NetGalley is the top online service for getting upcoming releases in front of reviewers all over the world. Publishers post ARCs (Advance Reader Copies) to be reviewed. Note that an ARC is not completely edited, but good enough for the reviewer to render an opinion.

Regarding NetGalley, this is expensive if you buy the service on an individual basis -- $399 each! Since we release 50 to 75 books a year, we opted for a subscription service that lets us keep a group of titles active. Individual ARCs remain active for a fixed period, and we are limited to how many concurrent titles we can have.

NetGalley subscribers are some of the key book reviewers in the industry. They will now be able to discover and access our galleys via their account and read (securely) a PDF, ePub, or Mobi version of the file.

Obviously, to implement this, our process must change. We will need to format the galley well in advance of release, perhaps after the first round of edits. Jen, Crystal and I will be discussing the best approach.

We will also need to manage the release schedule better in order to take full advantage of this. We will be working on this over the next month and sharing it in the next newsletter.

Some things to think about:

1) Not every book is suited for this service.

2) We have not tested the results, but so far our trial titles received dozens of review requests in the first three days.

3) We will have to decide the advantages of long lead times to releases versus short lead times. It would seem we could easily integrate a 60 day window prior to release for most reviews. However, a 180 day lead may not be possible or desirable.

At this point, there is nothing more for you to do as authors -- and Sunbury Press will be paying for the service.