In March and April, the NetGalley team attended the Audio Publishers Association Conference (APAC), London Book Fair, Festival des Livres Paris (Paris Book Festival), Leipziger Buchmesse (Leipzig Book Fair), and the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) annual meeting. This month (May), we—along with our Firebrand Group colleagues—look forward to the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) Publishing University, Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) Leadership Summit, and Publishers Weekly U.S. Book Show. Scroll to the end of this article to set up a meeting with our teams!
NetGalley and other Firebrand Group team members at the London Book Fiar
London Book Fair (LBF):
London Book Fair may be known for its International Rights Centre, but it’s safe to say that the whole conference was buzzing with energy, from the Sustainability Lounge to the Technology Theatre (which was just a few feet away from our booth). The Fair was busier than in 2022, with a generally positive outlook and mood among attendees.
It was exciting to hear about our clients’ efforts to engage with new and diverse audiences. Influencer campaigns were at the top of the list, with publishers sharing more about the ways they are identifying influencers who would make good partners. We heard about influencer databases some marketers are tapping into, as well as a more manual approach via active engagement in the social media spaces where these influencers live. Publishers are leaning into more social engagement using CTAs that drive to their social channels, and are creating and incorporating more media (audio and video) that plugs nicely into these platforms.
At a high level, we had conversations about tracking the full customer journey. Identifying where a reader is first engaged, and following them through the path to purchase is a top priority for the heads of marketing and communications across many of the large publishers. As we learned in the “Role of Technology in Publishing” session, data is the bedrock of publishing today. NetGalley’s data, especially for pre-pub titles, continues to be an important part of that journey—from initial discovery to request, from download to review, and even pre-order or buy now.**
The panelists emphasized the importance of gathering, analyzing, and using data, while pointing out the need to make that data available to all divisions and departments. But making it available isn’t enough—they stressed that it is equally important to help teams develop a better understanding of how data can be used to maximize effective strategies. We’re always happy to talk about data, so let us know if you’d like to hear more about your NetGalley reports.
The panel also discussed the potential opportunities and risks of AI in publishing, including optimizing content for specific audiences, proof-reading, fact-checking, translation, and even cross-referencing international rights. Some of the publishers we spoke to told us of their recent experiments with AI, testing its limits to write marketing copy, or even whole books, with an eye to understanding its limitations. In all cases, they felt secure that AI is not coming for anyone’s jobs (yet).
Number of publishers we sat down with during LBF: 14
Thank you to the nearly 60 publishers we’ve met with at these spring conferences! It’s always a pleasure to speak with the passionate members of our client community, and we’ve been inspired by our conversations.
Conference season is in full swing in a way we haven’t seen since 2019! It’s been rejuvenating to reconnect with so many of our colleagues and partners in the industry over coffee, tea, and/or something a little stronger. Post-show happy hours haven’t gone anywhere, and we’re glad to toast the return of the trade shows.
In March and April, the NetGalley team attended the Audio Publishers Association Conference (APAC), London Book Fair, Festival des Livres Paris (Paris Book Festival), Leipziger Buchmesse (Leipzig Book Fair), and the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) annual meeting. This month (May), we—along with our Firebrand Group colleagues—look forward to the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) Publishing University, Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) Leadership Summit, and Publishers Weekly U.S. Book Show. Scroll to the end of this article to set up a meeting with our teams!
What we learned in April
In general, AI was the hot topic in sessions across the industry. As with the evolution of digital-reading, publishers are viewing AI with eyes wide open to the threats that it could present, while also acknowledging the potential for it to revolutionize our work. Conversations on how to protect authors’ rights, address copyright for works generated by AI, and ensure that human creativity sits at the forefront of book creation are side-by-side with excitement to tap into AI’s potential to reduce tedious work and create more opportunities for that creativity to thrive.
Audio Publishers Association Conference (APAC):
The Audio Publishers Association offers publishers and narrators an amazing opportunity to network, learn from industry experts in the audio space, and share insights and resources. For NetGalley, this event was a welcome chance to hear directly from our clients who are using NetGalley to promote audiobooks.
Publishers told us that they are thrilled to use NetGalley to expand their reach into new communities, and/or offer the audio format to booksellers and librarians who are using audio to more quickly power through their TBR list. Others emphasized they are looking to reach more traditional media contacts. In the “Meetthe Press”session, Tom Beer (Editor-in-Chief, Kirkus Reviews) acknowledged that they have been accepting digital formats for review since 2020, including via widgets from NetGalley.* According to Beer, the audiobook format is relatively new to Kirkus. Each month their audio contributors write a column, centered on a theme, that incorporates three audiobook titles. These columns are less “book review” and more focused on the given topic, and how the audio format augments the story.
