Certainly the e-galley concept is going to gain traction.  I think a key point is what you touch on towards the end - that the value added by a service like netgalley is not the creation of the galley, it’s the large pool of potential reviewers.  Publishers can create egalleys instead of ARC’s already.  And even setting up something akin to netgalley’s “store” would be simple enough, as would streamlining the ability to request a POD galley.  What the publisher is paying for is the exposure and the time savings of finding all the reviewers.  That may not be worth it for every book and every publisher, but it will be for many of them.

Appreciate the quote--and feel free to cite me by name if you like.

However, I meant what I said, because we aren’t a traditional publisher in the sense of the mainstream. We print digitally, and have always offered ebooks. As a result, all those people you mention aren’t going to even look at one of our galleys, because the bias against digital publishing--POD, if you insist--still permeates the industry.

Add in the fact that we simply will NOT accept returns, which contradict our commitment to making as small an environmental footprint as we can manage, and that $200 would literally be a waste of money for us. For that $200 I can purchase an ad in a niche magazine (virtual or print) that will reach a book’s target audience (and perhaps arrange for the editor to include a first chapter as well). I can purchase postcards for the author to distribute offering a discount in our online bookstore. I can subsidize an author’s trip to a conference or convention, or assist with other promotional items. I can buy a year’s-worth of banner ad space on a popular website where potential readers visit often.

In other words, I can use that money to reach readers, who so far are the people who show the most interest in what we have to offer--long-tail it, if you will.

If I used something like netGalley, I’d be spending that money in the (probably vain) hope that enough reviewers (who aren’t already on my mailing list) would be interested, and that where they posted their reviews would have sufficient impact, that subsequent sales would recoup the cost. And our margins won’t allow for a distributor, so that’s not relevant.

Not gonna happen. Every one of my current best-sellers is so because of the untiring efforts of a committed author, combined with whatever assistance I can offer from our extremely tight budget. I’ve done the usual route several times because the author asked me to, and it was a waste of money. I see no reason to believe netGalley or any other high-priced service will be any different.

Might I use it for a very specific book? Probably. In fact, I have one in mind that’s due out in October. But for the general run, there are other options that make more sense.

@ Elizabeth - thanks for weighing in.  I appreciate your reading and responding.  Your comment on the Booksquare blog inspired my quote, although your reaction is not uncommon among the publishers that have discussed e-galleys.

A couple of thoughts:

- I may be misreading your post, but it sounds as if galleys (print or digital) don’t help sell your titles.  While there are advantages to using a service like netGalley (I’ll address that next), if galleys don’t work for you, they don’t work.  I wouldn’t argue otherwise.

- I do believe, strongly, that digital content is a cornerstone of digital marketing, and (as described in the initial post) that digital marketing will become the more cost-effective option for many publishers and titles.  The advantage of services like netGalley is that they open up the review and discovery universe at a manageable cost, and they offer those advantages to all of the titles that participate.  Rather than create and mail a list once, a publisher can tailor a list seamlessly, track results and refine its use over time.  Edward Tabolt’s response captures this really well.

- Finally, in our studies, we found that publishers failed to value the time required to manage their current publicity and marketing processes.  When analyzed, some of their standard practices proved much more time-consuming than they would have been with a tool like netGalley.

This is a hypothetical example, using your postcard as a test case.  If you mailed 100 postcards, it wouldn’t be unusual to spend $1 a piece on creative, production and mailing.  Someone might spend a day pulling all of those elements together; at a fully-loaded hourly rate of $35, that puts the cost of a small mailing at something like $380.

We take for granted that these are the things we need to do to market books, and the people required to do this work are already on staff, so there is no marginal cost.  I’d challenge both assumptions (it sounds as if you do too). I’m fine putting aside netGalley, which is just one option to make marketing an investment in building community, but I think publishers who stick to existing marketing models will find themselves at risk in the future.

Elsewhere on this site, there’s a presentation on digital marketing that Ted Hill and I did for Tools of Change in February 2008.  It had a somewhat different focus, but the underlying message is there, as well.  If it’s of interest, the file is downloadable.

I’ve provided the financials that I have as part of the initial blog post and a more recent response.  Let me know what you’d like to see beyond that and I’ll see if I can provide that.

Perhaps I should clarify: it’s not the idea of putting electronic galleys online I have a problem with. It’s paying $250 PER TITLE to upload them to a hub server when I can do the same at Scribd for free.

To me, that fee is intended to have the same effect as the huge membership fees required to participate in some publishing industry organizations--it’s meant to cater to the big mainstream publishers and keep the small-press riff-raff out.