Industry Spotlight: Cynthia Shannon on Book Marketing, Early Reviews, and Cookbooks

Originally Posted on We Are Bookish.
Visit We Are Bookish for more industry interviews!

NetGalley members don’t just love books, they’re fascinated by all aspects of the publishing industry. That’s why in our Industry Spotlight series, we’re asking publishing professionals to tell us more about what a day in their life looks like and to share invaluable tips for members who interact with them through NetGalley. Cynthia Shannon, the Senior Marketing Manager of Food and Lifestyle at Chronicle Books, discusses the importance of early reviews, what her team looks for in member Profiles, and how to best review lifestyle books.

Cynthia Shannon, the Senior Marketing Manager of Food and Lifestyle at Chronicle Books

Meet Cynthia

Years in the industry: 15 (OMG)

First book you worked on as a publicist: The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott. Working on it provided me with a great foundation right as the traditional media industry was getting disrupted. Pitching a journalist via Twitter was a novel concept at the time!

Current (or most recent) book you’re working on: Bagels, Schmears, and a Nice Piece of Fish by Cathy Barrow 

An indie bookstore you love: Omnivore Books in San Francisco

What does the role of a senior marketing manager entail? What’s your favorite part of your job? 

Marketing is about making sure the right message gets to the right people at the right time, and everything I do comes down to optimizing those three aspects for our food & lifestyle products. I love working with the creative and talented authors and my co-workers at Chronicle Books. I’m inspired every day to think differently about what we can do to improve our marketing efforts and raise awareness of all our amazing products.

People outside of the industry can have some funny or odd assumptions about our jobs. What do your friends and family think you do, and what do you wish people knew about your job? 

I think many people—including some authors—don’t realize why it takes so long to publish a book when many self-publishing platforms make it seem so simple. So many people are involved in bringing a book to market, and there’s a lot of expertise that goes along with it. I love reading the acknowledgments section of a book to be reminded of everyone who made a book happen: the editor and agent, designers, photographers, stylists, copy editors, operating managers, sales, marketing, and publicity staff. I’m always touched when I see my name listed there.

Help us take NetGalley members behind the curtain: What does the NetGalley request approval process look like for Chronicle Books? What should members keep in mind when making requests? 

This might be somewhat unique, but I set most of my books as available to Read Now. I have never seen an issue with getting our books into the hands of more people, especially pre-publication. The NetGalley community is made up of trusted readers and influencers, and their feedback—good and bad—is incredibly valuable as we gear up toward launch.  

How do the reviews that are published by members on NetGalley impact the pre-publication marketing you work on?

The pre-publication reviews are helpful in a number of ways:

1) They’re the first honest reviews we get from outside our publishing team, which helps us gauge actual consumer interest in the title and confirms our hunch in identifying an emerging trend from years ago.

2) They surface key aspects of the book that resonate the most with consumers, which helps us adjust the messaging and emphasize those aspects in media pitches.

3) They can flag mistakes in our messaging, which helps us pivot while there’s still time. 

For example, a few seasons ago there were some early reviews of a cookbook where reviewers were disappointed to see recipes that included meat. They had thought that it would be a vegetarian cookbook based on the cover, title, and description. While it was too late to change the cover or title, we were able to update the description to clarify that the cookbook contained recipes with meat. We also made sure to emphasize it in media pitches. Reviews improved after that, and it was a good lesson to learn internally as well.

What’s the most common misstep you see from NetGalley members that leads to a declined request?

While I set most of my titles as available to Read Now, my colleague Carrie Gao, School and Library Marketing Coordinator, says that having high approval and feedback percentages are certainly advantages and will usually lead to automatic approvals for any requested title. We will decline requests when we suspect the reviewer is probably not the right audience for the book: For example, when we see someone who mostly reviews Adult thrillers requesting a middle grade contemporary title about a pet shop. 

What advice do you have for members who are unsure of the best ways to review nonfiction books such as cookbooks or lifestyle books?

Anyone can Google a recipe for a dish that they feel like making. Good cookbooks will inspire you to try new dishes and build your confidence in the kitchen. Reviewers don’t need to make sure the recipes work—we have actual recipe testers for that—but they should scan the table of contents, read through the recipes, and follow the urge to run to the kitchen to see if they already have the ingredients on hand. Depending on what kind of cook you are, you may gravitate towards recipes that are quick, easy, and practical (like from the upcoming book A Dish for All Seasons by Kathryn Pauline) or specialized and time-consuming like perfecting your own bagels or masa (thinking of those in Bagels, Schmears, and a Nice Piece of Fish by Cathy Barrow and the forthcoming MASA by Jorge Gaviria). 

Lifestyle books range from the quirky to the practical and should be approached with that type of mindset. Discover books that speak to you, whether in parenting, astrology, or self-help. Also ask yourself, would you buy this book as a gift for yourself or a friend? 

