Follow The Reader

ALA Midwinter 2012

kristinaradke — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:59:17 +0000

The holiday rush is behind us, it’s still frigid outside, and librarians everywhere are starting to get excited. . . it’s that time of year again: Midwinter. The 2012 ALA Midwinter conference is being held in Dallas this year (January 20-24) and I’m thrilled to be going—it’s also a return to my Texas roots!

In preparation for Midwinter, we at NetGalley have been busy little bees working to enhance our service for librarians. I’m most excited to share the news that NetGalley has partnered with the ALA! If you have an ALA number, add it to your NetGalley account by logging in, clicking on My Profile, and then Account Information. Once you add your number, publishers can easily identify you as an ALA member and we anticipate your requests will be approved faster and more frequently. Some publishers have already told us they plan to auto-approve all ALA members for their galleys going forward!

We’re also starting a new newsletter and social media program aimed just at librarians! “NetGalley at the Library” newsletters will be sent out monthly and feature titles and promotions from various publishers. Don’t miss out—be sure you sign up to receive these and other newsletters here.

Nearly 1,000 of our librarian members have already taken our survey, which is great! But we still want to hear from YOU. If you’re a member and haven’t already taken the survey, please follow this link to do so. It should only take you about five minutes to complete. If you’re NOT a NetGalley member, or know someone who’s not a member, we have a whole separate survey for you to take. The surveys will close after Midwinter on 1/27/2012. Our intent is to discover more about how NetGalley librarian-members use the site and what aspects you find most useful. We will share the general results with publishers so they have some feedback from the librarian community on NetGalley.

Lastly, I just want to remind you that the ALA Midwinter website has a lot of really great tools for anyone attending the conference. Check out the scheduler and the exhibitor list, and find hotel and travel information. I’ll be roaming the exhibit hall on Saturday and Sunday with an “I Love NetGalley” sticker on, meeting with publishers and hopefully speaking with some of you librarians! If you spot me, please stop me to say hello—I’ll save a sticker for you, too.

Happy travels to Dallas,

Kristina, Community Concierge

NetGalley October is here!

lindseyrudnickas — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 16:53:05 +0000

It’s that time again–when the lovely Emily of Red House Books declares a “month-long read-a-thon of awesome” for NetGalley titles! This time the month is October, but the goal is the same: read as many NetGalley books as possible, hopefully making a dent in your TBR e-piles

We at NetGalley love seeing how many bloggers sign up and how many books ultimately get consumed by the end of the month. Keep us updated on your progress on Twitter with the #NetGalleyMonth hashtag! Plus be sure to follow Emily @WilowRedHouse for news/prizes/etc.

All the info is below, and stay tuned for our next post at the end of the month with the list of participating bloggers.

Everything you need to know is in Emily’s “DECLARE YOURSELF” post — but for those of you who are new to this, here’s a quick rundown:

What do I have to do to join in on the fun?

READ YOUR NETGALLEY BOOKS! Easy, right? But first… Be sure to declare yourself by sharing your NetGalley October love somehow – blog post, Tweet (use the hashtag #NetGalleyMonth), Facebook update. It must include a link back to Emily’s post and you need to fill out the form in her post for your declaration to count.

AND Emily is kind enough to offer prizes! 2 participants (who have declared themselves and filled out the form) will win $15 worth of books from The Book Depository.

Mark your calendars…

For the #NetGalleyMonth Twitter Chat on October 28th at 5pm EST. Yours truly (Lindsey, Digital Concierge at NetGalley) will be answering your questions and grilling you about how many NetGalley books you read. Just kidding! I’m nice, I promise. In truth, I’ll be more interested to hear how you’re liking NetGalley, different ways you use it, what books you read most, etc etc. So come armed with questions and feedback!

(Thanks to Sarah from Workaday Reads for creating this cute button!)

Plus, don’t miss the NetGalley Tips–all month long!

All month I’ll be feeding NetGalley Tips to Emily for her weekly posts. In case you missed them, here are the first two:

Week 1 NetGalley October Tips: Registering and Filling Out Your Bio

Registering and Filling Out your NetGalley Bio:
After you log in for the first time, make sure to fill in your Profile and Public Bio, so publishers know who you are and what you do. The information in your bio is what publishers see when deciding to approve your galley requests.

