: Is using NetGalley as valuable as it promises? NetGalley charges for a listing of any book to get it out to institutional buyers. I understand that you can offer advance reviewer copies but

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Difficult and subjective question. I'm sure it's a good investment for some books and not for others. As head of a smaller indie press, I didn't find it to be a worthwhile value for the cost.

Alternatives include: booklife, bookreviewrequest, librarything's member giveaway and contacting reviewers directly. It MIGHT be worth paying for Kirkus or PW to do a review if you're unknown. Perhaps you could enlist a friend you can trust to write a fair review. Perhaps getting blurbs from a trusted author/colleague could be helpful too.

I've noticed that ebook publicity newsletters like bookbub require a minimum number of reviews, so if using netgalley allows you to meet this minimum threshhold, then it might be worth doing.

If you haven't developed other ways to contact reviewers or early readers, then this might be your only (but expensive) option.

Maybe the deeper question: is how much money should you/can you allocate to publicity/reviewing services (or how big of a marketing budget should you have)? The larger budget you have, the greater probability that you won't see a return on your investment.

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