All of the panelists (Kirkus, Audiofile Magazine, and Audible) agreed that additional media assets are very welcome from publishers. A photo from the studio, a carefully chosen sound byte, interview with the author (or between the author and the narrator) are all dynamic and interesting assets they may use outside of a review. They’re always looking for content to share, so the more you provide the more likely it is they will share it widely! Audio excerpts in NetGalley are also a great way to generate interest in a title, adding them to either the digital or audio format.
Publishers confirmed audiobook workflows continue to be challenging. Many of the clients we spoke with have small teams who are managing everything from production to marketing. They are driving conversations internally at their companies about how to streamline their efforts to finalize files earlier, test AI voices without threatening narrators, deliver content to the right early audiences, and continue to champion the audiobook format. If you’re having similar internal conversations and would like to talk more about how NetGalley can help you achieve any of these goals, please reach out. We’re happy to provide data or case studies, and share strategies we’ve seen work.
Number of publishers we sat down with during APAC: 11
*The NetGalley widget is an auto-approved link that can be used to invite media and journalists to access a book right away. Here’s more information about the NetGalley widget.
Thank you to the nearly 60 publishers we’ve met with at these conferences! It’s always a pleasure to speak with the passionate members of our client community, and we’ve been inspired by our conversations.
VP of Podcasting at Macmillan Kathy Doyle shares an inside look
2019 marked a watershed moment for spoken-word audio. For the first time ever, more than 50% of the U.S. population reported listening to podcasts and 50% reported listening to audiobooks*. Macmillan has spent years developing a robust podcast network to build and then capture that interest in audio content. On their podcast network Macmillan Podcasts they feature podcasts hosted by their authors like Astro Poets, companion podcasts to books like The Girls: Find Sadie, or as completely unique content like Steal the Stars.
That’s why we asked Kathy Doyle, VP of Podcasting at Macmillan, to share her perspective on audio in publishing. She describes Macmillan’s podcasting content strategy – how they design podcasts to best support their authors as well as the collaborative process that brings those podcasts to life. She pulls back the curtain on how Macmillan works with distribution platforms, as well as how she and her team think about creating mutually beneficial advertising relationships.
Plus, whether indie publishers or self-published authors should get in the podcasting game, and what big changes in the industry she’s excited to see in 2020.
What is your history with audio and podcasting?
I joined Macmillan at the end of 2011. I was hired as the director of what was already a podcasting network at that time – called Quick and Dirty Tips. QDT had already been around for 3 or 4 years by the time I joined, but it was a dual platform. It had this major website, which it still has today, and it had a podcasting arm. I was hired to run the collective – the entire network. I have run websites almost my entire career. I started in digital at the Wall Street Journal back when the internet was emerging as a format and already had some familiarity with podcasting in 2011, so I was hired by Mary Beth Roche to take on the entire business unit as its director.
Tell about your role in developing audio strategy at Macmillan
I’m primarily responsible for the podcast networks. We now have two networks, [one of which is] QDT. From QDT we learned a lot about format and what we were finding was that we were trying to put authors of all types into that “quick and dirty” format of providing actionable, interesting information in 8 mins or less. We were finding that we had an opportunity because podcasting was starting to emerge as a bigger, bolder format for media consumption. We had the opportunity to start a second network, which we called Macmillan Podcasts. That really enabled us to strategically use authors of all types from some of the best imprints in the world – Henry Holt, St. Martin’s Press, Flatiron Books – and allow those authors to come onto the platform. We worked with them to develop various types of programming, which was not as contained as the QDT model. We’ve been able to do some fiction, some audio drama, we’ve done a lot of interview format. We’ve really expanded our capabilities from a strategic standpoint on the podcasting side.
What do you think about the relationship between podcasts and audiobooks? Are you both competing for the same ear time?
There’s definitely some crossover. APA came out with a study earlier this year that said 55% of people who had listened to an audiobook have also listened to podcasts. We’ve just seen an absolute explosion in audio as a form of consumption for media. It’s shifting paradigms. It’s really powerful. We don’t feel as though it’s competitive in nature at all. It’s strategic for us. We used to say that podcasts were audiobooks-lite — they were for someone who wanted to dabble in the format or hadn’t listened to spoken word audio before and this gave them a free and somewhat frictionless way to dabble in that media. But I think what we’re seeing is that people who want information via audio want all kinds of information via audio whether it’s short format or long format, book or podcast. Whether it’s because they’re driving or they’re exercising or making dinner, whatever it is, they can do other things while they’re consuming spoken word audio.
People who want information via audio want all kinds of information via audio whether it’s short format or long format, book or podcast
So you’re seeing this audio boom as a result of multi-tasking from the listener standpoint?
It can be. It’s not always. I mean, some people are very content to just listen and absorb the content the way they would if they were nose-deep in a book. I can just speak to the fact that we see a lot of research and hear from our listeners very specifically about how they listen to podcasts and audiobooks — what they’re doing at the time of consumption. I had an Uber driver in L.A. say something to me that I hear all the time, “I listen to podcasts to learn. I don’t always listen to podcasts when I’m in the gym. I want music to give me motivation, but when I’m doing housework or when I’m driving my Uber and I don’t have a patron in the car, I want to learn. And that’s when I turn to podcasting.” I hear that all the time.
