Partner Spotlight: NetGalley

Partner Spotlight is a new series designed to highlight the vendors that partner with ABA to offer discounted products, services, and business opportunities to ABA members. Each installment, we interview a different partner to learn more about their organization and why indie bookstores matter to them. 

NetGalley has been providing publishers (and booksellers, librarians, and other professional readers) with an alternative to physical galleys since 2008.

This week, Bookselling This Week spoke with Tarah Theoret, NetGalley's Senior Director of Community Experience. 

Bookselling This Week: Why don’t you tell me a little bit about NetGalley and its origin?

Tarah Theoret: NetGalley was launched in 2008 with the mission to provide publishers with an alternative to print galleys. While this was perfect timing during the rise of e-books, it also meant that much of those early years were focused on helping publishers and readers to see the value in digital galleys/DRCs.

Now 16 years later, NetGalley has evolved into an industry-standard service that is utilized by publishers and authors as a key part of their marketing and publicity efforts. Over 600,000 booksellers, educators, librarians, reviewers, media/journalists, and other book trade professionals use NetGalley to share reviews and champion literacy!

BTW: You have a few competitors out there. What do you think sets you apart from your competitors?

TT: Our platform is unique and flexible — publishers rely on NetGalley’s secure, digital fulfillment to actively invite all kinds of readers to access their books and audiobooks for a wide variety of goals, including pre-pub reviews, industry list nominations, pre-orders, and backlist promotions. NetGalley also has a dedicated focus on the user experience, and we’re constantly innovating based on member and client feedback. We are very proud when we hear readers or publishers remark how intuitive the site feels.

Our motto is “We help books succeed” and that’s truly our north star! It drives our service-oriented mindset which prioritizes customer success, empathy and problem-solving in everything that we do.

BTW: NetGalley has been partnering with ABA for several years now. Is there anything unique about working with our booksellers?

TT: We are so grateful for our strong partnership with ABA, which started over 10 years ago now, in 2014! We love supporting indie booksellers, and we’ve found ABA booksellers are incredibly eager to learn and innovate so they can best serve their community (whether it’s local and/or online). We recognize booksellers are passionate, but also constantly juggling a multitude of responsibilities for their store and community. So, we’re happy to provide a platform that can help expand their access to digital galleys and audiobooks.

Verified ABA members on NetGalley are generally approved more quickly to access upcoming books, and our exclusive ABA Digital Box Newsletter grants pre-approved access to select digital galleys of upcoming print books! Plus, booksellers can nominate for the Indie Next List directly in NetGalley. 

BTW: Are there any anecdotes or success stories you’d like to share?

TT: We’re so incredibly honored to have many success stories! Whether it’s a particular book finding its audience, or a debut author building their platform, we hear about successes large and small every day.

Especially meaningful for me as the leader of our Community Experience team, is when a member discovers a book on NetGalley that they needed (or didn’t even know they needed). Last year at Winter Institute, I had the pleasure of speaking with many booksellers and something that repeatedly came up was that they were grateful that they could access comics, graphic novels, and manga via NetGalley — since it allows them an easy way to view the entire file (vs. a sample) and in full color!

BTW: How long have you been with NetGalley? How did you end up here?

TT: I’ve been with NetGalley for over 12 years! I started my career in traditional publishing, at HarperCollins and then Penguin Young Readers, focusing on retail and digital marketing. During my time at PYR I managed our NetGalley publisher account, which allowed the marketing department to distribute digital galleys to booksellers, librarians, media, educators, and bloggers. And then, through a very serendipitous turn of events, I landed a job at NetGalley. Find me at Winter Institute in the Vendor Showcase — I’ll tell you the story!

BTW: What’s something you really enjoy about working with this company?

TT: The NetGalley team is the absolute best group of humans I’ve ever met and it’s a joy to work with them every day. The level of talent, curiosity, and respect everyone brings to the table makes me excited to come to work.

This also extends to our 600k+ members who use our site. I’m very aware that we have a unique community — they’re the kindest people and I genuinely enjoy every single interaction I have the privilege of experiencing.   

BTW: Do you have any book recommendations for us? Anything you’ve loved lately?

TT: My favorite book I read this year was This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar. I’m also reluctantly almost done reading The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab, which reminds me a bit of The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (my absolute favorite book) with the story told in multiple timelines and its dark magical elements.

Now that it’s officially cozy season where I live, I’m diving into the many amazing cookbooks published recently — my favorites are Pass the Plate by Carolina Gelen and Start Here by Sohla El-Waylly.