Discussion Post: The Pros & Cons of NetGalley

Free books! Who doesn’t want them? Well… Sometimes me. NetGalley is certainly an amazing service; it supports authors, informs readers of upcoming releases & provides free books in return for honest reviews, however, there’s always another side to every story and for me, sometimes NetGalley is just too inviting (anyone else press the ‘request’ button too frequently?). Here are my thoughts on the service.

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Pros:

1. Free (new release) books! Who can refuse free books, least of all, books that haven’t even been released yet? The concept of free books in return for reviews was something that astounded me when I was first introduced to it. 2 years later, and the novelty has anything but worn off.
2. Support for authors. Supporting authors (especially self publishing or lesser known authors) is something that I’m sure we care about here in the book blogging world.
3. Information on new releases. Probably my favourite thing about NetGalley is being able to stay on top of the new books coming out. Without this tool, I don’t know where I would be.

Cons:

1. Requesting too many books. There have been so (so, so, so) many times where I’ve requested 10+ books expecting to get approved for maybe 3 but have ended up getting 90% of them. While this on its own isn’t necessarily an issue, when combined with the point below, it’s a real killer.
2. Stressful deadlines. A number of timesI’ve been approved for books 2 weeks before the archive date. For me, a self confessed stress bunny, it’s too much to handle.
3. Reading eBooks. I’ve never really liked reading eBooks, but have recently found that I’ve been forcing myself to read electronic books just to keep up with eArcs.
4. Unknown quality of book. There is a huge number of highly successful well known authors on NetGalley, plus many great undiscovered writers. However, like any book, there’s a chance of it not living up to your expectations. Unfortunately, I’ve recently gone through a patch of bad eArcs where I was forced to DNF 3 books 😭.

What is your opinion of NetGalley? Have you read any bad eArcs? How do you deal with Arc deadlines? Let’s discuss! 😊