It’s very important to check the Publisher Approval Preferences page for guidance. Publishers are telling you exactly what they’re looking for in your Bio in order to approve you, so be sure to follow their advice!

And don’t forget to indicate if you are a member of any Associations, like the ALA or ABA (under Account Information).

*HINT* In your Profile, the “Company” should not be the same as your first and last name, or else publishers might not be able to see your Public Bio when you request titles. Please at least put an underscore (example: first_last) to avoid the issue. Thanks!

Week 2 NetGalley October Tips: Requesting and Getting Approved

Requesting and Getting Approved

Make sure to check the Before You Request page. Check out the Public Catalog of available galleys to find titles you want to request. You can browse by Publisher or by Genre, and of course search by Title, Author, etc. You can also find out what publishers are looking for when they approve requests. Then just click “Request!” to send your request to the publisher.

Remember that some publishers take longer than others to go through their pending requests, so try to be patient! You’ll get an email notification as soon as your request is either approved or declined.

You could also get an email that says “You’ve been auto-approved.” What does this mean? Individual publishers can auto-approve individual NetGalley members for all their titles in the catalog. This means that when you press the Request button for that publisher’s titles, you’ll receive the galley immediately on your home page. If you are auto-approved by a publisher, you’ll receive an email saying: “You have been auto-approved for any of Publisher’s titles in the NetGalley catalog. Next time you click the REQUEST button for one of their titles, you’ll be automatically approved. Congrats!”

While you’re waiting to hear if your request is approved, this is a good time to do these three things:
1. Add support@netgalley.com to your email address book, so you’ll be sure to receive emails from NetGalley.
2. Be sure to download Adobe Digital Editions, the program you’ll need to view galleys. The download is quick and free here.
3. Check out our NetGalley Features and sign up to receive our Newsletters by Genre here.

Happy Reading!

Lindsey

Digital Concierge, NetGalley

NetGalley Goes to Comic Con

kristinaradke — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 14:13:07 +0000

New York Comic Con is next weekend (Oct. 13-16) and I couldn’t be more excited! I always look forward to seeing cos players on the subways and in the streets of NY… not to mention all of the amazing guests and exhibitors that will actually be inside the Javits Center.

I hope that some of the 4,000+ NetGalley members who tell us they read comics and graphic novels can make it to New York for the convention. If you’re attending, don’t forget to stop at the publishers’ booths and show them some love! Dark Horse, Legendary Comics, ONI Press, Lerner, Lee & Low, and Carina will all be there, in addition to many others. Be sure you check out the Comic Con preview on our NetGalley Features page and read up on some of the new comic and graphic novel titles!

I will be walking the floor on Friday, October 14, meeting some of the publishers and taking lots of photos. I won’t be in costume, but I will be wearing an I HEART NG sticker. If you see me, stop and say hello… I’ll gladly give you a sticker too. You may also catch me in the Carina booth (#2021) getting “zombified” on Friday. Keep an eye out for the after-photos!

Check out The Gothamist’s favorite costumes from NYCC 2010 and if you go to NYCC 2011 in costume, please share your photos with us on the NetGalley Facebook page.

May the force be with you…

Kristina, NetGalley Community Concierge

July is NetGalley Month!

kristinaradke — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 13:00:35 +0000

Back at the beginning of the month, Emily at Red House Books declared that July is NetGalley month and we couldn’t be happier! After all, what are the summer months for if not escaping the heat with a good book (and some serious air conditioning)? Emily set a challenge to read as many NetGalley books as possible throughout the month . . . what a great excuse to plow through the digital TBR pile!

Now that it’s nearly August, Emily will be hosting a Twitter chat to wrap up NetGalley month. Follow @WilowRedHouse and @NetGalley, and use #NetGalleyMonth to chat with Emily, Lindsey Rudnickas of NetGalley, and other declared NetGalley month readers! Here are all the details:

Date: Friday July 29^th

Time: 5:00pm EST

Where: Twitter, #NetGalleyMonth

I also want to thank Emily and all the other bloggers and tweeters out there who declared themselves and have been spending July with their noses buried in their e-readers. Check out this massive list of declared NetGalley Month readers. . . if you’re not on this list, check out Emily’s post to find out how to DECLARE YOURSELF!

