Email Alerts section, you can change the frequency of these email alerts, as well as who receives them.

If you’d like a colleague to receive the email notifications for a specific title, just go to the Title Details page of the book, scroll down to Settings in the sidebar, and look for “Email Alerts.” The email address you add here will receive request and feedback notifications for that title only.

Email Notifications for publishers FAQ

10. Can I override an approval/decline?

We—or our cats—all click something we didn’t mean to every once in a while! Though there is no way to undo an approval once it’s been made, you can override a decline. If you decline a request by accident, or if you change your mind, you can send the member a widget inviting them to view the title.

More in-depth answers to these, and more, questions can be found on our Publisher Knowledge Base. Pro tip: use the search bar to find the relevant articles to answer your specific questions!

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A Publicist’s Tips for Being a Stellar Book Advocate

Estelle Hallick at Forever shares her strategies for finding the right NetGalley members for her books

Originally published on We Are Bookish

NetGalley members are always curious about how they can get publishers to approve more of their requests. That’s why We Are Bookish’s Kelly Gallucci interviewed Estelle Hallick, Publicity and Marketing Manager at Forever, about her process for managing requests, and her advice to members looking to improve their profiles. In addition to giving members an inside look at how a publicist is looking at their profiles and their NetGalley activity, Hallick also provides other publicists and marketers with a template for managing requests systemically. 

In this interview, Hallick shares the metrics she considers when approving Reviewer requests, how she treats new NetGalley members, and why a critical review doesn’t mean that she won’t approve another request from that same member.

Read the interview below! Plus, if you have a book or an author that you think would be a great fit for We Are Bookish, pitch them here

Take us behind the curtain: What does the NetGalley request approval process look like for Forever?

I always start by looking at the Feedback Ratio; I sort the reviewer requests and start the approval process with the highest numbers. Since we get so many requests every day, 80% Feedback Ratio is a benchmark number for me. 

When I start to get below 80%, I begin reading through bios. I tend to give more attention to the people under 80% because I’m genuinely interested to know why they are requesting the title or what brings them to NetGalley. I hope to see that bios are updated recently, or within a year (to me, it’s an indication that they are active reviewers) and to see if they have a list of authors they enjoy. This helps me decide if they are a good fit for our titles. While Feedback Ratio is important to me, I remember what it’s like to be a new reviewer and try to consider newer members whenever I can–but it starts with a detailed Profile.

What are three common missteps that can lead to a declined request?

I look for Feedback Ratio, correct member type, and updated bio with working links. I see so many Profiles with inspirational quotes or information that feels a little like a dating profile. I love personal details, but, in order to catch my eye, the combination of personal and professional information is important.

I look for Feedback Ratio, correct member type, and updated bio with working links. I see so many Profiles with inspirational quotes or information that feels a little like a dating profile. I love personal details, but, in order to catch my eye, the combination of personal and professional information is important.

Do you look for different information in NetGalley Profiles based on member type? 

Every member type should be as detailed as possible.

Bookseller: Where do you work? Are there book clubs at your store?

Librarian: What department do you work in? Are there any programs you run that would be of interest to publishers?

Traditional reviewer: What outlets have you written for?

Blogger: What street teams are you on? Do you organize any annual events on your platform? Do you cross-post? What are your stats?

Traditional reviewers and bloggers should absolutely include links to recent reviews or author interviews that they’ve done.

How often should members be updating their Profiles?

My hope is that reviewers are seeing continual growth on their platforms and want to communicate those updated stats with us. A good rule of thumb is to update whenever there’s something new to add–think of it a bit like a resume in that you want to provide your best and most up-to-date information. Put your best and most accurate foot forward.

We know publishers rely on member stats included in NetGalley Profiles when making approval decisions. Are there any specific stats you personally look for? (Psst, members: To find a publisher’s approval preferences, visit their Publisher page!)

For bloggers, I do look at social media platform growth. While I look at follower count, someone with a following of less than 500 (just as an example) won’t deter me from approving them. To me, it’s about engagement on the platform and how well posts perform.

Let’s talk about review etiquette. In your opinion, what are three important things members should think about when writing reviews? What do you recommend members do when faced with reviewing a book they didn’t enjoy?

First, I want our reviewers to be honest. Giving a book a critical review won’t mean you aren’t qualified to receive other books for review; if anything it makes it easier for us to understand what kind of books you do enjoy. (Reading is an extremely personal experience.)

Second, the most helpful reviews give a sense of the story but do not give away the entire plot. As a bonus, I love when you share if you personally identified with something in the story.

Third, timing. As a NetGalley member, you’re often able to read books well before they’re in stores or libraries. If you love something, don’t wait to share it! Early buzz is so important to authors and publishers. It also alerts other reviewers about the book. The one thing we ask you to keep in mind is remembering to share again on release day.

As an added note, please do not tag authors in critical reviews. Reviews are for other readers, and authors do not need to be alerted of them by a tag.

What can newer members, who may not have a high Feedback Ratio or strong blog/social stats yet, do to stand out to publishers?

New members should take advantage of “Read Now” books to grow their Feedback Ratio, and also give us a better idea of the books you like. Listing authors you enjoy (so we can think about comparable authors we have) and not overdoing the category/genre options would be a great help. I’d also love to see new reviewers share where they read reviews and their hopes for their review life–all great places to start.

Is there anything we didn’t cover here that you’d like to add?

As a NetGalley member, please be sure to read over the decline email you receive before contacting the publisher. A good letter will tell you why you didn’t meet the qualifications for this particular book. If you are still unsure, definitely reach out for specifics.

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8 Tools for a Remote Team

How the NetGalley team gets it done

At NetGalley, we think a lot about how to work more efficiently — how we can help publicity, marketing, and production teams minimize manual effort and maximize output, and how we can do the same for ourselves. Like our publishing partners, we are working on multiple projects, involving different teams coordinating with one another. We just launched We Are Bookish, are building backend support for full audiobooks, and working on some big changes to making accessing books on NetGalley even easier.

As a fully remote team, we can’t just peek our heads into someone’s office to ask a quick question. Instead, we rely heavily on cloud-based shared tools to help us stay on the same page, on track with our roadmap, and in line with what our publishers need. 

Here are some of the tools and programs that let us stay connected and on track with our goals. We hope that by sharing these tools, you might see something that can help you and your team work together even more efficiently in the new year. 