Let’s turn to Macmillan podcasting specifically. Macmillan Podcasts are divided into two groups – Bold Voices and Addictive Stories. Tell me more about how you developed those two areas of focus.
It definitely happened organically. What happened was we found that we were being approached by editors, we were identifying talent on our own, and it just felt like the right way to start the process early on of developing a catalog — a podcast catalog — in ways that we could define categories.
The Bold Voices really are author-hosted shows where there’s someone with authority — who has something to say — typically nonfiction. All the QDT shows fall into that format to some extent. We have shows like I Love You, But I Hate Your Politics which is [hosted by] Jeanne Safer who wrote a book about how to navigate politically troubled times when you have a partner, a colleague, a family member who you don’t see eye to eye with.
The Addictive Stories, that’s the very elusive driveway moment we’re all looking for. [A driveway moment describes audio that keeps you in your car to listen, even after you’ve arrived at your destination.]
Those are stories that capture you emotionally and you don’t want to let go. So that’s Steal the Stars, our audio drama which we described as Arrival meets Ocean’s Eleven. It had everything – it had heist, it had romance, it had crime, it had all kinds of elements that comprised a very engaging, richly entertaining story that you wanted to binge. But That’s Another Story is our narrative book podcast hosted by Will Schwalbe who is an executive here and also a bestselling author. He talks to people in a very powerful way about a book that changed their life. He’s spoken to everyone from Jodi Foster to Min Jin Lee. he just had the hilarious macmillan author Gary Janetti.
There’s a variety of things that we can do. Podcasting is a deeply engaged medium, so we get a lot of listener feedback. We have voice mailboxes set up for every show where people can call in and leave feedback or, in the case of some of the Bold Voices shows or QDT shows, leave a comment or question. We very carefully monitor ratings and reviews, we can learn a lot there. We’ve done some work with little focus groups where we bring people together and do listening parties to see what kind of reaction we get. We’ll get some from our ad broker; that helps give us demographic and other details about the listeners. The other thing we can do is on the backend of some of the distributor platforms, we can actually see things like what we call retention. If you have a 40 minute episode and you see that 60% or higher are dropping off after 20 minutes, [you can learn] about what listeners are staying tuned for, what adjustments we might need to make to the format or the approach to better serve the listening community. The platforms do not have the same consistent information from platform to platform but we sort of know what elements we want to look for.
If you have a 40 minute episode and you see that 60% or higher are dropping off after 20 minutes, [you can learn] about what listeners are staying tuned for
What factors are you keeping in mind when developing a new podcast?
There’s still this perception that I think is shifting as competition increases and the industry learns more about podcasting, but there’s definitely this perception that it’s really easy to pull off a podcast. And it is incredibly difficult and challenging work. It takes a lot of different people in the mix. We look at talent holistically. We want to make sure that we’re making choices that serve our publishers, that serve our talent, that serve the listening community for our podcasts. It’s all of those things. We get together with potential talent, we talk about an arc or a creative approach to the show. Then, we’ll do a creative brief where we talk about who the audience is just like a book – what are the comps that are out there that we can use as comparisons for how the show might do or the kind of approach we might take? We talk about the creative process, we talk about the workflow and make sure everybody’s on the same page. We talk about the schedule, which is really important. We talk about the business arrangement, which is also really important. We sort of work all that through and then we might do a pilot or a trailer or talk to our distributors about relationships for the show. It’s a really elongated process. It doesn’t happen overnight and it’s very collaborative.
Who makes up the team that brings a podcast together?
One of the best things about working at Macmillan is how incredibly collaborative we are. Everyone from the marketers to the publicists to the editors, we’re all involved in the decision-making process. This is an organization that cares deeply about its authors and takes very good care of their authors. so we want to make sure that we’re making the best possible decisions both for our organization and for the talent.
We will work with the editor to develop the relationship with the author or the host. When we get ready to launch the podcast, we’ll work with the marketer and the publicist from the imprint to make sure we’re all in sync in terms of who we’re pitching to, what kind of work we’re going to do on the marketing side. And then we just make sure that the editors get to listen to stuff before it goes out. We stay in very close touch throughout the entire process. Most communication happens up front but it is a true collaborative effort from start to finish.
Are you proactively approaching talent?
It’s all over the place. We do spend some time identifying talent. We [also] work within our imprints to try and find talent who would make good podcast hosts or guests. On the QDT side we will often bring up an emerging talent who is starting to grow a platform. We will work with them to grow their podcast and then work to help them secure a book.
What makes for a good podcast host?
I think it has to be someone who listens to podcasts — someone who embraces and understands the medium and what the pros and cons of the medium are. I think it’s someone who has to be willing to work and not just sit in a studio and read a script that they just wrote. For us, it’s about the collaborative nature of podcasting, and making sure that everyone is in tune and in sync with the goals and the objectives that we work toward in terms of developing and launching a podcast.
