By Adam Dahari
Update March 2020: We are no longer partnered with NetGalley. Please email us at writinglife@kobo.com for recommendations on growing your readership.
Are you an indie author looking to promote your titles and grow your readership? Kobo Writing Life and NetGalley have partnered to benefit authors and publishers looking to do just that.
What is NetGalley?
NetGalley is a reading platform that enables readers to access free eBooks for review on all major reading devices and platforms. What’s great about this service is that readers will leave their feedback on their social media platforms and channels, extending readership and further promoting your title(s) across social media channels.
How does NetGalley work through KWL?
Each month we accept a maximum of 20 title entries from KWL authors to be featured on NetGalley for the upcoming month. Authors then pay a flat fee of $39.99 – regularly $450 for a six-month standard title listing – for their title(s) to be featured for that entire month. There is no limit to how many times an author can submit their titles.
We take care of uploading the EPUB files to NetGalley – all you need to do is upload your EPUB and cover files to your author dashboard. Easy, right?
What happens after the NetGalley month?
On the first of each month, once your NetGalley promo has ended, we send a title activity report to authors detailing title downloads, reviews, star ratings, reason for request, suggested keywords, and opinions. This allows you to get a quick and easy glimpse of how well your title(s) did throughout the previous month, giving you a clearer insight into the factors of your title’s success.
If you think our Kobo/NetGalley co-op promotion would benefit your title readership and would like to be added to the submissions list, please email us at writinglife@kobo.com. We look forward to promoting your titles!
Adam is KWL’s author engagement intern. He works alongside the team to ensure that our indie authors have everything they need to successfully publish their works on the Kobo platform.
He enjoys reading Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Classical Poetry, and Indigenous Literature. He also loves playing video games (mostly retro Nintendo and PS4), and has been training in Muay Thai kickboxing for 3 years now. One of his biggest passions is music: he loves to sing, write, and play guitar, and hopes to make an album some day soon!
Hello, this sounds a great opportunity for authors but I am a bit confused by this comment: “Authors then pay a flat fee of $39.99 – regularly $450 for a six-month standard title listing – for their title(s) to be featured for that entire month.” $39.99 is not prohibitive for one month but $450 is for me, six months or not. Are you able to clarify please? Also, I think when we upload books to Kobo they are automatically converted to epub, I believe. It’s just that a while back I noticed that one of my books didn’t lend itself well to an ePub conversion but this was a few years back! Hopefully technology has moved on since then. It was to do with headings on the page. Many thanks
Hello Kate! To clarify, the flat fee of $39.99 is only through KWL; if you were to get a title entry through NetGalley directly, it would cost $450 for six months – this is their only subscription option for a title to be reviewed. As file types, you are now able to upload any of the following: DOC and DOCX, OPF, ePub and MOBI. I hope this gives enough clarification.