Smartsheet

The NetGalley team uses Smartsheet’s customizable spreadsheets and forms in a number of different ways. We use its spreadsheets to create our editorial, communications, and promotional calendars, to keep track of our own internal metrics, and to plan for conferences and events. We  generate forms through Smartsheet to let publishers schedule marketing opportunities, as well as to log our own hours and expenses, and submit new ideas for feature developments. Because it is cloud-based, we never have to worry that we didn’t get emailed the most recent copy of a spreadsheet. We always know that we’re all using the most up-to-date information.

Zoom 

As a remote team, scheduled weekly and monthly calls help us stay connected to one another. We use Zoom meetings for our weekly all-team conversations, our communications and sales calls, our data calls, development calls, one-on-one meetings, and more. We also use Zoom to hold training and strategy calls with publishers and conduct webinars. Zoom lets you record any call or webinar, so we can save development and planning calls for posterity or in case anyone is out of office so that we can share webinars for anyone who wants a recording. One interesting fact about how NetGalley uses Zoom, though, is that we never use the video functionality! Plenty of teams, especially remote teams, rely on video conferencing to see each other’s faces, but we find that we’re able to get that same collegial energy with audio alone. 

Jira and Confluence

Like 150k other companies in over 190 countries, NetGalley uses tools from software developers, Atlassian. We use Jira and Confluence for project management and for sharing internal documentation, respectively. Amanda Delatorre, QA Manager, works with the development team as well as the member- and publisher-facing teams to prioritize our development schedule, test new features, and document any issues along the way. Jira and Confluence are crucial to her work. “We use Jira to keep track of technical requirements, to schedule and assign the work to developers, and to show what phase the feature is in (up next, in development, ready for testing, completed). The scheduling is useful for keeping new feature development on track, but it is also an excellent way to keep the entire development process transparent for everyone else at the company who may find technical requirements intimidating. We use Confluence in conjunction with Jira in many ways, but, for me, it is most useful as a documentation repository. When a new feature is being developed and tested, we keep detailed notes around the rules and suggestions on how to use the feature, which we publish to Confluence for the rest of the team so there is never any question about how something is intended to work or what the rules are around the feature, and there is always a place to refer back to.” 

Passpack

Because we share access to websites, platforms, and tools across teams, we need to have a secure place to store shared passwords. Passpack allows us to share passwords with each other securely, and to generate new strong passwords whenever we make new accounts or profiles. Plus, having a shared password manager lets us cut down on emails or Slacks asking one another for login information. If you don’t already use a password manager for your professional or personal life, this article from Wirecutter might change your mind. 

Slack

We are big fans of this instant messaging service. Having an instantaneous way to chat with one another cuts down on our inbox clutter and speeds up communication. With Slack, we can direct-message one another, create topic channels with multiple team members, and group chat to brainstorm with one another. Also, as a remote team we do sometimes miss the water cooler conversations that happen in physical offices. That’s why we have channels dedicated to non-work talk within Slack!

SugarCRM

SugarCRM is how we keep track of our relationships with current and prospective clients. We can see which of our contacts work for which publisher, what their roles are, who our point people are, and what our communication histories are with them. We can archive email conversations to SugarCRM, which lets the team understand any relevant historical background to our relationships with publishers. For Katie Versluis, Sales Associate, SugarCRM is essential. “It is an absolute lifeline for me, as someone whose job is focused primarily on customer management. I look at it as a relationship building tool, since it allows us to easily and effectively stay in touch with our clients in meaningful ways. The email archiving system and the ability to collect notes about each account is crucial for us a team– we can sort through years of history with a client at the click of a button, which helps us do our jobs much more effectively. It also allows us to set reminders for ourselves to check in with a publisher we haven’t heard from in a while, or to send a friendly email to a prospective client who expressed interest in our service. It’s important to us to deliver a high level of customer service, and SugarCRM helps us do that.”

Online To-Do lists

The NetGalley team loves a list. And while a few of our team members use physical calendars and paper to-do lists, most of us are deeply devoted to one online to-do list or another. Several of us are fans of TeuxDeux, which lets you set recurring tasks and create ongoing project lists in addition to daily task lists. Others swear by Todoist. Dana Cuadrado, Social Media & Administrative Assistant, is a Todoist devotee. “The productivity nerd in me loves Todolist for all of the options it gives users. I can nest different items on my list, especially helpful when I have a specific idea for upcoming social content. I love that it tracks how many items you check off via specific date so you can see what days you’re most busy on. There are even more options that I don’t specifically use like setting high priority items or sending to-do agenda items to other team members.” 

Zendesk

We use Zendesk to communicate with our communities. On Zendesk, we host Knowledge Bases for both our members and our publishers. These Knowledge Bases have our FAQs about everything from which devices members can use to read books from their NetGalley accounts to how publishers can get the most out of the reports available to them. We also use Zendesk to conduct member support. One major benefit for publishers and authors listing their books on NetGalley is that we handle all troubleshooting and support inquiries from members accessing their books. 

Alicia Schaefer, Customer Service and Community Assistant, uses Zendesk to conduct that support. ”Our goal is to make sure any question or concern is solved in a manner that is quick and efficient but is also satisfactory for the person writing in and for the support member. Zendesk helps us accomplish these goals by providing a versatile platform that allows customizable, time-saving automation options as well as advanced reporting features and member and publisher-facing knowledge bases. My favorite feature is the ability to create ‘Problems’ and ‘Incidents’ where all tickets relating to one type of issue can be grouped together easily. This can be a huge time-saver when it comes to locating and following-up with members in a timely manner!” 

Honorable mentions

Camtasia: Create instructional and strategy-based videos

Canva: Generate images and infographics for social media, email, blog posts

Dropbox: Share documents internally

Google Suite: Email, calendars, collaborative document editing


Let us know what tools you use in the comments or by emailing us at insights@netgalley.com. We’re always looking for new ideas!

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The Importance of Early Data

Using NetGalley tools as a centralized hub for your data

We believe in the power of data. Publishers tell us all the time that they’re looking for more ways to use the data that’s at their fingertips, and we are always happy to work with publishers to help you develop your own unique strategies to use data to target followup, track where reviews are being shared, and to build an even more engaged community on NetGalley. But it’s also important to take a step back and look at the big picture. Early data across titles, imprints, and time can give you real wisdom about what’s working, how you can expect your books to perform, and how to give every book its greatest chance of success.

So, we’re reinforcing that bigger picture–why you should be looking at your early data, plus some ways that you can use both NetGalley Classic and NetGalley Advanced as a centralized hub for data collection and analysis. 