[For new hosts] we will do some training. We had a conversation this morning about one of the QDT hosts who was interrupting a guest with “uh huh” and making auditory affirmations as you would in a normal conversation. In podcasting we tell our hosts, “Tell your guest up front that you won’t be acknowledging them because you might not be in the same room.” If it’s a Skype interview or done via the studio, they can’t always see the person they’re communicating with. So it feels very natural to want to say “uh huh” or “yes, I agree” but you’re interrupting the flow of your guest’s statement in a way that’s going to make it difficult for the producer to put it out there as great-quality content.
That’s just one kind of small example but I think people who aren’t used to working in an audio format definitely need to be trained and educated on what suits the format best in terms of developing and creating and releasing the best possible experience for the listener — the highest quality for the listener.
We have such incredible guests — a lot of them are authors also, sometimes they’re outside experts. [Hosts] get involved in these really deep, interesting, engaging conversations and they’re so excited about the content they’re getting they forget that they have to be mindful of the format and the experience.
What about distribution? Which platforms do you use, and what benefits do you see from distributing your podcasts on multiple platforms?
I would say one of the advantages we bring to the table is our longevity because we’ve been podcasting for over a decade, we have great relationships with the long-standing distributors like Stitchers, Apple Podcasts and the new players that have come into the space. We’ve worked hard to develop those relationships over time — Spotify, Pandora, iHeart. We have great relationships with all of those teams. We’re not one-off shows just looking to boost our downloads. We are looking to build sustainable, long-term relationships with these partners.
It’s a two way street. Every conversation we have with our partners… we will not get off that call or leave that meeting without saying “How can we better serve you as well?”
One of the distributors came in recently with some back-end features and functionality that they wanted to test. They wanted to get our opinion; how would we use this data and how would we use these features. So our team got together in a conference room and we went through it with them step by step and we provided them with feedback about how we would use those features. It’s a two way street. Every conversation we have with our partners, we always make an ask — we might be asking for something whether it’s a promotion or for them to entertain a pitch, but we will not get off that call or leave that meeting without saying “How can we better serve you as well?”
What about podcast advertising? How is advertising on the medium changing?
There are two different camps on the ad side. There are branded campaigns which are general awareness and brand lift, so there’s nothing specific the listener has to do except retain that information the next time they’re in the drug store and need to buy moisturizer. There’s also what we call direct response which is really what grew the industry. The Squarespaces and the Mailchimps — they built this space for many podcasters.
Direct response is really labor intensive on our end because we have to make sure the talking points are correct, we have to make sure the promo code works, we have to make sure the URL works. A lot of the times [a promo code will be] mailchimp.com/grammar. Well we have to make sure that page exists before we have our host record that ad and put it out in the feed because we’re protecting our listeners. We want to make sure the ads are as accurate and as compelling and as engaging as the rest of the content. It’s hard work to deliver an ad well and sound genuine.
We want to make sure the ads are as accurate and as compelling and as engaging as the rest of the content. It’s hard work to deliver an ad well and sound genuine.
We also have requirements. A lot of times we turn away from advertisers if our host can’t support their product in a way that is genuine and viable and will make for a good ad read. I hear a lot of hosts on other shows — you can tell they just have the ad points in front of them and they’re literally just reading them with no emphasis with no personal experience with no integrity. We strive to make sure that doesn’t happen. As a result we leave some money on the table. If you’re a big listener, you know.
Not everyone obviously has the capacity of Macmillan or a big publisher to develop such a robust audio strategy. Do you recommend that indie presses or indie authors get in the game of podcasting or audio content?
There’s a lot of debate in the industry right now. I was just on a panel at Digital Hollywood and this was one of the premises of the panel – Do you need a network? Networks bring a lot of great support. They bring resources, they bring manpower, they bring history and experience. All of that said, it’s very competitive.
But if you are someone who has a story to tell, who has an experience to share, who has an expertise that will benefit, I’m all for developing an independent podcast. There are incredible resources out there to teach you how to do just that and the cost point — there’s very little barrier to entry. You need to buy a microphone; you need to buy some software. People can do it independently and some of the best and longest-running podcasts out there started out this way. It’s not as easy as it used to be to make that success happen. But, it’s also a great way to train and to test yourself on the medium before you have a big team behind you. You can try things out on your own that you wouldn’t be able to do if you were a part of a distribution platform or a big network. And I’m really impressed with some of the companies and people in the industry who have come forward to develop incredible training resources for anyone who independently wants to start a podcast. It is doable.
So it sounds like what you’re saying with the indies is that not everyone needs a podcast, but if you feel strongly that you have a unique perspective that fits in audio, and you have the bandwidth, you should learn how to do this and do it right.
