Reviews are important for a book, but there are things more important than nice words. NetGalley offers the opportunity to get a title noticed not only by reviewers, but also librarians and booksellers. The service is used by publishers and authors at all levels and business models, from the big houses to the smallest.
It isn’t free to post, but many writers organizations have paid for memberships that allow them to post so many titles a month and they then ‘sublet’ those slots to members and the outside publishing community for a marginal fee.
This is invaluable to independent publishers and authors, who likely don’t release enough titles in a month to justify an ongoing membership, which can be costly.
eSpec Books makes use of an application offered by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and while there is no guarantee a title will receive reviews–or that the reviews it does receive are favorable–there is generally some noticable impact on future sales. Certainly enough to justify the $30 sublet fee.
As far as how NetGalley works, for those not familiar with it, if you have an account you can request titles for review. Those listing the titles will evaluate your request and determine if they will grant it. It is free to sign up for a NetGalley account and anyone can do so, but your responses on where you post reviews and how quickly and often you post them will contribute to whether or not your request for a particular title is approve.
This month, we have posted two titles (click the below links to request these titles on NetGalley):
The Kindly One by Danielle Ackley-McPhail
Guilt, the venom running through humanity’s veins,
The cancer eating mankind’s soul.
Death, both courted and earned, well fed upon denial.
Balanced on the delicate edge between madness and damnation, clarity comes to us all. There is one thing more terrifying than the darkness at the edge of your vision staring back. The seed of that darkness peering from within your heart. What is real? What is imagined?
Right, or wrong, the price of your answer is your soul.
Includes the Stories:
The Kindly One, Skippy, Ruby Red, The Carrier, The Forest of a Thousand Lost Souls, Uncast Shadows, In the Dying Light, Burning Conviction, Purgatory
Gone to Ground by Aaron Rosenberg
There are creatures lurking in our world. Obscure creatures long relegated to myth and legend. They have been sighted by a lucky—or unlucky—few, some have even been photographed, but their existence remains unproven and unrecognized by the scientific community.
These creatures, long thought gone, have somehow survived; creatures from our nightmares haunting the dark places. They swim in our lakes and bays, they soar the night skies, they hunt in the woods. Some are from our past, and some from other worlds, and others that have always been with us—watching us, fearing us, hunting us.
These are the cryptids, and Systema Paradoxa tells their tales.
***
In the heyday of the Roaring Twenties, Trevor Kinkaid’s house parties were the highlight of the social season, with lively music, the most fashionable of clothes, excellent food, and, of course, illicit drink.
Not just the place to see and be seen, but the place to be noticed.
But when a fresh new face catches Trevor’s eye and she later turns up dead, no one sees a thing. Or do they? As the cream of society look on their host with speculation, his protests of innocence fall on jaded ears.
Even with some unexpected help, can the local detective unearth the truth in time? Or will the real perpetrator go to ground?
eSpec Books 