Create benchmarks

Understanding likely results is a crucial part of setting expectations and creating new goals. In NetGalley, you can compare historical data to see how other similar titles have performed in the past, helping you more easily develop those benchmarks and expectations. 

Understanding likely results is a crucial part of setting expectations and creating new goals.

“There is never a one-size-fits all marketing plan,” says Kristina Radke, VP, Business Growth at NetGalley. “Publishers have a lot of considerations when building their strategy — genre of book, debut versus established author, marketing budget, pub season, etc. — and they should also be thinking specifically about what they’ve learned from past performances.”

The Title Summary Report shows side-by-side NetGalley activity for a custom group of titles to help you understand standard performance as you’re setting new goals. The report includes Impressions, Requests, Approvals, Downloads, and amount of Feedback, among other data points. You can choose to view a list of titles based on pub date and category, and even narrow based on imprint or whether the books are still active on NetGalley. 

The Title Summary Report is available on NetGalley Advanced.

For instance: If you’re curious how your Science Fiction titles performed this year compared to last year, use this report to see all of those titles together to understand how that category is trending. Or, if you have a forthcoming book from an established author, you can use this report to find all of your titles from that author in order to see how the previous books performed on NetGalley. This report helps you to more easily set expectations for the new book, or come up with a plan to outperform the previous titles. 

One of the important ways that publishers are setting benchmarks is by looking at an author’s previous books or relevant comp titles. The Title Summary Report makes this research easier for you. You can generate NetGalley reports based on specific authors or ISBNs.  

This type of reporting centralizes a number of different data points that you can use when planning acquisitions or identifying new market trends. For instance, if activity for a book series is decreasing with each new title, a publisher might consider updating the cover design or re-engaging fans with a promotion. If cookbooks are consistently outperforming expectations, you might bring that information to your acquisitions team looking for the next big thing. 

Set your goals before looking at data

Once you have a good understanding of the expectations for a particular type of book, the next step is to clarify your specific goals for the new title. After identifying which metrics are most important to you and what kinds of numbers you’re looking to achieve, you have a better framework for engaging with the data you’ll receive from a new promotion. 

Once you have a good understanding of the expectations for a particular type of book, the next step is to clarify your specific goals for the new title.

Success on NetGalley looks different for different publishers, different authors, different books. It might mean a specific conversion rate from Impressions to Feedback, number of nominations for LibraryReads and Indie Next, or reaching a certain threshold of reviews on retail platforms around the pub date. 

Valerie Pierce, marketing director, retail marketing and creative services, at Sourcebooks told NetGalley Insights that when she and her team measure success, they look at a number of different factors. She said, “We have a few key lists that we look at to determine how the pre-publication promotions for a book are performing.” This includes NetGalley requests, cover votes, Indie Next and LibraryReads nominations. She and her team set goals based on past performance of in-house comp titles. “If the number is [below target], we know we have to stop what we’re doing and completely re-strategize. If the number is average, then we look at ways that we can improve them. And if the number is higher than we anticipate, then it not only means that we’ve got a winning strategy – it also means that this might be a title to pour additional resources into. This could include going back to the sales team and asking them to go back out to their accounts, reallocating budget money so that we can fund more advertising, and going back out to media.”

NetGalley reporting provides relevant information for a variety of different metrics and goals to help you get the information you are looking for in a streamlined way. 

Measure ROI on marketing and publicity efforts

We know that when you invest time, energy, and marketing dollars into a promotion, you want to know whether that investment was effective. By looking at the Title Activity Chart, you can see spikes in impressions, requests, and other activity, and easily correlate them to campaigns both on and off NetGalley. This line chart visualizes information to show you the impact of your marketing. 

When you invest time, energy, and marketing dollars into a promotion, you want to know whether that investment was effective.

“Why wonder, when we can know without a shadow of a doubt, how a campaign performed?” asks Lindsey Lochner, VP, Marketing Engagement at NetGalley. “Having the Open Rate for an eBlast is valuable, but actually seeing the direct result that eBlast had on your book’s overall activity, over the course of its life on NetGalley — that’s powerful. Experimenting with various promotional tools and tracking the results will allow you to determine which efforts are worthwhile for particular types of books and goals.”

Here are some real-life examples of how the Title Activity Chart shows the effects of publishers’ marketing and publicity efforts on and off NetGalley:

Example 1 

Coordinated NetGalley marketing opportunities boosted activity for this Nonfiction book several months after the book initially went live on NetGalley.

Example 2 

The spikes of activity in August for this Fiction book were not coordinated through NetGalley’s email or on-site promotions, showing that the publisher successfully increased activity through their own efforts.

Example 3

Inclusion in a NetGalley Newsletter boosted activity for this YA book, far exceeding even the initial excitement when it first went live for members to request.

Example 4

Small spikes of activity throughout this timeline demonstrate consistent successful efforts to drive audiences to this Children’s book on NetGalley.

Be willing to pivot

Data can show you when you should abandon your current path and pivot to something new.

Data can show you when you should abandon your current path and pivot to something new. If you’re disappointed with the response you’ve gotten, whether that’s a low number of requests, critical feedback about the cover image, or poor reviews of the book, use that information to adjust your strategy.

Look at the Reason for Request section (on the Title Feedback page, or the downloadable Snapshot PDF report) to understand if your book description is effective. This area can also demonstrate if your overall brand and author awareness is high, depending on how many members respond that they “keep hearing about this book.” You might boost your social media efforts, or encourage your author to pitch essays related to their book to news outlets to increase word-of-mouth if the responses are lower than you expected. 

Also consider the Cover Ratings on this page to understand how early readers are reacting to the cover art. 

We all know the old adage, but it’s impossible to ignore the fact that people DO judge books by their covers. The NetGalley community is overall very positive: when it comes to covers – they rarely click the thumbs down button unless they feel particularly strongly. So if you notice a lot of dislikes on a cover, it’s a good idea to have a conversation with the design team about reworking the art. 

Cover Ratings are also an indicator when strategies are working. Brian Ulicky, publicity and marketing director for The New Press uses feedback from the NetGalley community to confirm that he and his design team are on the right path. “Covers are one of the most important pieces of marketing any book gets, and if the NetGalley community loves our designs, we must be doing something right. It’s helpful to have early feedback inform and confirm our very involved, iterative process of designing and choosing covers.”

