Thoughts on NetGalley.com

I've been a member of NetGalley.com for about 3 months now, and wanted to share my thoughts with you. 

I enjoy being a member, and it's free! It's a great way to get advance copies of books and read and review them. Better yet, you get to pick and choose what books. 

My preference is to try to have a book read and a review ready by the time it is published. I am not always able to do this, in fact, so far I think I've only hit this goal with one book so far. Currently I have around 10 books on my shelf that I need to read, and many have already been released. 

Are you a new blogger, booktuber, or new to posting about books on instagram? Think you can't be a member of Net Galley? You would be wrong. I was just getting this blog started again when I applied to Net Galley and requested a bunch of books. I was flabergasted when I was approved for four of my requests almost instantaneously. I don't have a lot of viewers or followers yet, but I grow each and every day. May only be by one viewer, but hay, I'm still growing.

I was even more stunned when the publisher of one of the books I received contacted me about being part of their blog tour. Me? Part of a blog tour? I had a total panic attack because I don't like not knowing what to expect, and I had never been part of a blog tour, nor had I witnessed or followed a blog tour before. In the end I let myself down, I debated with myself, and took my time reading the book; I didn't want to sign up for a blog tour if I didn't like the book. With my dragging feet, I believe I put in my application to be part of the blog tour too late, plus very much limited what I was willing to do out of fear and was not chosen. I still posted my review around the time of the blog tour since I waited to be sure I had not been chosen, so I still felt I was part of it, I just wasn't officially part of it.

Another benefit of NetGalley is these are books I'm requesting and will likely enjoy reading. So while I feel obligated to read and review them, that feeling is outweighed by my interest in reading them. For example, I recently received Hunter by Mercedes Lackey; this book, I don't know what it was exactly, but I really wanted this book. I kept checking my email to see if I had received it. Then, one morning while I was at work, the notice on my phone popped up that I had received an email from NetGalley.com. Enough of the message showed in the notice that I saw I had been approved to receive a copy of this book. It took great effort to keep quiet while I did a little celebration dance in my chair. (Then I went and rushed through the book I was reading and chose Hunter as part of my BooktubeAThon TBR; and made myself wait even longer to start reading the book.)

A few tips I have are:

1. Use your shelves: NetGalley provides shelves kind of like how goodreads does. When you are approved for a request it appears on your New shelf. To track what books you have downloaded to your kindle or other reading device, switch the book over to your Reading shelf. This way you won't forget to download a book before it archives and you can no longer download it for reading. (Yes, I forgot to download one of the books I was approved for because I thought I had downloaded it already; and am kicking myself for it.)
2. Don't request more books than you can read: I went request crazy one day and now have more books than I can read in one month. This may not really bother you, but NetGalley also tracks your reviews written to approved books ratio. Once you get started and have a few reviews under your belt, the goal to aim for is 80%.
3. Read the approved request email: Some of the publishers may specify when to publish a review for their book. You do not want to publish too soon.

These are just a few tips I'm have. If you would like more tips as I go along and learn, please let me know. Do you already participate with NetGalley? Please share in the comments below any tips you have that you would like to share with me and others who read this post.