Write it down, develop a plan — a full-blown plan that includes what you’d cover in the first 5-6 episodes. A plan that covers the format of the episode, how long you want them to be, how many voices will there be? Will it be just you behind a microphone or will you be having guests? you really need to think through strategically. Treat each episode as if it’s a separate project. Intertwined, but a separate project. And figure out how you want to approach those episodes so that you’re developing a curated collection of your best work.
Tip for indie authors and publishers: Treat each episode as if it’s a separate project. Intertwined, but a separate project. And figure out how you want to approach those episodes so that you’re developing a curated collection of your best work
What new developments are you excited for in audio?
Some of the platforms are developing really interesting social sharing and other kinds of features. Spotify, for example, has developed customized playlists which can be done in a variety of different ways. You can actually integrate a playlist that has music and podcast episodes and then you can share it to your audience. That’s really powerful. We’ve been having a lot of fun with that. QDT has so much great New Year, New You content, so we’ll be developing a variety of playlists that will tackle that topic in ways that nobody else can.
The other thing that I’m watching closely is data attribution. You often hear podcasting referred to as the wild west, which it’s not anymore.That may have been true five years ago but now I think it’s really grown up a lot. Ensuring that we are all reporting our listens accurately is critically important because we all want to monetize with advertisers and they need to be able to trust the data they are getting from us. The Interactive Advisory Bureau has gotten involved. They have developed standards and compliance [for podcasting]. We are compliant on the platforms that we’re on, but not all podcasters and not all platforms are yet compliant with these standards. [We want to be sure] that 500k downloads on this platform is the same as 500k downloads on that platform. There were a lot of discrepancies in the data. So that’s all being resolved and I think 2020 will be a big year in terms of seeing that into fruition.
Ensuring that we are all reporting our listens accurately is critically important because we all want to monetize with advertisers and they need to be able to trust the data they are getting from us
As people have shifted to the compliant standards, and as the hosting platforms that these podcasts reside on have made changes on their backend to bring those systems up to full compliance, people have seen shifts in their download numbers. Sometimes quite dramatic! Consistency across the board is key and I think we’ll see that by the end of 2020.
One of the challenges on the content side is that of the top 200 podcasts on the Apple platform, 32% are now hosted by major celebrities or influencers. That’s huge. And it makes it really hard for the rest of us. That trend will continue – big name celebrities getting into the space. I think we’re going to see continued consolidation of some of the content providers as it makes sense for businesses to evolve and join forces together. We just saw Wondery and NBC strike a joint partnership. A year or two years ago, [a big trend] was VC money entering the space. That’s what everyone was following really closely. Now I think that’s shifting a little bit towards other kinds of partnerships.
In terms of genres, there’s opportunity and room for YA content. That’s changing a little bit, but there’s still opportunity there. And travel.
What podcasts are you listening to?
I love Dolly Parton’s America. It’s a brilliant new podcast that’s been getting a lot of buzz. I’ve also been listening to a show called The City which is from Wondery. This season focuses on the city of Reno and some aging strip clubs that are causing some issues with the city. I’ve only listened to one episode but it’s really interesting and I will definitely be continuing. There’s another season ofthe Jet Propulsion Lab’s podcast. My son is in aerospace so I follow that closely. And I’ve just become addicted to the daily news shows. I listen to Up First from NPR and I listen to The Daily religiously. I find that especially because I have a long commute those are great ways to stay informed.
At least two distribution platforms now have daily drive playlists that they are curating for listeners based on their listening habits. A lot of our shows are falling into those categories as well. The recognition that podcasting can be used as a means of entertainment and information for your full commute end to end is really becoming reality.
Kathy Doyle is the Vice President of Podcasts for Macmillan Publishers.
She runs the Macmillan Podcast Network, which produces popular podcasts
with the organization’s bestselling authors and book imprints. Current
podcasts range from sci-fi and true crime to literature and self-help.
She also oversees one of Macmillan’s largest digital networks, Quick and
Dirty Tips. QDT produces a dozen weekly award-winning audio podcasts
hosted by subject matter experts on a wide range of topics. Podcasts
include the long-running Grammar Girl and Savvy Psychologist. The
network has a large web presence, too, which features content from the
podcast hosts and a large variety of Macmillan authors.
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 extremelytelling! 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.
This year on NetGalley Insights, we’ve shared strategies, ideas, and best practices from across the industry. We’re honored to highlight the work of our industry partners, authors, and publishers of all sizes. Here are a few of the tips we’re still thinking about, and hope that you’ll keep in mind through 2020 and beyond.
If there’s ever a unique campaign, promotion, or industry perspective that you’d like to share with us and our audience, please let us know! Email us at insights@netgalley.com.
Janna Morishima, publishing strategist and literary agent, has been working with manga artist Misako Rocks! to launch Bounce Back! She suggests that traditional publishing and self-publishing should be looking at each other for inspiration.
