The e-ARC Sites

I’ve been playing around with the idea of doing an ARC related post, but I feel like I am just settling in to the ARC world and figuring out where I stand in it. Plus, I just don’t feel like I have enough knowledge about physical ARCs that would be useful or interesting to read! But, I have been playing around withe Edelweiss and Netgalley for a bit and I thought it’d be fun to tell my experience with both and maybe throw in a few tips!

This definietly not a popular opinion, but I prefer Edelweiss over Netgalley. I find it to be easier to use and you get feedback faster from most publishers (there are few that take forever though). Plus, once you get the hang of the site, it’s pretty easy to use! Viewing from a desktop is easier for figuring things out, but once you’ve got the hang of it, viewing it on mobile isn’t too bad. I also like this one cause I don’t really have to worry about a feedback ratio. I pretty sure publishers can see what you’ve been approved of and what you’ve reviewed, but I’m not sure how much that plays into approvals. I’ve also seen that books tend to be added here first most of the time.

Netgalley is very user friendly. Both on desktop and mobile. It’s easy to filter books and request or wish for them. I have found that approvals or denials tend to take longer here. I find it a bit frustrating waiting awhile just to find out that I’ve been declined. Nevertheless, it’s another chance to read books I’m really anticipating!

I would suggest only requesting the books you really, really want to read. This will better your ratio, which will make your chance of getting approved for another book in the future higher, and it will keep you from drowning in unread books to read and write reviews on. This post is actually brought to you from the fact that I accidentally added a book to my shelf that I thought was a request but was actually a read now. Oops haha. So this advice is probably not heeded by anybody and that’s completely fine! There’s so many good books out there! It’s just something I do since if I have a lot of ARC reviews on my plate it tends to stress me out!

I would also suggest to make your profile as strong as they suggest. It’s pretty easy, just adding links to where you review and making sure you have a profile picture! I’ve also found it nice to have accounts on both of these sites since certain books are sometimes only on one or the other. (And if they are on both that gives you two chances to get approved.)

This post was a lot messier than I intended it to be, but that’s fine! I think said everything that I wanted to. Which e-ARC site do you prefer? I’d be interested to know!

Thank you for reading!