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

I would recommend having a full and complete profile. My colleague Carrie agrees, adding: Include any link to external sites you might own, including blogs and social media, as we’ll check them out to see how consistent of a reviewer you are or what your social platform might look like elsewhere. Be as accurate in your profile as possible. Make sure your member type is correct. We’ll take into account how long you’ve been a NetGalley member, as being relatively new could explain a low ratio and wouldn’t necessarily cost you any points.

Who are some book influencers you think are doing really cool things in online book reviewing spaces?

I follow several NetGalley members who cross-post their reviews to Goodreads, as it’s always interesting to see what other books they choose to review. I also queried my colleague Ailyn Pambid, Marketing Assistant (and respectable book reviewer in her own right: @wheresdabooks). Ailyn noted how there are some great book influencers on YouTube (such as Regan from @PeruseProject, Adri from @perpetualpages, and Cindy form @withcindy) and Instagram (Sol from @thesolreader, Oscar from @booksteahenny, Angela from @baosbooks, Hayle from @bookishbluebird, and Esther from @estherhfung). 

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

I rely on NetGalley to start the flywheel of pre-publication buzz. I’ve noticed that approximately half of my NetGalley reviews show up on Goodreads, and the Goodreads ratings feed into Edelweiss, giving sales reps some built-in support when meeting with booksellers and librarians. NetGalley also helps raise awareness with a core and influential readership. 

Thanks for chatting with me, Cynthia! 

​​Editor’s note: The above opinions represent the specific viewpoint and strategy of one particular publisher. Publishers and authors use NetGalley to help accomplish a variety of goals, and incorporate NetGalley into their overall marketing and publicity efforts in different ways. 


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George Slowik, Jr. on the 150th Anniversary of Publishers Weekly

BookSmarts Podcast

Get smarter about your books! The BookSmarts podcast features discussions about publishing data and technologies and interviews with industry experts, deep thinkers, and doers, bringing you insights that will help you sell more books.

Episode 22: George Slowik, Jr. on the 150th Anniversary of Publishers Weekly

In this episode of the BookSmarts Podcast, Joshua interviews George Slowik, Jr., the Chairman and Owner of PWxyz LLC, the parent company of Publishers Weekly, who joins us to discuss the magazine’s history, the digital archive, and more.

Transcript available here.

Publishers Weekly was launched in 1872 as a bibliographic source for all publishers to list forthcoming titles. Over its 150 year history, the magazine has continued to provide news and features about the publishing industry, and has even expanded to provide over 9,000 new book reviews every year.

George gives a brief overview of the magazine’s history, discusses the development of the digital archive, the special anniversary edition to be released in April, and his thoughts about the future of publishing. 
You can learn more about Publishers Weekly and sign up for their free email newsletters, at their website, https://www.publishersweekly.com/.

Joshua Tallent is an acclaimed teacher and guide on the role of data in publishing, and a vocal advocate for high quality book metadata. In his spare time, Joshua enjoys playing complex board games, playing Minecraft, and fiddling with his 3D printer.

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Industry Spotlight: Sydney Tillman on Picture Books, NetGalley Tips, and Life in Publicity

Originally Posted on We Are Bookish.
Visit We Are Bookish for more industry interviews!

NetGalley members don’t just love books, they’re fascinated by all aspects of the publishing industry. That’s why in our Industry Spotlight series, we’re asking industry professions to tell us more about what a day in their life looks like and to share invaluable tips for members who interact with them through NetGalley. Here Sydney Tillman, the Publicity Manager at Hachette’s Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, discusses the art of a picture book review, what she looks for in member Profiles, and her favorite parts of being in publicity.

Sydney Tillman, the Publicity Manager at Hachette’s Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Meet Sydney

Years in the industry: Going on five years!

First book you worked on as a publicist: The Purrmaids series–the pun options were endless! 

Book you’re currently working on: Strong Mama by Robin Arzón

An indie bookstore you love: Cafe con Libros in Crown Heights, NY! It’s a cozy, very well-curated Afro-Latinx-owned bookstore and coffee shop with a focus on community and intersectional feminist reads. It is also home to my favorite bookish tote bags!

What does a day in the life of a publicity manager look like? What’s your favorite part of your job?

I start every morning reading through newsletters, media alerts, and scanning through my inbox. A big function of our jobs as publicists is to be effective communicators and a hub for information—for authors, editors, booksellers, and media/journalists—and emails are a big part of our job. The sheer volume of emails that we receive has increased in this virtual world, so I always prioritize the day’s tasks based on what is currently in my inbox. My day-to-day is often a mix of communicating with authors, pitching media for book coverage (my favorite part of the job!), and working with booksellers and/or book festivals to plan events or school visits. 