“I think the biggest thing that traditional publishers can learn from self-publishers is the importance of connecting directly with your audience rather than relying on intermediaries to sell the book. The publishing ecosystem is complex, so there are always going to be intermediaries — reviewers and booksellers and librarians, etc. — but now it’s possible to build strong relationships both with those influencers and your actual readers. What I think self-publishers can learn from traditional publishing is the importance of having a well-rounded team contribute to the final book. All writers need editors. All books benefit from great design. All books, no matter how good they are, need strong marketing and sales plans in order to get found. If you’re going to publish on your own, it’s important that you find the right people to help you.”
Michelle Vu is bringing automation to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, with a human perspective. She is keeping the needs of human workers top of mind when incorporating automation – learning where their pain points are, and how to free up their time for more creative work.
“Ask a person at any level from various industries and they are sure to be overwhelmed, doing the job of two people or simply cannot find enough time in a day to finish their work. It’s important to remember that automation is not just a series of meetings to go over process improvements nor is it the new shiny IT project. A grassroots approach would be most effective, so people are less inclined to view automation as a mandate or a cost-cutting initiative. Having people create their own areas of efficiencies allows for greater ownership and accountability over their processes. Honest conversations between departments about automation can help break down the silo mindset and engage employees to think bigger picture where they can add the most value to the book production life cycle. For entry-level positions, I expect automation could potentially mean fewer admin duties and more meaningful work.”
Sarah Cardillo, Director of Publishing Operations at Sourcebooks gave us an inside look at how Sourcebooks uses sales numbers, comp titles, and audience responses to guide their redesign strategy. She recommended keeping an eye on the backlist, as well as more recent books.
“Sometimes we look at titles that were published 5-10 years ago (or more) and think about bringing them back out with new covers as a way to boost sales. Especially in the young adult and the romance space. Since those audiences (especially Young Adult) turn over to new people so regularly and trends change so quickly, a successful book with a fresh cover can easily find new readers, and the accounts are happy to take the book because it was successful in the past with the previous audience. We are seeing a lot of illustrated covers in the young adult space right now. 10 years ago covers were all photographic. So we are looking at our backlist and seeing what books sold well but could get new life with an illustrated cover direction.”
NetGalley’s own data scientist, Mandy Fakhoury, offered advice to publishers looking to become more data-driven in their decision-making. Surprisingly, she recommended remembering gut instincts and experience, and combining them with those hard metrics.
“Decision making is a critical aspect of success or failure. In this new era, data has become a key part of the decision-making process. Once a problem has been clearly defined, it’s a matter of collecting the appropriate data needed to answer our problem. Data provides us with the information that can be used and processed in different ways to make decisions. A big challenge is knowing how much to rely on the tools at your disposal and how much to rely on your instincts. An effective decision is made based on a blend of experience and data. The best approach is understanding your data, the behavior of trends, as well as your audience, and don’t let the data blindly drive your decision.”
Our marketing team shared tips for creating compelling eBlasts in our Proven Strategies Series. They advised that when writing the content of your eBlast, less is more. Including an entire book description will likely overwhelm a reader, or increase the chance they will lose interest before taking action. Readers scan emails quickly for info that is relevant to them, so divide text into short paragraphs. And remember that aprominent headline (at the top or center of your eBlast) is your second chance at a strong first impression (after the email subject line). Is your headline clear, impactful, intriguing?
NetGalley Sales Associate Katie Versluis works with our community of self-published authors. She has seen first-hand how authors have responded to critical reviews or DNF (Did Not Finish) reviews.
She told NetGalley Insights that while DNF reviews “may sting after the years of work you just put into this book, they can actually be quite useful to you as you position yourself in the book world.” She advises authors to think about why a reviewer decided not to finish their book. “[Your book] may simply not have been their cup of tea, but [a DNF review] may also bring an entirely new understanding to your book that you hadn’t thought of yourself. In the past, I’ve worked with an author who did a complete re-editing on their book because an early DNF review alerted them to language they didn’t realize was offensive. The review certainly wasn’t “nice” to receive, but it became a blessing in disguise.” Sometimes critical reviews can help you better target the right kinds of readers, or tweak your marketing copy. For example, if you have been promoting your book as YA, but critical reviews are saying that it’s too young for a teen audience, consider positioning it as a Middle Grade book instead. Or, if reviewers are expressing surprise at the content, consider revising the way you are describing your book. You want to entice readers, but you also want to find the readers who are most likely to enjoy your book as it is.
Publishers are always trying new strategies on NetGalley: Using tools in new combinations, putting new kinds of books on the site, changing how they grant access to their titles. Chronicle recently started sharing cookbooks on the site, which has been a successful experiment for the. Cynthia Shannon, Food and Lifestyle Marketing Manager at Chronicle, described their recent pivot to cookbooks on NetGalley.
