Any interest in a NetGalley Co-Op?

Kelloish, I've edited your email address out of your post. You're welcome to put it back in again if you want, but you're likely to get all sorts of spammy emails if you do.

ETA: Do you have any evidence that this service is useful to self-published writers? How many reviews can be expected? How visible are those reviews? I'm not disputing NetGalley's professionalism, but $350 is a significant payment and I'm interested to know what sort of return is likely on that investment.

This looks really interesting. I'm definitely going to have a read on your blog posts and have a think about finances.

A large number of reviews means your book is more likely to be picked up by Bookbub or ENT for promotions, which in turn can lead to hundreds of sales in one day. That bump on Amazon's rankings can lead to very good sales sustained over a long period of time. So I can definitely see this as worthwhile for me. Of course the reviewers would need to post their reviews on Amazon for it to work. Is this likely?

Kelloish,

I'm aware of Net Galley and what it offers, but I have to ask...

Why should any writer pay to join your co-op, when they can join Net Galley them self and do all you suggest?

And as far as reviews go, a weeks time seems rather unbelievable. Professional reviewers and bloggers generally get dozens of ARC's a week. They can't and don't write reviews that quickly and a lot of bloggers end up not reviewing the ARC's they received for various reasons. Most have to slot the reviews in their schedules, and then their loyal followers have to find something in the review that intrigues them, before they will spend a dime. And not all readers will rush out to buy a book that quickly. So a claim of sales increase after a week of a posted review just does not wash as believable. Sorry...

As with all businesses models, self published writers need to weigh the cost of output with returns and right now, very few self published writers are seeing returns that equal the output, compared to the number of self published works out there.

I am not saying the co-op model does not work, but right now I am not seeing anything in what you are suggesting that would entice me to go with your co-op, should I decide to self publish.

You need to give specific and verifiable example of how your co-op differs from others that folded because they could not deliver on the pyramid scheme...

Sarah,

100,000 professional listed on Net Galley does not mean your ARC's go to 100,000 professionals. And as I said above, not all professional reviews, bloggers, etc, will review a book if it is not to their liking, or it does not meet their qualifications.

While more positive reviews can increase sales, negative reviews can also damage a self published writer's success before it takes off. The coin has two sides and the writer has to be very selective in who they send an ARC to be reviewed and who their audience is. Even commercial publishers are very selective about who gets an ARC...

I am also one of those writers who wants to know who is getting an ARC, electronic or print, and what they are doing with it after they have read and reviewed the damn thing. Back when I was reviewing books on Myspace, I used to get ARC's from small Indie presses, and most of them, I never reviewed because the writing was so terrible, or the story so inconsistent that I could not give the review. I stopped reviewing self published writers because of the negative comments from the writers about the reviews. And I know I am not alone in this fact...

So, pick the reviewers and blogs you want to tour, with great care, just like the way you crafted your book...

thothguard51 said:

Kelloish,


Why should any writer pay to join your co-op, when they can join Net Galley them self and do all you suggest?

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Co-ops work out cheaper than listing your book yourself.

Personally, I joined Netgalley in a co-op just over a week ago. In the first week, I had 80 review requests, of which 59 were accepted. I have already had 3 reviews from these requests, two 5stars and one 3star. They were all posted in personal blogs. The 3star was also posted on Goodreads, and one of the 5stars was posted on Amazon.

It's expensive but so far it seems that it's worth it for me.

thothguard51 said:

Kelloish,

I'm aware of Net Galley and what it offers, but I have to ask...

Why should any writer pay to join your co-op, when they can join Net Galley them self and do all you suggest?

Click to expand...

The benefit is that it's a hundred dollars cheaper in a co-op of 20, you get a year instead of 6 months, and you can change out your book as many times as you want. So you could feature several books throughout the year for $300 instead of paying $400 to feature one book for 6 months.

kelloish said:

Checking in to see if anyone here might be interested in joining a NetGalley co-op I'm in the process of organizing.

The cost is $350, which gets you one slot in NetGalley's catalog for a year, but you can change out your title as often as you like if you have more than one book you're looking to build visibility for. If you wanted to go direct with NetGalley, it would be $400 for six months, and you can't change out your title--one and done.

For more information, you can check out this post and this one, which has a much more indepth look at how everything works by another group's admin.

Thanks so much!

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Hi Kelloish, I do have a question for you. You say the cost is $350., and indeed, the first post you linked to listed that as the cost as well. However, the second post you linked to quoted the cost as $300. I also saw the $300. cost elsewhere (I think when I googled Net Galley). Is the extra $50. you quote an administration cost? Thanks

S., you're providing a sweeter deal as far as cash out of pocket. Unless I misunderstood (always possible), the deal as offered is $350 a year.

stranger said:

Co-ops work out cheaper than listing your book yourself. Here's a blog post about a recently created co-op.

http://www.susankayequinn.com/2013/05/netgalley-for-indie-authors.html

Personally, I joined Netgalley in a co-op just over a week ago. In the first week, I had 80 review requests, of which 59 were accepted. I have already had 3 reviews from these requests, two 5stars and one 3star. They were all posted in personal blogs. The 3star was also posted on Goodreads, and one of the 5stars was posted on Amazon.