People outside of the industry can have some funny or odd assumptions about our jobs. What do your friends and family think you do, and what do you wish people knew about being a publicist?

Publishing is such an insular industry and a lot of folks outside of it don’t see all the different stages of the process. Despite knowing that I work in publicity, most people assume I have editorial responsibilities—which I think is a common misconception for folks outside of editorial. 

Publicity is a behind-the-scenes job. A big difference between marketing and publicity is that publicists are working to secure earned media (review coverage, interviews, etc.) while marketers secure paid media (ads/sponsored posts, etc.). For publicists, there can be a lot of work (research outlets, building media relationships with journalists/bloggers, crafting pitches) that goes into securing one media hit. We can spend hours building a list, crafting a pitch, and having a back-and-forth with a media contact, but at the end of the day there’s no guarantee that coverage will be secured. However, when it is, it is the best feeling!

Your passion for picture books shines through even on your social media. What do you recommend reviewers focus on when writing about picture books, particularly when it comes to balancing who the book is intended for compared with the person likely to be purchasing it?

I. love. picture. books. And I love reading picture book reviews. I think it’s important to keep in mind that the art and text work together to create the story. I love a picture book review that is balanced in its examination of both. While it’s important to call out those special elements of the read that will engage young readers—maybe it’s a great read-aloud or inspires imaginative play—I think that picture books are for everyone. I love, love, love reviews that call this out. The adult reading the review and purchasing the book is oftentimes also the person that will read the book to the child, and so a successful picture book review should also compel the adult to want to buy or read the book.

Help us take NetGalley members behind the curtain: What does the NetGalley request approval process look like for Little, Brown Books for Young Readers? 

Publicists are responsible for routinely checking NetGalley to manage incoming requests for their assigned titles. I go through the requests for my titles on a weekly basis and approve or decline requests. It’s also important to note that Publicists are only approving requests on NetGalley for members who identify as “Media Professionals” and “Reviewers” while marketing handles “Bookseller,” “Librarian,” and “Educator” requests. 

What’s the most common misstep you see from NetGalley members that leads to a declined request?

There are two common missteps I often see. The first is someone who clearly has requested a title for a library or educational purpose, but who has mislabeled their member type. A request for anything outside of a consumer review or media purpose will often be declined by publicity.

The second is an incomplete profile. The more you build out your profile, the better. I personally immediately look for the links included. If a request has links to an active blog, bookstagram, or other platform then I’m most likely going to approve that request. If the request doesn’t include any links or it has links to inactive accounts, then that request will likely be declined. We want to see that you’re actively reviewing and engaged—that’s more important to me than stats or follower count.

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

Don’t be discouraged! Continue requesting books and posting reviews online. The more you continue to build out your platform(s) and engage with the community, the better. Regularly posting content shows us that you are consistent, which is something that we prioritize when going through requests.

Who are some book influencers you think are doing really cool things in online book reviewing spaces?

Maya Lê known as @maistorybooklibrary on Instagram is such an incredible champion for picture books. She goes above and beyond to create engaging, original content for young readers.

Thanks for chatting with me, Sydney! 

​​Editor’s note: The above opinions represent the specific viewpoint and strategy of one particular publisher. Publishers and authors use NetGalley to help accomplish a variety of goals, and incorporate NetGalley into their overall marketing and publicity efforts in different ways. 

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Takeaways and Trends from 2021

We’ve all learned a lot over the past couple of years, and 2021 has taught us some especially interesting things. Here are a few takeaways and trends from 2021 that we’ll carry with us as we continue to grow, evolve, and serve the book publishing industry!

Book publishing is in a period of renewal

Often, the things that challenge us the most also create great opportunities. The world has nearly two years of this pandemic behind it, and many publishers have seen surprising gains as consumers turn to books to fill their hours at home. On the BookSmarts podcast, Michael Cader, Founder of Publishers Lunch and PublishersMarketplace.com had this to say about additional opportunities the industry has at this moment:

“As we go through this COVID transition [we] redefine what work looks like and how work becomes meaningful….In the pandemic, people stopped going to book fairs and they stopped touring authors, and a lot of them stopped sending out [printed] galleys, and cut back on marketing expenses and did all kinds of things, some out of necessity, some because those things just didn’t exist, and some for ease, and some because they wanted to conserve. So, there’s this really interesting chance to rethink: Where are we spending our dollars? How are we spending those dollars consciously? And what’s driving ROI?

“There’s an interesting opportunity to rethink every role within the organization. What have people actually done during COVID, when they’ve been working with less direct supervision more on their own at home? And how has that worked well? And how can we enfranchise people to keep doing more of that, and less of what they didn’t like doing? 

It’s this really interesting reset moment. The good news is that publishing is coming at it from a position of strength.