The Top Performers chart is an easy way to see comparative performance for any active titles on NetGalley, filtered by type of activity and by category. For example, publishers can compare performance across all of their Nonfiction titles, based on which have the highest star ratings. This will help you predict what will happen with these books once they go on sale, or indicate where you need to boost your efforts.

When considering the Top Performers, take note of the conversion rate. First filter to view books with highest Impressions, and then switch to view books with the highest number of Requests. This can be extremely telling! If you have a book with a lot of Impressions, but comparatively low Requests, you’ll know that members decided against requesting the book after reading the description and looking at the cover. The question then becomes: Why?

You might try to optimize this conversion by revising the book description, or adding any missing information to the title record. If you can identify these necessary changes pre-publication and work to increase the NetGalley conversion rate before pub date, you can expect that the conversion from impression to sale will be easier to get once the book hits shelves.

Courtesy of Smith Publicity – Top Performers, sorted by Impressions. The Top Performing Active Titles list is available on NetGalley Advanced.
Courtesy of Smith Publicity – Top Performers, sorted by Feedback. The Top Performing Active Titles list is available on NetGalley Advanced.

The NetGalley Advanced Word Cloud can help you identify the strongest ways to talk about your book. Publishers already look at reviews to see what is resonating with readers, but the Word Cloud makes the process less manual and more visual. It’s created from the actual reviews that members submit for that book, making it a powerful tool to quickly identify readers’ sentiment beyond a star rating, and give you a better idea of what words are most relevant for the book’s marketing efforts. 

The Word Cloud is available on NetGalley Advanced.
The Word Cloud is available on NetGalley Advanced.
The Word Cloud is available on NetGalley Advanced.

“Audience language has been proven to be the most effective source of keywords for titles,” says Joshua Tallent, Director of Sales and Marketing at Firebrand Technologies. “How your reviewers think about your books, and the language they use when describing them, will correlate well with how new customers search for your books.” The NetGalley Word Cloud is a great way to understand your audience better, supplement your book description for SEO, or add keywords to your metadata. Plus, if you’re looking for even more quality keywords for your books, Firebrand’s Keywords service uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to generate keywords from multiple sources of audience language. (Including NetGalley!)

Understand your audience and how you connect with them

Are you reaching your target audience on NetGalley? If you’re working to connect with librarians or booksellers specifically, the Activity By Member Type chart will show you how well you’re doing. Not only can you see how approvals for these members compare to others, you’ll also see their follow-through, including whether they downloaded the book and if they provided Feedback.

The Activity by Member Type Chart is available on NetGalley Advanced.

On NetGalley.com in 2019, NetGalley members provided nearly 612,000 Reviews and Feedback! Reviewers provided Feedback for 41% of the titles they were approved to download, while Educators shared Feedback for 30%, Librarians shared for 23%, Booksellers for 20%, and Media for 19%. 

In 2019, NetGalley members provided nearly 612,000 Reviews and Feedback! Reviewers provided Feedback for 41% of the titles they were approved to download, while Educators shared Feedback for 30%, Librarians shared for 23%, Booksellers for 20%, and Media for 19%. 

It’s natural that Reviewers submit the most Feedback, whereas Educators, Booksellers, and Librarians tend to use NetGalley to consider new books to purchase for their classrooms, stores, or libraries, and Media use NetGalley to prepare for interviews and to be better informed about which new books are forthcoming. 

When looking at these charts, remember to consider your benchmarks as you set expectations.Determine how many new Bookseller requests you are hoping to receive, and then look to see if you reached that goal after the promotion. If you didn’t hit your mark, adjust your strategy as necessary. 

Early Data in Action

In our case studies, publishers and authors tell us about how they use the early data from their NetGalley accounts to drive their actions.

Jess Bonet from Random House uses NetGalley reviews to see what is resonating with readers and to adjust her marketing language accordingly. She said, “The Feedback Report is the tool we most commonly use. It’s so helpful to see what’s resonating with readers before a book goes on sale, so we can adjust our messaging accordingly. Around 3 months before a book goes on sale, our team will meet and discuss review feedback, largely from NetGalley, and adjust copy as necessary. We came to realize that readers were really responding to Taffy’s raw honesty about dating and marriage in the 21st century, so we played that up in our ad copy and our copy feeding to retailers.”

Laura Gianino at Harlequin looks at who is downloading their books so she can pay attention to what types of members are interested, and to drive very targeted follow-ups for reviews and media coverage. She said, “The data was one of the first indications about who was interested in the book.” It helped her to identify the media she pitched, and who followed through to access the book, indicating that they may be planning coverage of this title.

Cynthia Shannon from Chronicle shared early reviews with her sales team so they could show them to book buyers and make the case for carrying in-store. She said, “This helped shed insights into how customers were responding to the book.”


We want to hear which data points are most important to you and how you are using NetGalley to access that data. We’re also always here to help you strategize about developing benchmarks and data-driven goals. Drop us a line at insights@netgalley.com

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Guest Post: 6 Resolutions to Make 2020 Your Best Year Ever on NetGalley

By Sarah Miniaci – Senior Publicity Consultant at Smith Publicity, Inc.

With a brand new year (and for that matter, new decade) now upon us, why not bring the spirit of New Year’s resolutions into your NetGalley practices to create even better outcomes for your books in the months ahead?

At Smith Publicity, we’ve had the pleasure of working with NetGalley and its amazing community of members since 2012. We have discovered that one of the best ways of uncovering opportunities and opening doors for our authors and their books is through the careful and strategic use of NetGalley activity reports — or more specifically, careful and strategic follow ups and engagement with the contacts on your NetGalley reports, which provide you with all of the information and tools you need to get started.

Before we dive into the nitty-gritty of tips and tricks for making 2020 your best year on NetGalley yet, here are some examples of how we use NetGalley reporting to build relationships, boost pre-orders, and build buzz. 

While looking at the NetGalley history for an upcoming nonfiction title, we discovered a librarian whose bio noted that she books authors and events for her library’s prestigious author talks program. Using that information, we were able to secure a sold-out ticketed book launch event for the author, generating hundreds of pre-order hardcover sales in the process.

For fiction releases — particularly genre fiction, i.e. romance, sci-fi, horror, and crime/thriller — identifying contacts on the Feedback Report who are consistently active and influential on Bookstagram and in the blogger community and reaching out to them to build rapport, offer physical ARCs or final copies (if/when applicable), and establish a plan for release-window coverage can make all the difference in setting the stage for a ‘splashy’ launch and building strong consumer market visibility for a new title. Check out these gorgeous #Bookstagram posts from our friends — and active NetGalley members! — @bookishbellee, @watchmereadingnerdy, @abduliacoffeebookaddict23, @booksandchinooks and @candice_reads in support of the fall 2019 release of Katherine Kayne’s debut novel Bound in Flame (The Hawaiian Ladies’ Riding Society, Book #1).