“There is a lot of potential to sharing cookbooks on NetGalley and we are looking forward to exploring more ways to further optimize our NetGalley strategy. Adding cookbooks to NetGalley was a new strategy for us for Spring 2019, and I was pleased to see the overwhelmingly positive response. We saw many NetGalley reviewers commenting on the beautiful photographs and the level of complexity of the recipes or ingredient procurement, and how much they were inspired to try some of the recipes. More importantly, they’d comment about how they can’t wait to get a print edition of the cookbook so that they can add it to their collection. Chronicle Books prides itself on creating beautiful, physical objects that people will want to buy for themselves or as a gift, so having these endorsements helps customers make their book buying decisions. We’ve increased the number of cookbooks we share on NetGalley in advance of publication for our Fall 2019 list—for example, we have Tartine, Ama, and American Sfoglino, three of our most anticipated upcoming cookbooks, available for review on NetGalley now—and we’re exploring the many tools and services that NetGalley offers to further connect with reviewers.”
We look forward to sharing more new strategies from across the publishing industry with you in 2020!
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.
As a self-published author, you might think that the hardest part is over once the book is complete. But once a book is ready to go out into the world, it still deserves the same level of attention and care that you gave it throughout the writing, revising, proofreading, and design process. As an author, you might not have formal marketing or publicity training, or the budget to hire someone who does have that kind of experience. But you can still give your book a professional launch.
While every book is unique and will have slightly different goals and timelines, we’ve used our experience working with everyone from indie authors to the largest publishing houses to develop a framework that you can use to guide your own unique launch strategy. You can also download this launch schedule.
The most important takeaway from this timeline is to plan your promotions a few months before your pub date to create ongoing and increasing excitement for your book.
Different contacts should be given access to your book at different times, according to their needs. For example, any major media contacts will need a much longer lead time than a Goodreads reviewer or BookTuber. Plus, if you can secure early media attention, it’ll be easier to get interest from those consumer reviewers. Work towards getting some early blurbs, and then use those blurbs to bring in new readers, on NetGalley or elsewhere.
And once you have made initial contact with these different kinds of readers – consumer reviewers, digital influencers, librarians, media, and booksellers – be sure to follow up with them right before pub date. Put your book back on their radar, encourage them to share their reviews on retail sites and with their audience, where applicable.
For independent authors who are publishing your own work, it can be hard to know how much to spend, and where to spend. Can you publish a book using only free tools and services? Do you need to make a serious dent in your savings account to get your book into the world?
NetGalley and the IBPA worked together to gather information from an engaged and thoughtful group of authors about how much they budget for their books, where that budget gets allocated, and where they find the most value. We hope that this information can help other authors strategize for their own books, getting the most value out of their budgets.
These authors understand that they need to invest in their book, and that the biggest and most valuable expenses will be editing, design, and advertising & marketing in order to give their books the most professional launch possible.
Thank you to the thoughtful authors who shared their budgets, strategies, and lessons learned about the finances of independent book publishing.
Only 11% of respondents reported spending less than $1,000 on their books, indicating that the most active authors understand that they need to invest at least a bit in their books. The majority of authors spent between $1,000 – $6,000 on their books, with the $1,000 – $3,000 bracket accounting for 28% of the overall responses.
Across budgets, most authors spend the bulk of their budgets on a combination of marketing & advertising, editing, and design.
You can see how authors allocated budgets within different budgeting ranges here:
As authors’ budgets went up, they increased the amount that they spent on marketing and advertising. Other line items – print distribution, proofreading, and ebook distribution – stayed relatively stable across budget brackets.
Editing was the most valuable line item to 41% of respondents, followed by marketing and advertising (26%), then design (21%). We’ve broken down how they valued these three categories by budget spend below.
Editing was the most valuable line item to 41% of respondents, followed by marketing and advertising (26%), then design (21%). We’ve broken down how they valued these three categories by budget spend below.
As an author’s budget goes up, marketing & advertising became more valuable to them. And for the respondents with more limited budgets, they found the most value in first editing, then design.
We also asked how authors determined what made a line item valuable to them. Surprisingly, it wasn’t always sales. Only 17% of respondents used sales as their primary marker of value. Instead, 31% of respondents found value when they could see that an expense had made their book a higher quality product. We can see this correlated to the value found in design and editing. Authors were most interested in making their book look – both inside and out – professional and polished, and then putting eyes on it.
When asked what they would spend less money on in the future, 17% or respondents said marketing & advertising and 15% said printing. But, even in a question about spending less, 12% responded to a question about lowering their budget by saying it would stay the same, 7% said they would spend more. We see again that authors understand that they will need to invest in their books in order to make them the best product that they can be, and to then help their books find readers.
NetGalley and the IBPA are both dedicated to helping author-publishers. Through NetGalley’s partnership with the IBPA, as well as through direct work with independent authors, we help author-publishers reach our engaged NetGalley community. Plus, authors find many tips and author-focused case studies here on NetGalley Insights. The IBPA has programs, events, webinars, and resources for author-publishers, as well as other segments of the industry. Learn more about the IBPA here, including special NetGalley packages available to IBPA members.