– Michael Cader, Founder of Publishers Lunch and PublishersMarketplace.com

“We’re also in this interesting moment of the industry finally reckoning with diversity in a more meaningful way. Part of diversity means having an industry that’s not just centered in New York. Only certain types of people can afford to live and work in New York, and New York has all sorts of different people and viewpoints in it, but it’s not the nation at large. 

“I think writ large it’s this really interesting reset moment. The good news is that publishing is coming at it from a position of strength… the sales are there, the readers are there. The retail channels have been resilient… So there’s a really strong foundation to build from. So, where people go from there, I think will determine a lot of what the trajectory of the business looks like, over the next few years.”

Listen to Michael Cader on the BookSmarts podcast.

Book discovery is context agnostic

We know that NetGalley is just one of many ways that readers discover books. According to our 2021 NetGalley Member Survey, Goodreads, Friends/Peers, and Amazon also top their list for finding new books. For audio listeners, the library is also a very important means of discovery.

In the Panorama Project’s Immersive Media & Reading Consumer Survey, Dr. Kathi Inman Berens (Associate Professor of Book Publishing and Digital Humanities, at Portland State University) and Dr. Rachel Noorda (Director of Book Publishing and Assistant Professor in English) conducted a consumer behavior study focused on how book discovery works and how libraries fit into the book discovery ecosystem. In April, they spoke about their work on the BookSmarts podcast.

Dr. Berens notes, “In roughly equal numbers, people find a book online and then buy it in a bookstore, or discover a book in a bookstore and then buy it online. It’s actually far more fluid than just looking at sales data would suggest.

“The diversity of ways that people discover books suggests that there’s no one formula for discovery. We do know that people have multiple touch points… We also know that people are largely unaware of how metadata works, how algorithms and recommendation algorithms work. So a question that would be super hard to capture in self-report data would be: How many times did you encounter this book before you finally decided to open your wallet? Or you finally decided to check it out from the library? That’s hard for consumers to be aware of.”

Immersive Media & Books: Consumer Behavior and Experience with Multiple Media Forms, Portland State University 2021, Published by Panorama Project

Dr. Norda adds, “Our study was a cross-media one, and what we found is that avid readers are also avid media consumers in other categories. They’re gaming, they’re watching TV and movies. And there is a really high discovery rate cross-media. About 60% of people are going from engaging with a book to then finding a new TV series, or movie, or game. 61% are going from TV or movie to then finding a book or a game. Games was the lowest [category for cross-media discovery]—but still, about a third, 33% [are] engaging with a game and then finding other media like a book or TV/movies. Cross-discovery is something I don’t think we engage enough with in the industry, to think about readers as cross media consumers.”

Listen to Dr. Norda and Dr. Berens on the BookSmarts podcast!

Data is only as useful as its context

We at NetGalley firmly believe in giving publishers access to their data about NetGalley activity. Information like early impressions, numbers of requests and, of course, the Reviews and Feedback they receive give marketers and publicists the tools they need to analyze the effectiveness of their strategies. This early data helps build context for not only their NetGalley efforts, but their work as a whole. (Have you read our article, The Importance of Early Data?)

Earlier this year, Guy LeCharles Gonzalez, Chief Content Officer at LibraryPass spoke with the BookSmarts podcast, saying, “My issue with ‘data-driven’ is [that] it’s become kind of a buzzword that’s lost its original meaning. I compare it to the early days of GPS, where if you’re not paying attention, GPS will drive you off a cliff.

“Data is only as useful as the context you’re pulling it into, and the other insights you bring to it. Otherwise it can cause you to make some rather myopic decisions. [If] you’re getting all this sales data that says, 70% of our sales are from Amazon, a data-driven approach might say, ‘All right, we’re gonna put 70% of our resources and effort towards maximizing sales on Amazon.’ And data-informed says, ‘Okay, well, we know Amazon is a transactional point, for a lot of people, but it’s not necessarily the point of discovery. [There are] sites that include links to Amazon, social links…’ 


“Data is only as useful as the context you’re pulling it into, and the other insights you bring to it.“

– Guy LeCharles Gonzalez, Chief Content Officer at LibraryPass

“There’s a lot of reasons people go to buy a book on Amazon, and half of them have nothing to do with Amazon helping them discover that book. So if you decide to shift 70% of your resources towards Amazon advertising, and you’re only prioritizing metadata on Amazon, you potentially are losing all of the other touch points that drove those sales to Amazon and suddenly, your Amazon percentage may stay at 70% but your overall sales may drop. And that, to me, is one of the key differences between we’re data-driven versus data-informed. That’s where you really draw a line.”