Keeping track of the NetGalley members who leave positive reviews for a title can pay off in the long-term. Near the end of 2019, we went back to a list of NetGalley contacts who had left passionately positive reviews for Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn and World War II by Robert Matzen — a historical biography title released in spring 2019 — to advise that the Goodreads Choice Awards had just begun accepting nominations and encouraging them to vote, if they felt so inclined. As a direct result of this effort, the book – which had not previously been listed among Goodreads’ category selections – made it to the Semi-Finalist round in the ‘History & Biography’ category of the Goodreads Choice Awards.

And so, without further ado, here are six NetGalley Resolutions for 2020:

Look at member profiles during periods of especially high activity. Carve out the time to take a look through not just your Detailed Activity Report, but also the Member Profiles that pop out when you click on a name within the Approval History > Members with Access section. These periods will typically be when you’ve recently uploaded a title to NetGalley, or you’ve nominated and it’s been selected by the NetGalley editorial team for a Homepage Feature or Category Spotlight. Often, you’ll find useful background information and secondary links in this section which will signal that it would be smart to make a personal connection with this contact beyond the automated Approval Email they got when they were given access to the book. And remember, you don’t need to make your first point of contact a robust pitch — a simple “Thanks for your interest and please feel free to contact me with any questions or requests!” will absolutely suffice if you’re still deciding how you want to maximize interest and what you’re able to offer to requesters.

Think about ‘extras’ or bonus content you can offer to NetGalley members whose interest in the book you want to make the most of. If you have extra paperback ARCs or even final copies on hand and are keen to drive early reviews on NetGalley, Goodreads, and Amazon, or to see the book gain traction with the #Bookstagram community, Facebook book club groups, etc., it may not be a bad idea to send an email around to the contacts on your Members with Access list who haven’t yet left a review, asking them if they’d be interested in receiving a physical copy or running a giveaway for their followers, which can be a great way to create exposure when the contact is interested in the book but doesn’t yet have the time to read and review it. Depending on the book, other ‘extras’ and bonus content you can include might be Q&As with or guest posts from the author, special ‘swag’ related to the book, and the list goes on. Ultimately this all serves as a way to build connections and rapport with your “warm leads” and make the most of the organic interest you received on NetGalley.

Target outreach by member type. Depending on the author’s location, and their ability and willingness to travel and attend events, do signings and speaking engagements, etc., consider fragmenting out relevant Bookseller and Librarian member types on NetGalley. You can easily sort the Members with Access page to this effect by clicking the little up/down arrow next to the ‘Member Type’ column. Make a dedicated outreach effort to open the door to conversation about opportunities for appearances and other collaborations.

Include helpful info in your follow ups. When following up with NetGalley members — especially Librarians and Booksellers — remember that it is essential that you include ISBN, publisher/publication date, and sales/distribution (i.e. how they can order the book) details in your pitch. Also: please don’t solely reference Amazon as the preferred retailer for purchases! As a general rule of thumb in any pitch you’re sending out, anywhere you have an Amazon link should also have Barnes & Noble and IndieBound links. 

Keep track of the NetGalley contacts who leave passionately positive reviews While it’s something of a Golden Rule to not engage with or try to debate negative reviews (!!!), we have seen many benefits come from corresponding with NetGalley’s highly engaged, book-loving community of readers who have really enjoyed titles we’ve been able to provide. Some follow ups you might consider conducting with positive NetGalley reviewers include encouraging review cross-posts to Amazon, B&N, and other online retail sites after the book has officially released, advising of any special deals or promos (a reader who absolutely loved a book may be inclined to share news of a deal with their network), offering to send a special signed final copy of the book as a thank-you, establishing that they want to be on the ARC pitch list for the next book in the series, and more. This is as much about building relationships as it is about building visibility for your book! Which brings me to our next and final resolution…

Be gracious, be kind, be generous, and always try to give more than you get. In every area of life, it’s so important to recognize and appreciate that everyone is doing their best and while things aren’t always going to work out exactly the way you’ve planned for or anticipated, you’ll get a lot farther and feel a lot better by treating others with respect and kindness, and being generous of spirit wherever possible. Not everyone who requests and receives access to your book on NetGalley is going to be able to carve out the time in their busy life and TBR stack to read and review it — and that’s OK ! Not everyone who does so is going to love it (also completely OK, and to be expected)! Resolve to follow the ultimate Golden Rule when it comes to NetGalley etiquette and in any follow-ups or engagement you conduct, treat others as you would want to be treated. I will go so far as to guarantee that this, above all, will help to make 2020 your most productive, positive, and fun year on NetGalley yet.

And now for our own resolution! Now that we are using NetGalley Advanced, we have access to new tools and reports to help us look at our overall NetGalley usage. Firstly, we want to get more comfortable using all of our new capabilities, incorporating them into our NetGalley workflow. But beyond that, we want to carve out dedicated time every season to look at our overall NetGalley usage. We will make dedicated time to look at charts like the New Titles Created chart, the Types of Access Over Time chart, the Types of Access pie chart, and the Activity by Member Type chart to make sure that we are consistently uploading new titles, using all appropriate approval tools at our disposal, and engaging successfully with different member types.


Sarah Miniaci is a Senior Publicity Consultant at Smith Publicity – one of the leading book publicity agencies in the world, with offices in Toronto and New Jersey. Founded in 1997, Smith Publicity has worked with more than 3,000 authors and publishers, from New York Times bestsellers to first time, self-published authors.

To connect with Sarah or another publicist at Smith Publicity, contact them at www.SmithPublicity.com or find them on social media @SmithPublicity on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Check out her tips on pitching here.

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7 Popular Book Cover Design Trends

Darkly gothic and brightly illustrated book covers ruled 2019

Competition is tough to catch a reader’s eye as they browse at their local bookstore or library, or as they click through pages from an online retailer. A compelling cover can make a huge difference for drawing in new readers. 

In 2019, we saw book publishers lean into both moody, nature-inspired covers as well as bright and graphic covers for their books. To inspire you and your design team in 2020, we’ve rounded up some of the biggest book design trends we saw in 2019. 