Books, Movies, Reviews, Oh My!

My Disorganized Ramblings

The Paperback Princess

The Firefly Book Loft

Lisa’s World of Books

Rachel L: via Facebook

RWA 2011–Welcome to NYC!

kristinaradke — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 22:13:11 +0000

Romance Writers of America are in New York this week for their 31^st Annual Conference, and I’d like to take a moment to welcome all the visitors to my home turf! Hopefully you’re taking time to sight-see between workshops, networking events and meetings. If you’re looking for something to do, there are always plenty of book events going on in and around the city—check out New York Magazine’s list for this week.

Last month we announced a partnership with Library Journal, who is now considering book-length romance e-originals for review, and this month I’m happy to report that NetGalley now has over 6,000 members who have listed Romance as one of their reading genres and 175 romance titles listed in the catalog from publishers and imprints such as Harlequin, Carina Press, Avon, Berkley Romance, Forever, Red Sage and Entangled. That makes romance one of our hottest genres on NetGalley, pun definitely intended! Not to mention that YA + Romance=some of the most requested titles on NetGalley right now. Five of the top ten requested titles are YA/Romance cross-overs!

We’re very sad that we couldn’t be in attendance at RWA this year, but we know there are lots of great conversations happening virtually as well as physically at the Marriott Marquis. We’re watching #RWA11, but are there any other hashtags we should be following? Off the top of my head I know that Angela James of Carina Press is moderating a panel with book reviewers on Thursday. I hope there are lots of tweets! Let me know which hashtags you’re following in the comments, or tweet them @NetGalley!

Lots of love to all you romance readers,

Kristina, your Community Concierge

Hello and Congrats to our BEA Winners!

kristinaradke — Tue, 31 May 2011 15:30:38 +0000

BEA has come and gone—a whirlwind of informational sessions, meetings with publishers, and saying hello to all of the amazing NetGalley members who stopped by to “like” our wall. Whew! Talk about an intense first week on the job.

For those of you whose hands I didn’t get to shake, I’m Kristina Radke, your new Community Concierge at NetGalley. Together with Lindsey, I’ll be answering your support questions (via email, Facebook [www.facebook.com/netgalley], & Twitter [@NetGalley]) and helping our publishers promote their titles to our members and incorporate digital galleys into their own campaigns. Before coming to work for NetGalley I worked at HarperTeen, where I did marketing for some really great YA books and used NetGalley from the publisher’s perspective. (I know for a fact that HarperTeen has an exciting fall list, so if you read YA keep an eye out for their new galleys.)

It was easy to recognize what a useful tool NetGalley is for publishers and professional readers alike. Imagine my delight in finding an opportunity to join this (quickly) growing company that connects readers and publishers, and begin interacting with such a wonderful community. All of your energy and positivity at BEA has further validated my excitement to join the NetGalley team!

And while we’re talking about BEA . . . congrats to the winners of our eReader giveaway! Each of the winners will receive either a Kobo eReader, NOOK Color, or Kindle.

Georgia Edwards, librarian & reviewer in Charlotte, VT

Katie Butler, Katie’s Book Blog

Bob Bettendorf, copywriting manager in Princeton, NJ

BEA can be a bit daunting, but your smiles and hellos made my first week such a pleasure. Thank you all for such a warm welcome!

Kristina, Community Concierge

NetGalley at BEA: giveaway update & more!

lindseyrudnickas — Fri, 13 May 2011 19:25:45 +0000

Oh my goodness folks, BookExpo America is just around the corner!

If you’re already a NetGalley member, you probably got our email last week about our BEA plans. We have an exciting update, so I wanted to share the details of our promotion with all you “follow the readers.”

“LIKE” NETGALLEY AT BEA & ENTER TO WIN A READING DEVICE!

By BEA, NetGalley will have over 26,000 registered members and 100 publishers–which we think is something to celebrate! Our theme for NetGalley at BEA will be “COUNT ME IN” and we hope you’ll join the fun.

We’re bringing our Facebook Wall to life by asking all of you to come by booth #3718 to “like” our booth wall using the cute “I heart NG” sticker you see here and below.