Joshua Tallent, Director of Sales and Education at Firebrand Technologies and BookSmarts host, adds, “The amount of data you have and the type of data you’re pulling in…  if you’re only looking at a subset of real information, then you’re only going to have enough information to make a very narrow choice. But when it comes down to the data that publishers receive, a lot of times, they don’t get enough data to really be able to be data-informed in the first place. And so you feel like you have to be data-driven, and just make decisions based on what you’ve got.”

Data informed publishers constantly analyze their raw data from as many sources as they can find—from their own internal databases as well as data from their partners’, even beyond sales data. What data points do you use to inform your strategies?

Listen to Guy LeCharles Gonzalez on the BookSmarts podcast.

Backlist is the backbone

Although most titles available on NetGalley are pre-pub, frontlist books (“galley” is in our name, after all), we often work with publishers to promote backlist as well! Often, a publisher wants to promote an author’s previous works on the cusp of a new release, or an important current event may make an older book suddenly relevant to audiences again.

In his interview with BookSmarts, Michael Cader notes, “It’s sort of extraordinary that the business is doing so well given the depth of the real challenges we’re seeing. One is just the increasing difficulty of selling new books, right? You know, what we’ve seen during the pandemic is the backlist sales continue to rise. Backlist sales have been rising for years, which is in part a function of the increased percentage of book sales online, right? Because an online environment is less conducive to displaying new titles, and stacking them up and putting them in prime real estate [as happens in brick and mortar stores], and more conducive to people browsing or searching, or going to look for the book they want at the price or vendor they want to get it from.”

Chief Marketing Officer at Open Road Integrated Media, Mary McAveney, in a separate interview adds, “Lots of publishers saw great increases in revenue and in sales during that time when people were turning to online search, or browsing [retail sites], but a lot of what was happening is readers were gravitating to books they knew about. They either remembered, or they were classics or somehow the book had an audience.”

Referencing BookNet Canada’s study Aged like a fine wine: What’s the ideal age for a backlist title?, Joshua Tallent says, “When you get into two-to-five years, things really pick up. And so there’s an opportunity there for publishers to take advantage of that—especially with debut authors, or lesser known authors, or those midlist titles that aren’t necessarily the ones that are really going to push a ton of marketing on at the beginning, because they don’t have the time or the energy or the or the money for that. Hitting that middle time period, that two-to-five years, might be just a benefit to go back and say, Hey, let’s just put a little more at this, let’s think about these titles that really haven’t… they’ve kind of been selling a little bit here and there. Let’s put a little bit of effort behind them.”

In a few different conversations, Joshua wants to focus on practicalities. He notes the opportunity and asks, “Where do you think discovery comes from? What do you think that can be doing to really push more discovery?”

Drive discovery by joining communities

Connecting directly with readers has long been at the forefront of publishers’ efforts. Within NetGalley, we see publishers directly invite important media contacts, reviewers and influencers, and use their reports to follow up directly with them. As you can imagine, a number of the people who Joshua interviewed spoke about direct-to-reader efforts as well.

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez says, “A lot of the practicalities come from a direct connection to readership. One of the first things I look at is: if you’ve got a clear vertical that you serve, you’ve got opportunities to capture data beyond just the sales data that gets fed to you from your partners.

“…There is a community for everything on the internet, you can get a pretty clear sense of how big it is and how engaged they are. And you can build a business model around that, if you can develop the right content or services—you know, it’s not just about books—for those communities. But it starts with really understanding those communities. And to do that, you got to be a part of them. So you can’t just go buy, you know, Reddit’s mailing list, or do an ad buy on Reddit, and think you’re engaging with the community, you’re just, you know, shifting traditional marketing approaches to the internet.”


“It’s critical to make sure that you’re thinking about the consumer more than you’re thinking about the book.”

– Mary McAveney, Chief Marketing Officer at Open Road Integrated Media

Mary McAveney adds, “If you have a media hit around a book, it’s like manna from heaven…. but you know, what you have to do is actually build your own verticals, to build your own content sites, because there are people looking for books, and they may only know Dan Brown’s name. They don’t know anybody else in that genre, but they know they like that book. It sounds sort of simplistic, but you want to bring in those people who like that book, and it’s really important to make sure that the [next] book you’re putting in front of them when they’re doing that search is something they’re going to enjoy just as much as that book. 

“Authors spend their lives writing [fantastic books] and they shouldn’t be punished just because the demand isn’t evident. You should be able to build that. But it’s work. It’s really creating your own owned media through funnels and content verticals and articles. And if you can harness those readers and really continue that relationship and build it. If you become like a hand-seller you know what [anyone] likes to read, right? Because they’re clicking pretty consistently on the books that they like to read. And as that reader stays in your system for years, you become even more and more familiar with what they’re looking for. And you can really segment the titles well for them, and so that becomes really critical.”