Survey collection: NetGalley and the IBPA collected survey responses from 137 author-publishers between May-June 2019.
Since NetGalley Insights launched in July 2018, we have published nearly 40 articles about the publishing industry – interviews, industry trends, best practices for using social media, case studies from successful book marketing campaigns, and more.
We are looking forward to continuing to leverage NetGalley’s unique place within the industry to provide creative marketing ideas, to highlight the great work that’s being done across the publishing world, and to help our readers keep up with new tech and trends.
We are grateful to our community of publishing industry professionals for sharing their expertise and experience with our audience. And, of course, to you, our readers.
Here’s what we’ve been up to in 2018!
NetGalley has unique access to different members of the publishing industry – we work with authors, publishers, and publicity and marketing services. By sharing their successes and strategies with you, we hope you’ll find new, creative ideas that you can implement, too. In 2018, we interviewed members of the publishing industry at all levels; from interns to senior account executives. We even tapped our own team for their experiences finding and keeping mentors.
We know how valuable it is for authors, marketers, and publishers to learn from each other’s successes. That’s why we feature case studies from our NetGalley clients. We’ve shared the strategies that made Glimmerglass Girl, a debut poetry book, one of the Most Requested poetry titles on NetGalley, how NYU Press successfully engaged with NetGalley members, and North South books used availability settings and timely subject matter to create pre-publication interest for a children’s book.
Readers looking for their next pick tend to trust recommendations from content curators in their communities and online . With that in mind, we talked to librarians, podcasters, and a BookTuber to help publishers better understand these influencers’ communities, what kinds of books they are looking for, and how they find them.
Social media platforms and tools are always changing. That’s why we do our best to help you keep tabs on new trends and to offer strategies for making the most out of different social media platforms. We recommended Instagram accounts to follow, gave examples of how publishers are using Instagram stories, gave you a peek into the Librarian Twitterverse, provided a primer on BookTube, and suggested ways for both authors and acquisitions agents to get the most out of Wattpad.
We know that you can’t be everywhere at once, so we’re doing our best to be there for you. NetGalley Insights attended conferences for the ECPA, Firebrand, and for BISG. We listened to book club gatekeepers, including the books editor at O: The Oprah Magazine and the founder of Well-Read Black Girl, talk about what’s important to them as they make their influential book club picks.
With a dedicated NetGalley UK site and partner sites in Germany, France, and Japan, NetGalley is a part of the global book industry. With our global perspective, we featured stories about the German book market and recapped the first year of NetGalley.co.uk.
Subscribe to our weekly digest so that you can stay tuned for everything that NetGalley Insights has in store for 2019. You can expect articles on blockchain and metadata, interviews with content creators and curators, case studies from successful marketing campaigns, tips for authors, and more coming to you in the new year.
Word-of-mouth is one of the most effective ways to increase book sales. Whether this chatter happens face-to-face with friends, or digitally through online reviews or social media shares, the earlier audiences are talking about your book, the better! In order to facilitate this digital word-of-mouth, NetGalley introduced simplified social sharing in November 2017, to allow NetGalley members to connect their NetGalley profile with their Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, and LinkedIn accounts to share their reviews with just one click.
This is great news for your titles! Reviews of your books are being seen on more platforms by broader audiences. You can track where reviews are being shared by checking the book’s Feedback Report in NetGalley. Plus, it’s easier than ever for publishers to encourage more cross-posting and successfully leverage the buzz. Here are some ideas and best practices we’ve observed in action:
Incorporate hashtags: Publishers can add a custom hashtag for any title on NetGalley. This helps to focus the buzz around a title, and can make members feel like they are joining a rich conversation online. Ask members to share their reviews on social media with the hashtags when you follow-up with them, and then use those hashtags to identify your most vocal pre-publication advocates. Retweet them, favorite them, and consider auto-approving those members in NetGalley! For more information about including hashtags in your NetGalley marketing plan, check out this 2-minute video.
Share the shares: If NetGalley members are sharing reviews on Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere, consider using those reviews in your own social strategy. Retweet or re-post the reviews you see, and be sure to thank the member. Everyone loves a shoutout! Use screenshots or quotes of these shared reviews to demonstrate the word-of-mouth energy behind your titles and include them in sales presentations. They are visible proof of early consumer interest.
Learn more about your audience: In addition to watching your hashtags, you can use your NetGalley Feedback Report to see who has shared their reviews online. Digging into your data, including the social media presence of members who are talking about your book online, can give you some powerful demographic information about your audience. Are they mostly millennials who post on Instagram? Are they primarily baby boomers who use Facebook to stay in touch with their friends and family? Use this insight to guide your marketing messages and to determine which platforms are worth your investment of time or advertising dollars.
How have you successfully leveraged social media sharing in your marketing campaigns? We love to feature case studies from our community of publishers and authors.