Plus it’s your chance to enter our drawing to win one of three eReaders! That’s right, now we’re giving away 3 devices:

Just announced: a NOOK Color—The Reader’s Tablet (thanks to our friends at Barnes & Noble)

a Kobo eReader (thanks to our friends at Kobo)

and a Kindle!

Of course we want the fun to extend online, so you can also pose for a picture with your sticker on the booth wall, and we’ll post the pics on our NetGalley Facebook page.

CAN’T ATTEND BEA? WE STILL LOVE YOU!

Show that you love us too by putting this sticker on your blog.

Plus, if you comment on our Facebook page during BEA Week (May 23-27), you’ll also be entered into the drawing for one of the eReaders!

And one last friendly reminder:

DON’T MISS US AT THE BOOK BLOGGER CONVENTION!

I’ll also be on the Technology for Blogging panel at the Book Blogger Convention (at the end of BEA).

See my guest blog post for the BBC here. Follow the updates on Twitter @bookbloggercon.

If you’ll be there too, make sure to say hello!

Can’t handle waiting another whole week for all this fun to start?

In the meantime, check the NetGalley Features page for links to our BEA FICTION Preview and BEA NONFICTION Preview to see which galleys will be promoted at BEA. Request them now for a sneak peek.

That’s it for now–thanks, as always, for all your support. See you soon!

–Lindsey, Digital Concierge, NetGalley

Book Blogger Convention guest post: New Ways to Build Book Buzz

lindseyrudnickas — Tue, 03 May 2011 15:24:12 +0000

BEA is quickly approaching and we at NetGalley are hard at work planning some fun promotions for our booth (#3718). More on that later.

But we’re also prepping for the Book Blogger Convention (at the end of BEA). I’m looking forward to being on the Technology for Blogging panel, and talking with all you bloggers!

The kind folks at the Book Blogger Con asked me to do a guest post, which ran today over on their blog. Since we all love to share great ideas, I’m posting it here too.

Follow the updates on Twitter @bookbloggercon and I hope to see you there!

Lindsey Rudnickas on New Ways to Build Book Buzz

Lindsey Rudnickas is the Digital Concierge at NetGalley, an online service and connection point for book publishers, reviewers, media, librarians, booksellers, bloggers and educators.

**********

We could talk forever about the philosophy behind building book buzz and how that’s changed—and changing. Just as the entire news world is adapting in response to the popularity of online and social media, so is the job of the book publicist/marketer. The key, I think, is to be creative, open to new ideas, and willing to experiment.

So along those lines, I’ll keep from philosophizing and instead give some real-life examples of how we’ve seen NetGalley publishers being creative in their book buzz efforts.

Utilizing social influencers and Twitter:

We had a publisher partner with Klout to offer a digital preview copy of a highly anticipated title (via NetGalley) to 100 pre-selected key influencers on Twitter, in exchange for tweeting about the book to their followers. It was very cool for us to learn about what Klout does, and to see this publisher interacting with some of their biggest fans in a meaningful way. The concept of rewarding people who were both interested in that title and also influential in book circles is something more publishers could easily replicate in other ways (outside of Klout or Twitter).

Certainly, it pays to know your audience—and to use them to help spread buzz. And of course in your own Twitter efforts, it’s important to be focused in your messaging and tweet with relevance—we definitely try to! With a current Klout score of 57, @NetGalley is always looking to keep our audience engaged and extend our reach, and we appreciate your help!

Connecting with bloggers:

The idea of a blog tour can be immediately exciting to many authors and publicists who run into logistical hurtles when planning a traditional book tour (high costs for travel, coordinating special shipments of books to arrive in time, scheduling events with various stores all with their own full calendars, and bringing in a big enough audience at each venue to make it all worthwhile). How enticing an idea—to stay home (in your PJs if you feel like it!) and follow a schedule of virtual Q&As/interviews/guest posts directly with bloggers. We’ve seen how fast buzz can build and spread across dedicated book blogs, and we love to see publishers taking advantage. One publisher used NetGalley to promote a special campaign to bloggers to help spread the word about authors who were touring (both physically and virtually). In exchange for a blog post about the author, book, and tour, the blogger would receive an exclusive sneak peek of another forthcoming title via NetGalley. Win-win!