Presented by NetGalley, We Are Bookish is an editorial blog, presenting an independent voice to highlight books and a bookish lifestyle. Recurring features include: book recommendations, author interviews & guest posts from publishing professionals, cover and stepback reveals, gift guides, book club resources, NetGalley member spotlights, and more.

“I know that so many publishers, of all different sizes, are building mailing lists and really trying to develop that one-to-one relationship with the consumer. And it’s critical, but it’s also critical to make sure that you’re thinking about that consumer more than you’re thinking about the book. You have a book you spent a lot of money on to purchase, and you want to push that book out to every consumer you can think of, but that isn’t necessarily going to win the day at the end. You want to really cultivate those customers.

“It’s not an easy proposition. It’s extremely costly to do that. But the way we [at Open Road] started, is really to start with demand. What are people currently searching for? How does that map to the kinds of books that we have available to put in front of them? It starts there, and then you can use those audiences to build—it becomes sort of a pyramid, you get your base of consumers, and then you use those to build on top of it more, more and more. Whether you’re using social channels, or you’re using external newsletter ads, or you’re using just your content and your search engine optimization, or you’re using search engine marketing, there are a number of tools. And they all require a good amount of expertise to function well.”

Interviews have been edited for clarity and length.

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Robin Whitten on Audiobook Demographics and Quality

BookSmarts Podcast

Ep 18: Robin Whitten on Audiobook Demographics and Quality

In this episode, Robin Whitten, editor & founder of AudioFile Magazine, joins us to discuss audiobook listener demographics and performance quality. Audiobook sales have grown significantly in a short amount of time. With that growth, we have also seen an increase in the number of available audiobooks and a revolution in audiobook production.

Transcript available here.

Robin expounds on some of the major advances in the audiobook world, how the demographics of audiobook listeners are changing, and the genres that are the most popular. She also talks about how important the sound design and narration are to the success of an audiobook, and explains how AudioFile Magazine does its reviews.

Be sure to Check out part two of the NetGalley Listener Survey, which focuses on audiobook reviewers and their listening habits: https://insights.netgalley.com/2021-netgalley-member-survey-part-ii/

Getting started (from the APA): https://www.audiopub.org/industry/getting-started

AudioFile Magazine: https://audiofilemagazine.com

Audiobook Break Podcast: https://audiofilemagazine.com/audiobook-break/

Behind the Mic Podcast: https://audiofilemagazine.com/podcast/

Joshua Tallent is an acclaimed teacher and guide on the role of data in publishing, and a vocal advocate for high quality book metadata. In his spare time, Joshua enjoys playing complex board games, playing Minecraft, and fiddling with his 3D printer.

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Audio Publishers Association Webinar: The Future of Audiobooks

Presented November 10, 2021

Let’s examine where professionals from different areas of the audiobook industry see us being in the next 3-5 years. We will ask specialists in the areas of production, consumer sales, independent authors, to forecast the future. Joining us are Kevin Fecu of John Marshall Media, Darren Speers of Authors Republic, and Tarah Theoret of NetGalley.

Watch the webinar here.

The Future of Audiobooks Webinar

The ability to consume more, faster, while multi-tasking will continue to help with consumers, but also book reviewing of all formats. We’ve heard anecdotally from reviewers that they specifically request books in the audio format because they know they’ll be able to listen to it faster and sooner, and fit it into their schedule… this quick turnaround helps ensure that the marketplace is already being populated with early enthusiasm for this format specifically, which will boost pre-orders and sales. 

– Tarah Theoret, Senior Director, Community Engagement at NetGalley

Visit the Audio Publishers Association at audiopub.org

Formed in 1986, the Audio Publishers Association (APA) is a not-for-profit trade association that advocates the common, collective business interests of audio publishers. The APA consists of audio publishing companies and suppliers, distributors, and retailers of spoken word products and allied fields related to the production, distribution, and sale of audiobooks.

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2021 NetGalley Member Survey, Part II

All About Audio

In Part I of our Member Survey overview, we saw that 49% of the nearly 10,000 respondents consider themselves to be Audiobook listeners. It was important to us to gain more knowledge about their listening preferences and habits, so we asked Audio-specific questions to those members who favor the format. We’re excited to share even more of what we learned!


Librarians, Educators and Reviewers are the biggest listeners of Audiobooks on NetGalley, though all member types show significant interest in the format! Once we narrowed down those members who consider themselves Audiobook listeners, we asked even more specific questions about their listening habits. The following charts include responses from only those members who indicated that they listen to Audiobooks.

Across all member types, most survey respondents listened to between 1 and 9 Audiobooks in the past year. But a significant portion (20.5% on average) indicated that they listened to 10-19 Audiobooks. Educators in particular fall into this range. As we saw in Part I of our Member Survey overview, ​​NetGalley members are voracious readers and listeners who consume multiple books per year, across formats.

