NetGalley Launches Consumer-Facing Platform
NetGalley, a platform that allows publishing industry professionals to access digital ARCs of upcoming releases, has launched Booktrovert.com, a “consumer-facing marketing platform” featuring giveaways, reader activities, merch, and more. NetGalley is positioning Booktrovert as a solution to “the book industry’s demand for robust consumer marketing tools.” Marketing is a perpetual challenge, and publishers continue to struggle with how to get readers to buy the books they want to sell them instead of/in addition to whatever is trending on BookTok. Algorithm-driven social media has turned marketing into a casino in which the odds of gaining traction are low, but the possibility of hitting the viral jackpot compels everyone to play. Which is all to say: I understand the opportunity NetGalley sees here and why publishers might find it appealing. The real question is: what is the value proposition to the readers?
Angela Bole, CEO of NetGalley’s parent company Firebrand, told Publishers Weekly that influencers and their followers are “the people that publishers want to reach.” So why isn’t the platform social media-forward? The primary action for a new Booktrovert user happens on a page called “My Booktrovert Feed,” which is simply a list of current and upcoming giveaways. Additional tabs offer the ability to track one’s reading with tools that are not nearly as robust as those available on Goodreads or StoryGraph, create digital shelves to “share proudly on social,” and play a bookish Bingo game. Notable for a platform intended to reach consumers who are digital natives, the only way to use Booktrovert is through the website; there is no app.
Most telling, perhaps, is the emphasis on keeping NetGalley and Booktrovert separate. Kristina Radke, SVP of growth and engagement for both brands, notes: “We want the NetGalley community to remain as professional as we can, while the Booktrovert community can be everyone and their mother.” And therein lies the rub: the publishing industry hasn’t realized that, like the biggest BookTubers, Bookstagrammers, and book bloggers before them, social media influencers are professionals. Their content regularly garners hundreds of thousands, even millions, of views. If the goal is to get influencers to cover the books publishers are trying to sell, why not simply give them the same access to NetGalley that other book media professionals (whose content generates much less visibility) receive? Why add friction to the process by asking them to join a new platform with minimal features and a limited title selection? I completely believe Angela Bole that “publishers have been asking for this for a long time.” Just once, I’d love to see the publishing industry try to solve ~the discoverability problem~ by starting with what readers want.