Engaging with online reading communities:

Publishers don’t have to look far to find pre-existing communities of dedicated readers who can’t wait to talk about the books they’re reading. Sites like LibraryThing and Goodreads are an awesome resource and a way to connect directly with fans. LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers program in particular is a great tool that awards advance copies of books to LibaryThing members in exchange for a review. LibraryThing uses their special algorithm to match the most deserving readers with the right titles, and publishers benefit from all that pre-publication buzz. We love when publishers use NetGalley to make the process even easier (and environmentally friendly) by fulfilling those Early Reviewer copies digitally. Not only does this allow the LibraryThing member to read the title on their favorite device, but also keeps the publisher from being restricted to only offering as many printed galleys as they have left in their office.

They can even have the best of both worlds—offer some print galleys and then fulfill the second-tier of requests with digital galleys. We saw another publisher do this with a trade advertising campaign: through a trade newsletter ad (like Shelf Awareness, PW Daily, etc), the publisher collected requests for a particular galley. When they ran out of printed galleys to send, they provided an auto-approved link to view that galley via NetGalley instead. We loved to see how many more readers were given access to the galley because the publisher utilized the digital option, too.

Plugging into the NetGalley community:

Here’s the shameless plug portion of this post! With the new “NetGalley Features” newsletters, publishers are promoting their forthcoming titles to professional readers (reviewers, bloggers, media, librarians, booksellers, and educators) who have expressed interest in that genre. NetGalley members who love Romance titles are excited to hear about the newest romance galleys that have just become available, and publishers benefit from tapping into their pre-existing reading preferences. Plus, we announce which galleys were the Most Requested from that each newsletter—just as you can sort our entire catalog of galleys by Most Requested.

Those are just a few recent examples that caught our eye and made us smile—but we’re always open to new ideas! We thrive on finding new ways to incorporate digital galleys into buzz campaigns and are continually inspired by publishers and bloggers alike.

We’re back!

lindseyrudnickas — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 18:40:22 +0000

We must apologize for the absence of new posts over the last few months. As you may know if you’re a NetGalley member, your Digital Concierge (me, Lindsey) went on maternity leave earlier than expected in late November, and this blog went on leave right along with me! Luckily we found great help in Sarah, who served as your Digital Concierge while I was out. Now I’ve returned to my post at NetGalley and we’re ready to give you an update.

Here’s what NetGalley’s been up to over the past few months:

Bringing more publishers into our catalog. There are more than 85 publishers now signed up with NetGalley. Here are a few we’ve welcomed in the new year: Oceanview, Hyperion, Candlewick, Fox Chapel, PR By the Book, Thomas Nelson, HarperCollinsCanada, Chelsea Green — and as just recently announced, Penguin Group (USA).

Finding new ways for you to read digital galleys. Thanks to the Aldiko Book Reader app, Android users can now read NetGalley files on their devices. Have questions about using your iPad, iPhone, Kobo, Literati, Nook, Sony Reader, or other device with NetGalley? There’s a page for that!

Telling you about new titles. Currently we have more than 940 titles listed in NetGalley’s public catalog, and new galleys are added all the time. We send out periodic updates about our new titles, so make sure you’re signed up to receive our newsletters for your favorite genres. Plus, you can now view past and forthcoming newsletters on our NetGalley Features page. We’ll soon be announcing the Most Requested titles, so check back to see if it’s your favorite!

Helping your requests get approved. We asked publishers what criteria they use to determine whether to approve or decline galley requests. Wondering what publishers are looking for? Check out this new page BEFORE you request to better your chances of getting the galleys you want.

Getting to know you — our members. We closed out 2010 with 15,353 registered members of NetGalley (today, just three months later, we’ve surpassed 20,000 members!), and we took some time to look at what that number means:
- Reviewers – including bloggers – make up almost half of our members (49%). Another 16.5% are librarians, and 11% are part of the media. Booksellers make up an additional 11% of our member community, while educators accounted for 9.7%.
- When new members join NetGalley, we ask them to indicate which genres they’re interested in. Literature & Fiction is the most popular, but only by a little bit – Teens & YA is close behind. Mystery & Thrillers, Science Fiction & Fantasy, and Romance are next, followed by Nonfiction.
- NetGalley members made 80,945 requests to view galleys in 2010. It’s probably not too much of a surprise to say that reviewers made most of those requests – 63.9% of them, to be precise.
- Our members downloaded 45,422 galleys last year. Almost half (46.9%) were DRM-protected files downloaded with Adobe Digital Editions. 29.1% were sent directly to members’ Kindles, and 11.2% were DRM-free files.
- And the result of all of those readers, requests, and downloads was a mountain of reviews sent to publishers via NetGalley: 7972, to be precise. That’s a 17.6% return on approved galley requests.