Most members indicated that they listen to Audiobooks daily:

With only one exception, all member types listen to Audiobooks daily. Only Booksellers are slightly more likely to listen on a weekly basis instead.

Since NetGalley members read and listen across all formats, it was important to us to understand why someone might choose an Audiobook over the print or digital format. 58% of respondents explicitly said they choose Audiobooks because they are already a fan of the narrator. This is not surprising, as we’re seeing elevated profiles for narrators online, where they are building loyal followings on social media.

To escalate this growth, Audiobook publishers can strategically include prepub access as part of their marketing strategy, and coordinate even more closely with the marketing and publicity teams who are working on the other formats. This will ensure that important audio-specific info—like narrator or cast—are included in those efforts, and that prepub access is granted to NetGalley members who are likely to access and review both formats. This will help build more buzz and momentum for the Audiobook at on-sale, and it will empower narrators to build their own platforms and following—a similar process that authors have traditionally benefited from.

Did you know . . . Audiobooks on NetGalley currently generate a higher rate of return for Feedback when compared to Digital Review Copies. The Feedback rate for Audiobooks averages about 46%, compared to 33% for DRCs, since January 2021.

When we asked members why they love listening to Audiobooks, they told us that the audio format allows them to multitask. Nearly all of the top five reasons they listen to Audiobooks have to do with this broadest motive:

The top five activities that members participate in while listening to Audiobooks include:

So, where do these listeners discover Audiobooks?

NetGalley is a top source for Audiobook discovery for most members, with Librarians slightly favoring discovery within a library. We’ve only shown the top five responses for each member type in the chart above, but other sources include Libro.fm and Social Media Influencers.

Nearly all members selected Goodreads as their preferred social media platform for Audiobook discovery, with Instagram as a close second. The one exception was Media, who favor Instagram over Goodreads. Facebook is the third choice for all member types.

We also provided a write-in option to tell us specifically who their favorite narrators were, and over 400 individual narrators were mentioned, many of whom were frequently repeated by multiple members. Julia Whalen was named over 100 times! 

NetGalley is the top source for Audiobook discovery among survey respondents. On average, 64% indicated they discover Audiobooks on NetGalley.

Additionally, 74% of survey respondents said NetGalley Promotions influence their decision to request or download books and audiobooks! Did you know that Audio publishers can take advantage of any of the NetGalley Promotions found in our Media Kit? Explore our Audiobook-specific Recently Added Spotlights and seasonal Audiobook-specific Newsletters—both with special pricing!

We have been so thrilled to work with publishers to promote their Audiobooks. Since NetGalley introduced the audio format on our platform in 2020, over 45,000 members have expressed interest in Audiobooks within their NetGalley Profile and have submitted over 100,000 Feedback and Reviews.

These survey results reinforced how valuable NetGalley can be for Audiobook publishers, so we’re offering new clients a FREE 2-month subscription*—if you sign up by December 31, 2021. Existing clients can get FREE placement in our next Audiobook Newsletter on January 13, 2022 (a $500 value).

Email concierge [at] netgalley.com before the end of the year to take advantage of either offer!

For more information about the NetGalley community as a whole, in particular their habits with digital and/or print formats, please see Part I of our Member Survey overview.

*This free 2-month offer allows for up to 5 active audiobooks on NetGalley, a value of nearly $800. If you’re interested in adding more than 5 audiobooks, please let us know!

All data taken from NetGalley’s 2021 Member Survey (conducted from August 14 – 31, 2021), and/or from member stats and activity on the NetGalley.com platform as of September 2021.

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2021 NetGalley Member Survey, Part I

Over the past two years, NetGalley has recorded unprecedented growth. Since 2019, the NetGalley community has grown by 50%! With so many new members, we knew it was important to gain more knowledge about their reading preferences and habits to ensure we understand how and why they interact with books, whether on NetGalley or elsewhere.

This summer, we launched a survey and nearly 10,000 active NetGalley members in the U.S. answered our call. We’re excited to share what we learned!

49% of all survey respondents consider themselves audiobook listeners, and that’s still just a fraction of the over 45,000 members who have expressed interest in Audiobooks within their NetGalley Profile. Keep an eye out for more insights about Audiobook listeners in the coming weeks—we’ll have more to share about the audio-specific questions from this survey in Part II of our Member Survey overview! Keep an eye on your NetGalley publisher dashboard to be alerted about it!

While BookTok continues to turn backlist titles into bestsellers, at this moment TikTok is relatively low on our members’ social media priorities. For Booksellers, it was the 5th top social media platform (after Goodreads, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter). For Reviewers, Educators and Librarians it came in as 6th.  Although social media trends ebb and flow, if Bookstagram and BookTube are anything to go by we’re sure to see BookTok continue to gain traction among NetGalley members. We’ll be paying close attention to their habits in this space.

