We interrupt this public service blog for an announcement from our sponsor, NetGalley…
As any of our loyal NetGalley members know, we recently had a makeover in some key areas of www.netgalley.com. Around the same time, we asked our members to take a short survey to get some feedback about how they were reading galleys and how we could better serve them. I thought it’d be fun to share some of our findings – and perhaps even start a larger conversation about these hot topics. While this post will focus mostly on the NetGalley side of things, stay tuned for a related post about overall trends.
We were psyched when what we lovingly-named our “Reader Release” went live. Stemming directly from feedback from our members (“professional readers” made up of reviewers, media professionals, bloggers, librarians, booksellers, and educators), we worked hard to make it easier to find and request galleys.
That meant a catalog revamp – not just a fresh overall look, but also a bunch of exciting changes, including…
See more about each title:
• Now ISBN and Genre show in the main catalog view
Browse instantly in several ways:
• Browse by Titles Recently Added
• Browse by Publisher
and best of all…
• Browse by Genre (This change was greeted very warmly, indeed!)
Narrow down with Sorting and Searching:
• Sort by Date Added, Most Requested, Title, Publisher, Imprint, Author, and Pub Date
• Search by Author, Title, Imprint, Publisher, and Genre
My favorite one of these is the Most Requested sort. How cool that I can see (and you can see too!) the…
Top 10 Most Requested Titles on NetGalley (as of today):
1. The Iron Daughter (Harlequin)
2. The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors (The Crown Publishing Group)
3. My Soul to Keep (Harlequin)
4. The Oracle of Dating (Harlequin)
5. The Case for Books (PublicAffairs)
6. Chasing Perfect (Harlequin)
7. Manifest (Harlequin)
8. The Clearing (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
9. What’s New, Cupcake? (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
10. BOOK: THE SEQUEL (PublicAffairs)
But, we couldn’t just stop at the catalog. Our homepage got a facelift, too – with new navigation so readers can easily find the information they seek, as well as a special “What’s New at NetGalley” area. Personally, I’m a big fan of the sleek buttons we added, too.
Lastly, we updated our QUICK BROWSE reading option. Our new online viewer includes some great benefits, including easier page-turning and ZOOM!
Oh, and one more cool thing: we added a SHARE button to our Buzz Page – so now you can tell others which titles spark your interest. Post it on Twitter, Facebook, and a ton of other places — just roll your cursor over the word “share” to see all the different options.
My favorite is how now you can EMAIL IT TO A FRIEND with the envelope icon.
Lastly, I’m proud to announce that we’ve reached the milestone of 5,000 registered members! That includes: publishers, traditional book reviewers, media professionals (radio/tv producers, journalists, etc), booksellers, bloggers, librarians, and educators (for exam/desk copies).
More to come in my next post about our member community – who they are and how they read – and I look forward to a larger dialogue about overall e-reading trends!
As always, I’m open to any and all feedback – we love hearing from you 
All best,
Lindsey Rudnickas
your friendly Digital Concierge at NetGalley
Follow me on Twitter: @NetGalley
Become a fan of our Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/NetGalley
I am really impressed with all of the changes on the site. It is so much easier to use! Thank you for listening to feedback and making changes. A lot of companies won’t do that, it’s really nice to associate with a company that cares what their user thinks. My favorite new feature is Browse by Recently Added!
This is great information. Thanks.