So that’s the latest from the NetGalley world. I look forward to connecting with you!

Happy Reading,
Lindsey

Digital Concierge
NetGalley

Thoughts on Innovation

ftoolan — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 19:10:21 +0000

The mark of any good conference is how much conversation goes on about it after it is over. Last week in San Francisco, the Internet Archive hosted a conference that this year they called “Books in Browsers“. This was the second such conference held by the Internet Archive. Last year, I don’t think it had a name, but the overall effect was similar – it was nearly impossible to stop thinking about it or talking about it. On Twitter, the hash tag #BIB10 is still very active, and the mailing list Read 2.0 (also hosted by Peter Brantley of the Internet Archive) has enough fodder to keep it buzzing for the next 6 months.

There are some great accounts written about the meat of the conference by Kassia Krozser, Patrick Brown, and Jeff Kaplan (and a special thanks to Eric Rumsey for pulling it all together). I encourage you all to read them.

However, the big take-away for me was about innovation in general. Leaving the conference (both years), I had a feeling similar to the one I had as a kid leaving the Year 2000 exhibit at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. Believable fantasy was made into reality (or at least a prototype). Not everything I saw in 1964 is with us today, but some of those innovations are, and some of them took a long, hard road to get here.

For example, the video phone. It was a huge hit at the Worlds Fair, and AT&T went and built it, but the market wasn’t ready, and it failed miserably. But today, how many of us use Skype to communicate with close family over long distances? When you add in the eras of video conferencing and online meetings, you can see how this concept of communicating on multiple levels was way ahead of it’s time in 1964. But, the vision put us on a road to where we are today.

Back to #BIB10 – Many of the presentations gave me the same feeling. Some of them were BIG ideas, and others were very practical. Bob Stein’s much debated social reading platform was one of the big ideas, as was Brian O’Leary’s Unified Field Theory of Publishing. (Please allow me one quick aside – How cool is it that Bob Stein, a hero-innovator in electronic publishing is back creating controversial debate about reading?). Some ideas were innovative on a much more tangible level like Joseph Pearson’s Monocle software platform that is (it seems to Joseph’s surprise) powering several reading programs, or Kevin Franco’s transmedia demonstration. These were only some of the presentations, and I’m only citing them here for the purposes of making a point.

The good news: This all relates to the world of reading, writing, publishing, and experiencing the power of the written word.

I could write a tome on the examples of innovation I witnessed, but below are some tenants I came away with. What would you add to this list?

1. Innovation is often not a brand new idea, but one that expands upon an already given belief. (Social Reading)

2. Innovation is often a solution to the problems caused by limits of another technology. (Pandamian, Monocle, IBIS Reader)

3. Truly great innovations are often so ubiquitous that we take them for granted. (Goodreads, OLPC)

4. Broad based excitement about an innovation has a shelf life, after which the excitement is kept alive by only a few. (OPDS)

5. Innovations become great ideas only after they achieve success in their market. (Kobo).

6. Anyone can be an innovator, anyone willing to follow through on the execution of an idea. (Richard Nash)

7. Lack of mass market acceptance does not kill the innovation, it just puts it into obscurity. (Bob Stein and the original Voyager work)

8. Innovation is often not new, it’s just something happening outside our sphere of being. (Voyager Japan)

9. Innovation often isn’t sexy, but paves the way for the movement of larger ideas. (EPUB, HTML5)

10. Innovation often requires doing things for the sake of doing them, and deferring the idea of ROI. (FrancoMedia)

11. Sometimes innovation isn’t tangible, but a concept whose time has come. (Brian O’Leary’s unified field theory, Dominique Raccah‘s immersion vs. extraction reading talk)

12. Sometimes the greatest innovators are the ones who pull all the rest of them together! (Brewster, Peter)

thanks!