Snakes! 

Snakes were top-of-mind for design teams in 2019. Snakes give these book covers an eerie sensibility, an association with forbidden knowledge, the natural world, and, in the case of The Undying, a medical edge.

Pastel Color Blocks

Pastel purples, oranges, yellows, greens, and blues drew attention when they appeared on bookshelves in 2019. Téa Obreht and Jacqueline Woodson hit bestseller lists with Inland and Red at the Bone, respectively. The pastel colors are bright and engaging without being overwhelming and the collage aesthetic gives the books an intimate feeling.  

Moody, Overgrown Vegetation

In 2019, books across genres looked more and more like gothic gardens.The lush, overgrown look could indicate a dense plot, full of secrets and mysteries like Tell No One or sprawling fantasies like The Ten Thousand Doors of January.

Repetitive Geometric Shapes

Some of the buzziest books of the year incorporated geometric repetition, including You Know You Want This, the debut short story collection from “Cat Person”  author Kristen Roupenian and Miriam Toews’ Women Talking, inspired by real-life events. The repetition of these shapes suggests behaviors repeating, shared experiences, and a hypnotic reading experience. 

Brightly  Illustrated Romances

Some of the biggest romance novels in 2018 had illustrated covers (The Kiss Quotient, The Proposal) and we still saw that trend on the rise through 2019. Compared to the traditional, photo-realistic covers of historical romances and mass market romances, these illustrated romances tend to appeal to readers who might not consider themselves romance readers. Berkley is at the center of this trend.

Cindy Hwang, Vice President and Editorial Director at Berkley told NetGalley Insights,  “We wanted to showcase the modern, fun quality of some of our new contemporary romances, and the illustrated approach really stood out for its versatility and vibrancy. We keep things fresh by playing with different ideas and colors to suit the story and characters. We’ve now branched out into illustrating historical romance covers, something that hadn’t been widely done in the genre, and we’re thrilled by the positive early response.

Overlapping Words and Design

Like the gothic garden cover trend, we saw book covers where the design was integrated with the text – under waves for The Water Dancer and licked by flames in Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe? In addition to making a strong visual impression, overlapping words and text lets readers know that they can expect an immersive reading experience.

Hair

Titles were shaved into, braided into, and intertwined with hair on book covers in 2019. How we style our hair is one way that we express our unique personalities. Hairstyles, colors, and textures also have deep cultural resonances – cornrows, locs, buzzcuts, long braids, and bobs, to name a few. Books like Queenie and Juliet Takes a Breath used hair in their cover art to signify intimacy and the mix of personal and cultural. 


Make sure to subscribe to the NetGalley Insights newsletter for weekly updates about trends, best practices, industry news, and interviews through 2020 and beyond. 

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NetGalley Marketing is Holistic

NetGalley’s new promotions support publishers’ goals throughout a book’s lifecycle, including backlist and audio 

At NetGalley we always strive to meet publishers where they need us. We love listening to our customers and learning from their ever-evolving needs–from secure digital galley files, to marketing promotions that reach targeted audiences, to a desire for more data and reporting, and even into new formats like audiobooks.

Publishers often adapt NetGalley’s tools for their unique goals and, based on trends we see across all of our clients, we work to expand the breadth of the NetGalley service. In 2020 you’ll notice greater emphasis on a holistic approach to promoting books, across formats and beyond the pub date. As we continue to expand our offerings, we’re emphasizing a more comprehensive approach to book promotions across format and lifecycle.

NetGalley was originally designed to predominantly support books in the pre-publication stage, but our tools and promotions are flexible enough to help publishers and authors achieve a variety of goals throughout a book’s lifecycle. Publishers are increasingly taking advantage of that flexibility! While 44% of titles on NetGalley in 2019 were archived within 1 week of their pub date, 29% were available on NetGalley for at least 2 months after pub. 

Lately, our marketing team has received more questions and interest from publishers about promoting their books to members in new ways–and during new times: close to on-sale to drive pre-orders specifically, or post-pub to reignite activity for backlist titles.

We’re supporting this pivot by launching brand-new marketing promotions in our 2020 Media Kit, flexible enough to encompass a variety of goals, timelines, and formats.

Book Club Kits

Book clubs are a crucial audience for publishers, as they are often interested in backlist titles (especially when available in paperback, or have a movie tie-in). We’ve heard from many clients that they wish to interact more directly with book clubs, but don’t always have the bandwidth to create marketing assets in-house.  That’s why we’re introducing custom Book Club Kits: created especially for your book and promoted directly to book club members in the NetGalley community.

Each bespoke kit is crafted by our editorial team to be unique and fitting for the particular book. Book Club Kits contain, at a minimum, an Author Interview, Discussion Guide, Readalikes, Printables (such as bookmarks, decorations, etc.). Possible additions include quizzes, food and drink recipes, playlists, and more. See page 17 in our Media Kit for more info.

Dashboard Spotlight

The NetGalley member Dashboard receives an average of over 36,000 unique impressions each week, offering huge exposure for your book! Publishers can now showcase their books on all member Dashboards with the new Dashboard Spotlight promotion. The CTA is up to you, so consider using this placement to drive pre-orders, promote retail offers, or to boost a backlist title. See page 5 in our Media Kit for more info.

Sponsored Social

Our community engagement team has built a loyal and engaged following of book advocates across social media platforms: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. We are now offering publishers the opportunity take advantage of NetGalley’s influence to promote your book in a relevant, valuable way to our social audience. 

Audio Excerpts

With the introduction of Audio Excerpts on NetGalley, there are many opportunities to showcase these clips to our community across the site. Members will see a new, additional Featured carousel on the main Find Titles landing page which will highlight books with Audio Excerpts–free for publishers! Our marketing team can also include the audio icon in NetGalley Newsletters and Category Spotlights for books with Audio Excerpts.

And this is just the beginning: by BookExpo 2020, we will support full audiobooks in addition to Audio Excerpts! We’re thrilled to help audio publishers benefit from early feedback from the NetGalley community, and we aren’t the only ones… NetGalley members are already excited! We asked, they answered: check out hundreds of comments on our Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram posts. 

As publishers start experimenting with these new promotions, we’ll be sharing their successes here on NetGalley Insights. Stay tuned!

