scijessreads

Before I returned to my reading roots, I had no idea what an ARC (advanced readers copy) was in the book world. I’m not even sure how I ended up deciding to get my first ARC, but I signed up for NetGalley near the end of 2022 on a whim. At that point, I didn’t have a huge social media following. To be honest, I still don’t. Probably because my social feeds are not just books, but are still a bit of everything. This blog included. But I did have a decent log of reviewed and rated books on Goodreads, and a passion for reading. So, I figured “why not?” and signed up. It was free. There was an option to “read now” on books that didn’t require publisher approval. It seemed like a good thing to try with very little downside if it didn’t end up working out.

As far as numbers go, I’ve been approved for 40 books in total, and have read them all. I try to choose books that fall into my go-to categories (fantasy, romance, and science-fiction), with the occasional non-fiction science-related book. And most have been 4 to 5 star reads. A few reviews have been less than enthusiastic on my part, but overall I’ve found some great books doing this (many of which I now own, after purchasing them for myself after publication). I have had the best luck with Tordotcom books in terms of loving the books and being approved by the publisher to get them.

Each publisher has their own approval requirements, so I try to check those out before requesting books to reduce the number of rejected titles I end up with. But there are so many reasons why you may not be chosen to get a book and you have to be OK with that. Generally, I try to keep my profile updated with current Goodreads and Storygraph Stats, and read what I am given in a timely manner to keep my percentage higher for the feedback ratio. I try not to request too many at once, and to space out the publication dates, because I am very much a mood reader and don’t want to neglect to read and review books I agreed to read.

You can get some fun badges on your dashboard. The top Reviewer one is for if you get 3 or more “featured reviews.” Those are when the publisher chooses your review to be featured on the first page of reviews available on the site for others to read.

Outside of NetGalley, I tried Book Sirens as well, which is another site that you can request ARCs from. I read a few from there, but I found that I was rating those books lower, and thus not getting as many given to me after a while. So I stopped requesting from there. Even in my 3 star reviews (or lower) I tend to give as many good elements of the book that I can, and not be mean in any way. But I do understand that authors might not want to see those reviews of their work.

I also in the last year managed to get ARCs from 3 indie authors directly via sign-ups I saw posted on Instagram. Two were authors I already had read books by and loved, and one was a new one entirely that I now follow and love their work.

Overall, I have enjoyed ARC reading. I’ll continue to do it (I currently have 3 books to read from NetGalley), but it will never be my main source of books. My TBR is too long for that. And as mentioned, I am a mood reader and sometimes don’t want to be reading a book because I HAVE to. I would much rather read books because I WANT to.