It’s probably no surprise that Goodreads is among the top platforms for talking about books, and Bookstagram continues to be a popular and powerful platform for NetGalley members. As you can see above, it is among the top social platforms for nearly all members. This is especially true for Audiobook discovery, which we’ll share more about in Part II of our Member Survey overview. 

When you are working on social campaigns for your books, be sure to include NetGalley in those plans! Customize the hashtags you’d like members to use when they’re talking about a book, and consider a Sponsored Social Package with shareable posts and interactive content. (See page 18 of our 2022 Media Kit.)

74% of survey respondents said NetGalley Promotions influence their decision to request or download books and audiobooks!


Perhaps no surprise, but in addition to posting reviews on Goodreads, NetGalley members also use that platform to discover new titles as well. Friend and peer recommendations remain high.

As a resource for discovering new books, Publishers remain high on the list for all member types! All of your efforts to invite members using the NetGalley widget and approving requests are working–we’ve seen an average of over 230,000 monthly approvals in 2021.

As you can see, even aside from NetGalley our community is very active in the bookish world. We know that NetGalley members are avid readers, and it was important to us to gain a greater understanding of their habits even outside of our own system. Demonstrated in the charts below, NetGalley members are definitely reading both print and digital.

NetGalley members are voracious readers–consuming multiple books per year, across formats. In addition to Print and Digital formats, Audiobooks continue to grow in popularity among our members. On average, 20.5% of survey respondents said they’ve listened to 10-19 Audiobooks in the past year. We’ll go into more detail about this in Part II of our Member Survey overview!

It’s clear that NetGalley members favor the digital format, but they are very driven to consume book content in any form and continue to read and purchase books beyond their activities on NetGalley. Remember to follow up with approved NetGalley members at the pub date to remind them to share their reviews, as well as offer them retail links to share with their audiences (or use themselves!).

Finally, here’s a look at the full, 650k-strong NetGalley.com member community today. We are proud to work with these highly engaged and supportive reviewers, educators, media, librarians, and booksellers. They’re here to help your books succeed!

650k NetGalley.com members as of November 2021

NetGalley.com Activity

257k unique users monthly
409k avg Requests each month for Books & Audiobooks
87% approved books are downloaded
82k avg Feedback each month for Books & Audiobooks

Part II of our Member Survey overview will be released soon, all about the NetGalley community’s Audiobook listening preferences. Keep an eye on your NetGalley publisher dashboard to be alerted about it!

All data taken from NetGalley’s 2021 Member Survey (conducted from August 14 – 31, 2021), and/or from member stats and activity on the NetGalley.com platform as of September 2021.


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Brian O’Leary on the Future of Publishing

BookSmarts Podcast

Get smarter about your books! The BookSmarts podcast features discussions about publishing data and technologies and interviews with industry experts, deep thinkers, and doers, bringing you insights that will help you sell more books.

Ep 2: Brian O’Leary on the Future of Publishing

In this episode of the BookSmarts Podcast, Joshua interviews Brian O’Leary, Executive Director of the Book Industry Study Group (BISG), the US book industry’s trade organization. Brian and Joshua talk about three areas where Brian sees the industry struggling now and with space for continued growth in the future.

Transcript available here.

First, Book Publishing is a small industry, so it is important that we leverage our collective strengths to solve problems and become more forward-thinking, using standards and other technological investments to do so.

Second, we are seeing a growing emphasis on rights sales and information sharing, but there are some large technological limitations that still need to be overcome in that area.

Third, the “last mile” of publishing is shifting, both for retail and for libraries, but the industry does not yet have enough data about how books are found, evaluated, and purchased. We need to better understand our market and the path book readers and consumers take.

Joshua Tallent is an acclaimed teacher and guide on the role of data in publishing, and a vocal advocate for high quality book metadata. In his spare time, Joshua enjoys playing complex board games, playing Minecraft, and fiddling with his 3D printer.

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BookSmarts: A New Podcast from Joshua Tallent

Get smarter about your books! The BookSmarts podcast features discussions about publishing data and technologies and interviews with industry experts, deep thinkers, and doers, bringing you insights that will help you sell more books.

Ep 1: Publishers Are in a Moneyball Situation

In this episode, Joshua discusses how he sees some similarities between the state of the publishing industry and the story of the Oakland A’s baseball team as told in the movie Moneyball. Competition is fierce, and solid data practices can be the key factor between success and failure.

Transcript available here.

Joshua Tallent is an acclaimed teacher and guide on the role of data in publishing, and a vocal advocate for high quality book metadata. In his spare time, Joshua enjoys playing complex board games, playing Minecraft, and fiddling with his 3D printer.

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