If you’re looking for more detail about post-pub strategies, check out our Case Studies on NetGalley Insights. Jayne Allen shared how listing Black Girls Must Die Exhausted on NetGalley after its pub date actually improved its sales numbers. She said, “Allowing the book to be offered for sale during the NetGalley window worked best for me because it allowed NetGalley reviewers to post directly on the Amazon sales page as a consumer review…At first, I was concerned that being on NetGalley might somehow erode sales, but the simultaneous window actually served to increase sales and start Black Girls moving up the charts much more quickly.”

If you want to discuss your own campaigns, please email marketing@netgalley.com. Our dedicated marketing team would be happy to help you strategize and find the right plan for your timing, budget, and goals. 

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The Grand Workflow

The lifecycle of a book, taking advantage of Firebrand and NetGalley

In every department in a publishing house, teams are working as hard as they can to publish books that they believe in. But sometimes we can get lost in the day-to-day and lose sight of the big picture. It can be hard to connect your daily work to the work your colleagues are doing, and to see yourselves as fitting into the same overall efforts. 

To refocus our attention on the big picture, Director of Sales and Education at Firebrand Joshua Tallent and VP of Business Growth and Engagement at NetGalley Kristina Radke gave a presentation at the Firebrand Odd Year Community Conference that demonstrates an overall workflow for a book through various Firebrand services, including NetGalley.

The goal of this workflow is to demonstrate departmental interconnectedness; how acquisitions, production, and promotion are linked — how one informs the other.

Tallent told the audience that he sees clients come to NetGalley and Firebrand to solve specific problems: To help them send metadata more effectively, to get more control over printing specs, to track P&Ls, to build pre-publication buzz. And while NetGalley and Firebrand can certainly provide tools and processes to fix these pain points, focusing on the individual issues can be limiting. 

“I’ve seen many clients lose the institutional awareness over time about the many ways we can help them solve new problems. That has led to companies looking at other solutions, not even knowing that the software they’re already using can do what they need.” 

Using Simon & Schuster imprint Gallery Books’s The Book Charmer by Karen Hawkins, Radke and Tallent showed how a title might move through Firebrand and NetGalley services most effectively, from acquisition through publication, and even rejuvenate the backlist. Gallery used a number of these tools in their actual launch of The Book Charmer, and graciously allowed us to use their book to demonstrate how all of the Firebrand services can link together. This example includes recommended use of the Firebrand and NetGalley tools.

During the Acquisition phase of a project, Title Management provides publishers with robust tracking functionality, helping them manage submissions and ideas and plan for each project’s success. Title Management can help with budget planning utilizing a powerful Profit & Loss system and production planning templates.

For The Book Charmer, the Gallery team could create contracts and contract templates within Title Management and, once the acquisition was complete, use Title Management to start collecting metadata and assigning tasks across various teams. Getting the details right in Title Management is critical to everything that follows!

Around 5-6 months in advance of pub date, the team could send initial metadata feeds through Eloquence on Demand

Before the data was sent, Eloquence Verification ensured that the metadata met industry requirements. These metadata feeds ensure that the details consumers see about the book are consistent and correct.

Once the book was a few months away from its pub date, Gallery Books made it active on NetGalley, using metadata sent through Eloquence on Demand. This made title setup a breeze. NetGalley was used to garner early reviews and buzz, and generally raise the visibility of the book before it went on sale. Gallery Books could add NetGalley as a Marketing Campaign in Title Management, too, allowing them to keep track of this among the other efforts they were putting forth for this book.

Once the book was live in NetGalley, Gallery Books received requests and feedback, plus early data. To get the most out of NetGalley, Gallery Books used targeted marketing to drive requests. They made particular efforts to target librarians and booksellers through inclusion in the ABA Digital Whitebox and the Librarian newsletter. 

The Gallery team used consumer-facing platform, BookishFirst, to entice avid readers with a First Look at The Book Charmer, building pre-publication excitement through the use of a giveaway and gaining access to in-depth reporting through BookishFirst.

Through the launch process, the Gallery team updated their metadata and their keywords in Title Management, ensuring that the feedback they were receiving through NetGalley and Bookish First was informing the marketing copy. 

Both Firebrand’s Keywords service and the NetGalley Advanced Word Cloud allow them to add keywords that repeatedly pop up in reviews on NetGalley and beyond.  These keywords are important to discoverability across all retailer platforms, and using real audience-generated words ensures they’re as effective as possible.

At the same time as publicity and marketing teams were promoting The Book Charmer on NetGalley and BookishFirst, feeding the data they learned back into metadata, the production team was hard at work. Using Title Management, they managed printing specs, planned production costs, and handled inventory management, sending out purchase orders to their printer—all very critical details that affect the finished product and the publisher’s bottom line.

As the ebook file approached completion, the production team could load the file into FlightDeck through the Title Management interface. FlightDeck lets publishers check for any lingering issues with their ebook files before they send them to retail partners for fulfillment. 

As The Book Charmer grew closer to its pub date, the Gallery team could continue to track marketing promotions, including social media campaigns and printed promotional postcards, within Title Management. They kept track of tasks, specs, and design details.

Once The Book Charmer hit its pub date, the Gallery team could use the contact information they had gathered in the pre-pub phase from NetGalley and BookishFirst to re-engage their audiences on those platforms. Letting people know that the book they reviewed is now on sale is a great way to get these early fans talking about the book and to boost sales and reviews.

Plus, in addition to using Eloquence on Demand to distribute their metadata, Gallery could take advantage of Eloquence on Alert to track changes happening to their titles across retailer sites, including alerts if cover images don’t match across different retailers, if list prices or sale prices change, if a title’s sales rank increases, if the number of reviews or star rankings change, or if they lose their buy button to a third party seller on Amazon.

Through the journey from pub date to the backlist, the Gallery team can continue to update The Book Charmer’s metadata and feed it out to retailers, ensuring that the data is always relevant. They can create new or updated Keywords to see how that might impact sales for a backlist title, and test updated EPUB files in FlightDeck. They can use Express Purchase Orders within Title Management to create a single purchase order for an entire list of reprints. They can re-activate its NetGalley listing for a limited time when they publish a sequel. 

Every tool can be used in different parts of the publishing process, and the insights gathered in each stage and through each tool can be used to inform the others. 

If you have any questions about how to best streamline your NetGalley or Firebrand workflow – how to keep a wide perspective – please reach out to concierge@netgalley.com or joshua@firebrandtech.com

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5 Ways to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile

Tips to forge stronger connections on LinkedIn from the B2B Institute

On Tuesday, November 12, Women’s Media Group descended upon the LinkedIn offices for a brown bag lunch with Afiya Addison, Education Lead at the B2B Institute.