It's expensive but so far it seems that it's worth it for me.

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OK, I have to ask...

Have you seen a spike in sales yet because of those 3 reviews, over your normal monthly sales? And how can you tell if those 3 reviews are the reason, versus word of mouth finally spreading?

thothguard51 said:

OK, I have to ask...

Have you seen a spike in sales yet because of those 3 reviews, over your normal monthly sales? And how can you tell if those 3 reviews are the reason, versus word of mouth finally spreading?

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Hoping for that would be expecting too much within the first week of a year-long campaign. (Though you might be just curious, which I get.)

I've no idea whether it's worth the money or not. If there is value in it, it seems to be the accumulation of reviews that can help you get accepted by a site like Bookbub or ENT--both are fairly choosy about those they promote, but those promoted tend to do pretty well. And I do think that Amazon favors books in their algos that have more and better reviews than those that don't.

I would expect it's a cumulative benefit, not a spikey one like you might get with a Bookbub listing.

Fair enough...

thothguard51 said:

OK, I have to ask...

Have you seen a spike in sales yet because of those 3 reviews, over your normal monthly sales? And how can you tell if those 3 reviews are the reason, versus word of mouth finally spreading?

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Zero spike in sales.

As shelleyo mentioned, one of the big advantages of this is that if I get a lot of quality reviews I can go for promotions in the big reader sites.

Although I did get a request from a reviewer who sends reviews into big sites like Tor and Publisher Weekly. Fingers crossed that one ends up being good.

I agree with shellyo.

Ent and Bookbub only accept books with at least 25 reviews and a 4 star average. Gathering reviews takes a lot of time, not all bloggers post their reviews on Amazon.

For me--I don't know about anyone else's experience--gathering sales is all about Amazon rankings. Bookbub pushed my book up the ranks but it took months to get my reviews. Netgalley could be useful for my second novel, to save time, get a bookbub or ent promo and travel up the rankings.

The risk of bad reviews is there regardless.

It might not be useful for everyone, but for me it could work very well.

I'm typing on my phone so apologies for any typos.

Ann Joyce said:

Hi Kelloish, I do have a question for you. You say the cost is $350., and indeed, the first post you linked to listed that as the cost as well. However, the second post you linked to quoted the cost as $300. I also saw the $300. cost elsewhere (I think when I googled Net Galley). Is the extra $50. you quote an administration cost? Thanks

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For me, the cost was 350, of which 300 went to Netgalley and 50 went to the organizer. It was hard to find a co-op where the organizer didn't charge a fee because there seems to be a fair amount of work in setting it up and accepting review requests.

Thanks for answering my question, stranger. I was thinking it was an administration fee, but it doesn't hurt to check.

Now I have another question. Who accepts the review requests? You or the administrator? If it's you, how do you go about deciding whether or not to accept them?

Ann Joyce said:

Now I have another question. Who accepts the review requests? You or the administrator? If it's you, how do you go about deciding whether or not to accept them?

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Basically all the co-op emails go through the administrator+administrator approved moderators. So if you get added as one of the moderators you can handle your own requests. For me, I just allow the administrator to handle it.

The netgalley reviewers generally have in their profile where they post previous reviews/their credentials. So this is briefly checked to make sure they actually write reasonable reviews or that they are librarians/other book professional before being approved (as I understand it).

Since most libraries do not stock self published books, I am not sure how getting an e-book ARC to a librarian helps? Other than if they like, word of mouth.

Color me confused...

Thanks stranger. Sounds interesting. I hope you keep checking in to let us know how it works out for you.

kelloish said:

At this point, our new group is about half full, so we're well on our way.

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I wondered how many writers it took to reach half-full. Thanks to your links in the initial post, I see your group needs 20 participants.

It sounds interesting. If I had more titles to promote, I think I'd throw in.

stranger said:

For me, the cost was 350, of which 300 went to Netgalley and 50 went to the organizer. It was hard to find a co-op where the organizer didn't charge a fee because there seems to be a fair amount of work in setting it up and accepting review requests.

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With twenty members in a coop, the organiser makes $1,000. While I don't doubt that organising the scheme involves a lot of work, that's a nice chunk of change.

kelloish said:

Yes, the additional $50 is an administrative fee, although $10 of that does get eaten up by PayPal.

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$800 after fees, if the above is right. If you offered me the job -- keeping 20 writers happy, juggling their various titles for a year, and approving reviewers -- I'd want a bigger chunk of change.

kelloish said:

Yes, the additional $50 is an administrative fee, although $10 of that does get eaten up by PayPal.

As for my current group, I do most of the review request approval but all the authors involved are welcome to do as much or as little as they like. A few have opted to do all themselves, some have opted for me to do all of them, and most fall somewhere in the middle. I handle all of the uploads, NetGalley troubleshooting (we had some titles that didn't run through their conversion process properly), contract stuff etc.

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The administrative fee seems more than reasonable given the amount of work you do. Good luck with it.