Addison works with both individuals and companies to help them get the most out of LinkedIn and shared some of her best practices with the members and guests of Women’s Media Group. And we’re happy to pass along a few of her tips!

Find the right photo

If you don’t currently have a photo associated with your LinkedIn, now is the time to change that! According to Addison, LinkedIn members with photos on their profile receive 9x more connection requests, 21x more profile views, and 36x more messages. And for everyone wondering exactly what kind of photo they should be using, it depends on your industry and your role. An investment banker will need to present a very different kind of professional image than a freelance children’s book illustrator. It also depends on your role. If your work is creative or visual in nature, let that shine through in your photo. And, finally, it depends on the kind of company that you work for or want to work for. Do you work for a fully remote tech company or a traditional corporation with over 100 years of storied history? Match the tone of your photo to the tone of the company you work for (or are hoping to work for).

If you’re not sure exactly what kind of photo is best for your industry or your position, you can always search for other people in your same industry or in your same role on LinkedIn to see how they are presenting themselves. 

Profile photos should show the human behind the resume. Use discretion, but don’t be afraid to be a bit playful. And, of course, make sure it actually looks like you!

Tell your story

LinkedIn allows you to fill in a brief “About” section in your profile. Second only to having a picture in your profile, Addison told the WMG audience that this section is the most important part of your profile. It is your opportunity to weave together your experience and interests into a coherent narrative; an elevator pitch for yourself. It’s where you can show off your individuality. If you’re actively searching for a new job or looking to change industries, the About section is the place to say so. And, especially important for the publishing industry, it’s where you prove your writing chops. Can you condense your whole work experience – plus indicate how you want to grow – into a handful of sentences?

Addison suggested a length of 1-2 short paragraphs and using the STAR format: Situation, Task, Action, Result. Be sure to hit what industries you’ve worked in (Situation), your responsibilities in those industries (Task), how you get your work accomplished (Action), and your successes (Result). She recommended including relevant metrics for your roles. For example, if you worked on the publicity team for 10+ bestsellers in the past 2 years, if you are a publishing industry veteran with over 15 years of experience, if you exceeded your growth goals for 5 consecutive quarters, etc. She did, however, note that while many industries value years of experience, ageism in the workplace is real and advised discretion when talking about how many years you’ve been in a field.  

Make it media rich

There are several opportunities within a LinkedIn profile to add media like photos, videos, articles, or your portfolio. After encouraging the audience to add in a profile photo, Addison also recommended adding in any other relevant links to make your profile more engaging and to give anyone looking at it a fuller picture of your work. This is most intuitive for professionals whose work is already visual; graphic designers, illustrators, etc. But, Addison reminded the audience that all kinds of professionals have materials that they can – and should! – add to their LinkedIn profile. For example, articles you’ve written, links to presentations you’ve given, big media coverage that you earned for a project, and more.

If you are sharing articles or writing articles on LinkedIn, include images or videos when applicable.

Give endorsements and recommendations to get them

LinkedIn connections can endorse one another for relevant skills, plus provide written recommendations that are available on their profile. Recommendations and endorsements are great ways to demonstrate that, not only do you think you’re a whiz at developing strategic partnerships, for example, but your peers and colleagues think so, too. The best way to encourage your contacts to endorse you or give you a recommendation is to first endorse or recommend them. Addison suggested first making your recommendation or endorsement for a contact, then reaching out to them to ask if they would be willing to do the same for you. She told the audience not to be shy about asking colleagues to cover specific topics or skills in a recommendation, especially if they are in a more senior position.

But, you’ll need to keep these skill endorsements fresh. Your skillset when you first got a LinkedIn account might have changed as your career has grown and changed. You’ll want these endorsements to reflect your current skills. Addison recommended going through your LinkedIn connections every six months or so to endorse them for the most relevant skills to their current positions and asking them to do the same for you.

Share your voice, build your audience

LinkedIn is a powerful platform for building your voice as a thought leader in your chosen field. The simplest way to start sharing your perspective on LinkedIn is to share articles, links, or quotes on your profile as status updates. But, whenever you do post content you find elsewhere, make sure that you’re making it clear to your followers exactly why you’re posting it. Frame any shared quote, or article, or tip with your own viewpoint and your own voice so that everything you share becomes a part of your own branding on the site. The other option for sharing your opinions and building an audience on LinkedIn is through their in-site publishing platform. You can publish an article on LinkedIn directly, which will then be promoted to your followers as an update, rather than just as an item in their newsfeed if they happen to be scrolling. These articles are opportunities for you to reflect more deeply on something you’re interested in. For example, Addison wrote an article called “Silent Reflection” about losing her voice. It was more personal than professional, but positioned her as someone who thinks deeply about communication, accessibility, and interpersonal skills needed to succeed at work.

Use your posts to start conversations – if someone comments, respond! This is how you demonstrate that you are engaged in a conversation and invested in moving discussions forward. Engaging actively in the comments on posts – yours or others – creates an opportunity for reciprocity between you and whoever you are in communication with.

Use hashtags to reach a broader audience. Hashtagging is still relatively new on the platform, so some of the more general hashtags (#marketing, #professionaldevelopment, etc.) are able to broaden your reach without getting entirely lost in the shuffle. Once you’ve started to share content on your profile, start to think about scheduling it so that your followers know when to expect regular updates from you. For example, every Tuesday afternoon. It’s best to stay away from posting on Fridays, but a surprising number of people are active on LinkedIn during the weekend, so feel free to post on Saturday or Sunday! The whole audience was surprised to learn that LinkedIn is not just for Monday-Friday, but Addison explained that because so many people are using LinkedIn to find a new job, they might not want to be on it while at their current job.

Bonus tips

  • Check in on your security preferences in case you want to be able to look at other members’ profiles without them being notified. Check this by going to your Account, then Privacy, then How Others See Your LinkedIn Activity.
  • Unless you are in a very public-facing role or give lots of workshops or talks where you are meeting new people and inviting them to connect with you, Addison recommends keeping your LinkedIn contacts just to people you’ve actually met or corresponded with.
  • Include your Volunteer experience. It’s a great way to show who you are holistically. Plus, you might find that you share non-career interests with a hiring manager or recruiter.  
  • Use the first person in your profile. Third person tends to read as awkward and too formal for the platform.

Learn more about Women’s Media Group here, and check out our recap of their Beyond the Book panel last spring.

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